C19, Covid-19, and Conferencing Josh Doty (bio) My institution did not provide travel funding during the 2020–21 academic year, and I would be surprised if it did next year, at least at previous levels. This is not a complaint—my institution has handled the pandemic and its fallout wonderfully—but rather an acknowledgement of financial reality. Many scholars of nineteenth-century American literature are in the same position, particularly if they work at teaching-oriented institutions, as I do. And even scholars at research universities and well-resourced liberal arts colleges may see their travel funds stagnating or diminishing in the coming years as undergraduate enrollments nationwide continue to decline, particularly in the Midwest and Northeast, and as the impact of Covid-19 on state budgets becomes more clear.1 Yet I was still in attendance at the field's premier conference at little personal cost: the 2020 biennial meeting of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists was virtual, and attendance was only $10 for C19 members and $20 for non-members. Maybe it should stay that way. In this brief essay, I want to offer a few thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of C19's virtual modality as a way to start thinking through what the Americanist intellectual community might look like after the pandemic. Although C19's move to a virtual modality was less a matter [End Page 236] of choice than of necessity, it offers our field a chance to think about what forms we'd like our conferences to take going forward. I focus on C19 because of its important role in the field, but my intention is to provoke a larger conversation among nineteenth-century Americanists about what forms of intellectual exchange we wish to have in the future. It is my position that this future will likely be one of shrinking budgets for the humanities, deepening inequality between rich institutions and those with less resources, and decreasing numbers of tenure-stream Americanists. I am convinced that in the years to come, attendance and presentation at in-person conferences will become inaccessible to an ever-greater proportion of our colleagues. With this focus in mind, I wish to pay special attention to the possibility of holding conferences using modalities such as hybrid models or the Nearly Carbon-Neutral conference model that preserve the upsides of the virtual format while minimizing its drawbacks. I will also propose that we look beyond conferences altogether and toward alternative forms of intellectual exchange such as the Society for the Study of American Women Writers' regional study groups and the Society of Early Americanists' annual workshops. Thinking beyond the conference model might offer us more focused, more personal, and more local forms of scholarly community and engagement. I should note that C19 is already considering some of what I suggest here. C19's Executive Committee identified "hybrid options" as a topic of interest during the conference's Members Meeting, and, according to an email sent by C19 President Edlie L. Wong to the C19 listserv in December 2020, the organization is convening a committee "to help oversee the development and planning of smaller-scale community building and social networking events for our membership in the two-year period between our major conferences."2 These efforts, if pursued, could be [End Page 237] real steps toward making the field more open and inclusive in various ways. the advantages of alternative formats: accessibility and sustainability The greatest advantage of the virtual format over the inperson format is its accessibility. I have in mind two forms of accessibility, one concerning ability and one concerning funding. Kate Sang, a researcher at Heriot Watt University focusing on inclusion and academic labor, explains that in-person conferences present a number of challenges to academics with disabilities. Scholars report issues with the built environment, including stages that are accessible only via stairs and inadequate bathroom facilities. Other barriers concern mental and social fatigue and sensory overload: long days spent in crowded conference rooms, with dinners and socializing to follow, can leave some disabled scholars with little choice other than returning to their hotel rooms.3 I will add that not enough presenters provide...