Reflections on OSCLG by Deborah Ballard-Reisch

Reflections on OSCLG by Deborah Ballard-Reisch

First, this conference, this organization, the people who present and discuss work here are the most nurturing, energizing, fulfilling colleagues I meet each year. This conference is like coming home. I leave each year with new perspectives, new ideas, new directions. I have found an academic home here for myself, my students, my children, and our scholarship. I have found colleagues who will support and challenge me to consider my perspective as well as find meaningful alternatives.

So, with OSCLG, I begin at the beginning.

In the spring of 1978, I was a junior at Bowling Green State University. Virginia Eman-Wheeless was teaching the first ever "male/female communication" course. Cindy Berryman-Fink was one of her graduate assistants. My male advisor told me it was a waste of time when I indicated I wanted to take the course. I didn't. I have regretted that decision, but it did not dampen my interest in the study of communication and gender. That year, the first OSCLG conference was held in the student union at BGSU. I was intrigued. I found reason to go to the student union - a lot. At first I stood outside the room where the conference was held, just listening. Later, I snuck into the room, listened for a bit, then feeling self conscious, like I didn't belong there, I left. Throughout the conference I snuck in and out ... a lot! Scholars who would be very important to me later, as I pursued my graduate degrees, even later as an academic, were there in person, including CherisKramaraeand Bobby Patton. Little did I realize how critical they would be not only to my writing, but to my career.

I lost sight of OSCLG for years after that first conference until in 1986, a colleague told me about this great conference he attended. I submitted some of my work and attended the conference in Marquette University in 1987. There I met Linda Perry, this was the first conference for both of us, if I recall, and we struck up what has been a very meaningful life-long friendship.

The day before that conference, I learned I was pregnant with my son Stefan, who, by the way, has presented and performed at this conference. Linda was one of the first people I told. It was several years before I realized that this OSCLG was that same organization whose first conference I had crashed at BGSU.

In 1990, I hosted the conference for the first time in Reno. At that conference I became aware of Helen Sterk and Alice Deakin's works on childbirth and on a bus ride back from Lake Tahoe, I shared my story with them. This was the foundation of a paper I will always cherish (and one we hope to publish this year) on childbirth as heroic adventure. I had met two more amazing women who would forever impact my personal and professional life.

I co-hosted the conference twice more in 2005 & 2006 with Paaige Turner; I met Paaige the year she won the Kramarae dissertation award. We knew we were soul sisters from minute one and have been best friends ever since. Our children presented on panels together at this conference on mother-son communication (twice) and on mother-daughter communication. This led not only to closeness between our families, but also to the development of more important friendships, relationships with Kim Kline, Renee Houston, Paige Edley, and Patty Sotirin. At one of these conferences my son fell in love with MJ Hardman and Anita Taylor's work on the implications of violence metaphors in language. Both of my children danced with their hip-hop crew at the 2005 conference in Reno.

I have been on the executive committee three times (not counting my stints as conference director). I was president for the 25th anniversary when we launched the Wise Women's Council. I have edited a special issue of "Women and Language" on "Globalization and Feminism". I have mentored and been mentored by scholars like Jessica Elton, Robyn Remke, Laura Ellingson, Lynn Turner, Jeannine Minge, Patrice Buzzanelland Jimmie Manning.

The power of OSCLG, for me is in the personal and professional connections that we make here, the diverse voices and perspectives reflected here, the new ways of seeing and knowing that we craft here. I am honored and humbled to have been selected by the Wise Women to join their council. There was a time I would not have felt ready to take this role. I now see this honor as a new beginning, one in which I will strive to welcome that young woman or man in the back of the room who, as I was at that first conference, isn’t sure she or he belongs.