NYC Fashion Studies Symposiums - A Chance for Collaboration?

Graduate programs across the 5 boroughs have sent out invitations for their end-of-the-year symposiums. It is my goal to attend as many of these as possible, to see what others in the field of costume, fashion and textile studies are up to. Many of these symposiums consist of final-semester student papers, but it does get me wondering - if all of these schools promote their own symposia, is there any chance there could be a city-wide collaboration? It seems silly that I should have to schlep all over town just to hear a few relevant papers at each institution.

Presenting papers or projects at conferences is vital for scholars of fashion studies. The field's visual nature warrants exposure of intriguing topics. These events build up academic credibility and look fabulous on resumes and CVs. They also allow established experts to provide feedback and/or collaboration, which means support for your research. These experts may also lead you in new directions, such as further education and even occupational opportunities.

Of course, academic calendars vary institution to institution, and not every graduate program emphasizes fashion and textiles in their curricula. Even so, there are enough people out there - professors included - that could benefit from mutual exposure in a setting such as a symposium. NYU had four presentations (which were really well done and enlightening!), and there will be six presentations for the symposium at FIT. There are at least three relevant presentations from the Bard Graduate Center's symposium and one from the Cooper-Hewitt/Parsons consortium - and I'm only referring to student works here. That's more than enough people to represent a full-day fashion studies symposium.

Time and dedication to organization is most likely the culprit. Any event consumes personal time - something many scholars have little of to begin with. People need enough time to solicit participation, review submissions, find a space, schedule a keynote speaker and formulate some kind of entertainment. There also needs to be a significant budget for renting a space, advertising, publications and refreshments. All of these factors I'm sure have contributed to lack of city-wide university collaboration.

Clear notification of events open to public submissions must be established as well. Although the CH/P conference was open to outside participants, I received the invitation two weeks prior to the deadline - whereas those graduate students had about a semester or so to work on their submissions, it gave myself little time to formulate a topic relevant to the theme. Part of the work I do for Worn Through is to sift through websites like H-Net for relevant conferences, and CH/P never appeared until a CH insider sent me the criteria.

There has been a lot of animosity between graduate programs lately, which may contribute to the separation of events (although that seems like an immature notion on the academic system's part). Professors wish to exhibit their students in the highest way possible - it looks bad if student representation ratios are uneven, not to mention the intellectual content structures of one institution may be totally different from another. I don't really buy MA-program competition as an excuse for non-collaboration, but I also don't rule it out.

For those of you who study/teach in the NYC area, what do you think about the possibility of a combined symposium for those involved in academic fashion studies? This could eliminate the need for separate events, or occur on top of curriculum-based ones. Are there any points I might have left out concerning this topic (aka is this an unrealistic goal?), and most importantly, are there people out there who would be interested in organizing, presenting and attending an event like this?

Those from out of state with relevant advice, please chime in as well! I am definitely interested in collaborating a more consistent exposure setting for fashion studies work and a conference - even a small one - sounds like a good idea to me.