The Academic Conference in Fiction

One of the central features of the traditional professorial career, the academic conference, can provoke dramatically different responses; for academics of a certain age and established status, the conference is a source of nostalgia. And a number of academic novels, particularly David Lodge’s Small World, celebrate the conference in nostalgic terms. At the same time the conference can be challenged on many fronts, including its cost but, even more, its role in catering to, and perpetuating, privilege in the academy, or what one observer calls “the continued feudalization of academia.” Lodge’s original title, We Can’t Go On Meeting Like This, may have been prophetic, as the challenges to continuing to meet “like this,” particularly the resentment of angry academic outsiders, may overcome the nostalgic enjoyment of the traditional conference.