My Experience at This Year’s PCA Conference

This past week I attended the PCA/ACA Southwest Texas regional conference in San Antonio, Texas (the full acronym being the PCA/ACA SWTX conference-a mouthful indeed). While it was not my first conference experience, ^[1] it was certainly my first autonomous endeavor to present my work in an academic setting.

What I mean by that is I did this completely on my own, without any supervision or scholarly recommendation. It felt good to go into a setting such as this with the sense of adventure and confidence of presenting your findings to people who actually have similar interests. Also, the event was in my home town, which only made me feel more comfortable.

I knew this conference was a major gathering, but the scale of the conference surprised me. Upon checking in at the registration desk, I was handed a huge book. That was the schedule. I briefly browsed the program online, but this visualization in a 400+ page book made it seem all the more daunting. I immediately felt a fear that I would simply get lost in the mix.

I presented a paper I wrote in a seminar last spring at George Mason titled Politics and Entertainment. This twentieth century US course focused on the way theater, music, and (mostly) film intersected with and played a role in American politics. My paper, Nervous Breakdown: Hardcore Punk, Ronald Reagan and US Culture in the 1980s presented a broad overview of hardcore and attempted to contextualize it in not just 1980s America but also the social and cultural conditions of the 1970s. The types of historical questions I wanted to explore included how marginal cultural productions differ in their message, do they contribute anything new, and if so, how does American hardcore punk fit into this?

My findings (as shown in my PowerPoint) highlight that:
1. It is best to look at the world of the 1970s to understand these kids’ emotions
2. Hardcore should be viewed as an umbrella term (more of a mode of doing things)
3. I’m arguing against the notion that hardcore is either valid or invalid by resulting in “real change”. There is validity in the real emotions expressed through hardcore (as I attempted to illustrate through the lyrical sincerity in the word clouds). I would push for scholars and interested individuals to avoid such a dichotomous position.
4. Perhaps Reagan is not the end all be all cause of hardcore punk. He is often cited as “the galvanizing force” behind hardcore, but I feel there is so much more going on that this presents an oversimplification.

A few technical issues aside, the panel went well and there was a nice Q & A. The audience seemed interested and there were some good questions that produced a good dialogue between the other panel members and the crowd.

All in all, it was a very enriching experience and I would like to attend next year. Speaking of which, I plan to submit my work from this past semester entitled The Origins of Straight Edge Through Lyrical Analysis . This paper saw a deeper and more informed analysis of hardcore through the specific topic of straight edge. Textual analysis tools led to a very interesting look at straight edge songs which resulted in some intriguing conclusions.

1 As an undergrad I presented at the World History Association of Texas, the WHAT conference, which always made me chuckle.

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