Conference Dispatch
A report from the UofA Conference on Whackydoodletry
by Matthew Keracher
image courtesy of Diablanco
Delegates of the Association for British Whackydoodletry convened in Aberdeen last week, to present panels at the forefront of their field. The Gaudie sent a reporter to the King’s Conference Centre to investigate.
One panel, entitled “Navel Gazing and Gavel Nazing,” hopes to redress an imbalance in the discipline and offers the promise of a “new turn”, sure to shake up Whackydoodletry, which many see as a stagnating field, and make it more amenable to policy makers and wealthy laymen alike.
Dr. Chey Gerumsaynathan, based in the Whackydoodle Department at Aberdeen, explained to the Gaudie: “There is this theoretical presupposition in certain circles that forms of post-modernist critique [such as Whackdoodletry] has no ability to hold power to account, and has been described as a form of navel-gazing. This panel asks, what if navels can gaze back?”
Gerumsaynathan’s own paper at the panel explores contranavelphallocentrism, and is entitled “All dicks and no belly buttons.” Other papers include, “Can the Outie speak?” and “Thinking through skin holes.”
Dr. Lance Sidney had come to present a paper entitled, “Churchill’s Real Belch: Navel Command at Gallipoli.” Sidney, a military historian of the University of his Bongo, explained: ‘I didn’t really have a paper for this panel, but the conference offers free bed and board.’
Dr. Gerumsaynathan remained confident that the panel, and conference, was a success with tens of people attending. However, in a statement to the Gaudie, Sally Ferguson, Vice Principal of Spreadsheets, stated that the free bed and board for delegates would “have to go,” as part of a strategic disinvestment plan of the Whackydoodle Department. Calling from the newly finished management citadel (“The AU”), a solid gold student-proof cube in the sky, Ferguson explained: “There just isn’t enough money for this kind of decadent, ivory tower, intellectualism. In a time of increasing austerity and globalization, we have to balance our budget somehow.”
