Yes, even though the weather has been a bit moody in Savannah, GA, since I arrived on Thursday afternoon for a conference on the Gothic (indeed, the foggy, gray, drizzly weather has been particularly apropos to our topics of inquiry), Savannah has stolen my heart.
Not only has the two-day conference been immensely productive (thanks to the two full days of panels I've now designed a new course to be titled "Haunted America: Slavery and Gender in the Gothic"), but being here has been immensely fun. I can't remember a time before when I didn't want to rush back home and return to my routine and be reunited with my little family. This time, however, I am truly sad that I must leave Savannah.
Unfortunately, my new fancy camera, which my husband gave me as a present for my birthday, needs a charger that I left back home, thinking regular batteries would do. Thus, the few photos I've been able to take are all from my cellphone, which doesn't even begin to do justice to this small awesome city.
The visit started with a tour to the Flannery O'Connor house, and then a walking ghost tour of Savannah, including "Laura's Cottage," the house of a former free black woman "root doctor," who appears to haunt her erstwhile home, which is now available for rent at $180 a night, with a three-night minimum. According to our ghost tour guide, most people don't make it past the first night.
The conference itself began in earnest on Friday with all-day panels and, for the first time, I chaired a panel on Society and Self in the Gothic. I made new professional friends and learned a lot from all the panels, but especially from the keynote speech by Teresa A. Goddu about slave narratives and the Gothic. Today, I gave my paper on Martin R. Delany's novel in the morning, and received a lot of positive feedback, and then took a break in the afternoon to walk down the famous River Street in search of some memorabilia.
Tonight, on the last night in Savannah, we went to dinner at the 17Hundred90, a pub and restaurant that is also famously haunted. We didn't see any ghosts but the food was sublimely good, including a Jambalaya that was all I imagined and more.
Tomorrow I return home and it's a bittersweet feeling because I will not only miss this lovely city but also the weather down South, even if it's been rainy and foggy and gray. It still beats, by far, the chilly Ohio weather. I thought I was done with falling in love with places. But Savannah has proved me wrong.
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