aana jaana

I just submitted my proposal for the next Textile Society of America Symposium in 2020. Fingers crossed that it’s accepted. In the meantime, papers from last year’s symposium are now available online in a couple different formats. My presentation was part of a recorded session, so you can actually watch the thing on Youtube. It’s not as multisensory as the live presentation was–my arm will not break through your laptop screen to hand you a sample of wool. But there is some stuff in there that’s not in the written paper, notably the moment when I bust into song.* I’d highly recommend checking out the whole playlist of video presentations–I saw many of them in person and they were amazing.

Even more really excellent presentations are available in written form in the Proceedings (my paper specifically here). And they are all open access! I am so grateful to TSA for making their symposium proceedings available to the public. When I was considering going to grad school, TSA papers were pretty much the only textile research that I could take a look at to see if it was something I wanted to pursue. And now that I’ve graduated and am no longer able to access most scholarly literature, I’m really reliant on the few open access sources that are out there. Thank you TSA and everyone else who makes it possible for me to continue this work outside academia!

*The line that I chose to sing was a bit of a private joke–it translates to something like “it was time for me to go, but I remembered and I forgot the way.” I thought it sort of applied to the situation I was in, of having to give this presentation after my research went in a completely different direction than I expected when I submitted the proposal. In the context of the song it’s from, it has rather a different connotation, as you’ll be able to infer from this somewhat melodramatic music video.