I was thrilled to be a part of the Identity, Subjectivity and Horror panel at SCMS in Boston – it was a great panel with phenomenal papers and scholars! I haven’t presented at SCMS since 2018 in Toronto, and am always shocked at the size of the conference, and how many amazing panels there are – how are you supposed to choose what to attend? This was also my first time in the USA since COVID and my first time in Boston! Although I didn’t get to see much of Boston (trying to attend as many panels as possible), I enjoyed my time – minus seeing a mouse at the airport while waiting for our flight!

I always leave conferences feeling so inspired and full of energy to keep researching and working on my own research. They give me the same feeling as I get when I used to watch the awful Urban Legend (1998) on repeat as a teenager. Filmed at the University of Toronto, the film always gave me the aura of “oh… this is what university feels like,” and while the brutalist aesthetics of both UCalgary or York don’t match the old-timey university vibe of Urban Legend, I still get the same spiritual feeling of “this is what university feels like” when attending conferences.