Dispatches from the AHA in New Orleans (1)

The Way of Improvement Leads Home is already hard at work at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in New Orleans.  Erin Bartram is a Ph.D candidate at the University of Connecticut where she is studying 19th century U.S. gender and religious history.  She is working on a dissertation, under the direction of Richard D. Brown, which examines New England women converts to Catholicism.  

Erin will be reporting "from the floor" of the AHA.  Her first dispatch is published below.  --JF

Like many AHA attendees, my conference got started in the departures lounge at the airport.  I was dutifully reading my latest issue of Perspectives in History when a gentleman approached me and asked if I was presenting a paper.  And thus I met my first new historian of the trip, Jonathan Elukin of Trinity College in Hartford.  Now that I'm settled in, and I've had my first (but certainly not last) beignet of the week, I'm looking forward to Thursday's lineup, starting with a panel on the AHA's tuning project.  For those of you who are at the conference, make sure to take advantage of the app the AHA is providing if you can.  It provides you with an easy way to make a schedule for yourself so you don't end up flipping through that bulky program trying to remember where you're off to next.  I can already tell it's going to make navigating the conference much easier!