Congratulations to the thirty-one MLA members who are among the winners of the National Endowment for the Humanities grants announced in January 2023. Their projects include a digital recovery hub focused on surfacing the work of American women writers; the creation of a humanities and health justice pathways program; a book examining American high school English curriculum as a touchstone of American literary history and culture; and much more.

On 6 March eight additional NEH grant winners were added to this list:

Timothy Arner, Grinnell College

Project Title: The Virtual Viking Longship Project: A Study in the Future of Liberal Arts Teaching and Research

Project Description: The development of a virtual reality model of a Viking Age longship with a team of undergraduate researchers. The project team will document the workflow and learning outcomes to share with other undergraduate institutions

Rebecca Kumar, Spelman College

Project Title: Brown Looks: Theories of Brown Queer Filmmaking since 9/11

Project Description: Research and writing for two essays examining the self-representation of new categories of ethnic identification in US media in the last twenty years.   

Mary McAlpin, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Project Title: Rationalizing Rape: The New Logic of Sexual Violence in Enlightenment France

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the scientific, literary, and philosophical discourse on sexual violence during the French Enlightenment.

Wendy Roberts, SUNY Research Foundation, Albany, State University of New York

Project Title: Phillis Wheatley Peters’s Poetic Worlds

Project Description: Transcription of archival documents and writing a book on Phillis Wheatley Peters’s (c. 1753–84) poetry production in the context of transatlantic manuscript culture.

Christine Ruotolo, University of Virginia

Project Title: Project Title: Literature in Context: An Open Anthology of Literature, 1400–1925

Project Description: The continuing development of the open educational resource, Literature in Context, an open-access, curated, and classroom-sourced digital anthology of British and American literature in English in partnership with scholars and students from Marymount University.

Jennifer Stoever, SUNY Research Foundation, Binghamton, State University of New York

Project Title: Living Room Revolutions: Black and Brown Women Collecting Records, Selecting Sounds, and Making New Worlds in the 1970s Bronx

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about hip-hop history, showing how the record collections and home-DJ practices of Black women and Latinas in the 1970s Bronx shaped the artform’s birth, sound, and development.

Aviva Taubenfeld, Albany Research Foundation for the State University of New York

Project Title: Building Community and Belonging for Hispanic Students through the Humanities

Project Description: The creation of an advanced course, a community-wide speaker series, and digital humanities resources for the study and teaching of Spanish language and culture for heritage speakers.

Melanie Walsh, Cornell University

Project Title: BERT for Humanists

Project Description: The development of case studies about and professional development workshops on the use of BERT (bidirectional encoder representations from transformers) for humanities scholars and students interested in large-scale text analysis.

Maikel Alendy, Florida International University

Project Title: Science, Fiction, and Science Fiction: Building a Digital Library of Teaching Resources for Interdisciplinary Curricula

Project Description: A three-year project for development and curricular integration of a digital library of interdisciplinary teaching materials exploring connections between science and fiction.

Kyoko Amano, University of Houston, Victoria

Project Title: Interdisciplinary Humanities for a Diverse Campus: Building Minors in Race, Gender, and Disability Studies 

Project Description: The creation of interdisciplinary minors in three areas: race and ethnic studies, women and gender studies, and disability studies.

Marissa Ambio, Hamilton College

Project Title: Curatorial Studies: Expanding the Impact of the Humanities through Interdisciplinary and Experiential Partnerships

Project Description: A two-and-a-half-year project to develop an interdisciplinary program and minor in curatorial studies.

Maria Letizia Bellocchio, University of Arizona, Tucson

Project Title: Italian Language and Culture Curriculum Redesign

Project Description: A three-year project to develop curriculum and open educational resources for interdisciplinary courses in Italian language and culture.

Jeffrey Berglund, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff

Project Title: A Journey of Striving: Literary and Creative Expressions of Diné (Navajo) Becoming

Project Description: Research and writing of a book on how Diné (Navajo) principles of homeland, kinship, beauty, harmony, and shared memories are reflected in their literature, music, and film.

Russ Castronovo, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Project Title: American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability

Project Description: Research and writing for a book examining how early American conceptions of national security are expressed in its literature and other media.

Jessica DeSpain, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville

Project Title: Recovery Hub for American Women Writers

Project Description: The continued development and implementation of a digital recovery hub focused on surfacing the work of American women writers and promoting scholarship on their literary contributions.

Elizabeth Drumm, Reed Institute

Project Title: Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s La media noche: Visión estelar de un momento de guerra

Project Description: Preparation of an English-language translation and critical edition of Spanish author Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s chronicle of World War I, La media Noche: Visión estelar de un momento de guerra (Midnight: Astral Vision of a Moment of War) (1917).

Stefani Engelstein, Duke University

Project Title: The Emergence of the Concept of Opposite Sexes around 1800 in German Literature, Science, and Nature Philosophy

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the scientific concept of “Opposite Sexes” in nineteenth-century German scientific and scholarly discourse.

George Hoffmann, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Project Title: The Price of Peace of French Pacification Policy, 1560–98

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on religious toleration policies in early modern France (1560–98).

Tonya Howe, University of Virginia

Project Title: Literature in Context: An Open Anthology of Literature, 1400–1925

Project Description: The continuing development of the open educational resource Literature in Context, an open-access, curated, and classroom-sourced digital anthology of British and American literature in English in partnership with scholars and students from Marymount University.

Harris Kornstein, University of Arizona, Tucson

Project Title: Enchanting Technology: Obfuscation, Play, and Other Queer Strategies for Countering Surveillance Capitalism

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book about how queer and trans people expand traditional approaches to privacy and counter surveillance by creatively exploiting the features of mainstream technology.

Tracy Leavelle, Creighton University

Project Title: Humanities and Health Justice Pathways: Forming First-Generation Professionals

Project Description: A three-year, cross-institutional project between Creighton University and Arizona State University to create a humanities and health justice pathways program.

Andrew Leiter, Lycoming College

Project Title: Enhancing the Digital Humanities as Experiential Undergraduate Research

Project Description: A two-year project to build the college’s digital humanities capacity through undergraduate research about campus history.

Laura McGrath, Temple University, Philadelphia

Project Title: Literary Agents and American Literature

Project Description: Research and writing for a book examining the role of the literary agent in shaping the marketplace and the literary attitudes of readers.

Andrew Newman, Stony Brook University, State University of New York

Project Title: The High School Canon: The History of a Civic Tradition

Project Description: Research and writing for a book examining American high school English curriculum as a touchstone of American literary history and culture.

John O’Brien, University of Virginia

Project Title: Literature in Context: An Open Anthology of Literature, 1400–1925

Project Description: The continuing development of the open educational resource, Literature in Context, an open-access, curated, and classroom-sourced digital anthology of British and American literature in English in partnership with scholars and students from Marymount University.

Mariana Past, Dickinson College

Project Title: Unbroken Nostalgia: An Annotated Translation of the Haitian-Cuban Poetry by Hilario Batista

Project Description: Preparation of a trilingual (English, Spanish, Kreyol) translation and critical edition of Unbroken Nostalgia: Haitian Kreyol Poetry in Cuba by Hilario Batista Félix (1955– ), an important Haitian-Cuban writer.

Lisa Rhody, CUNY Research Foundation; Graduate Center, City University of New York

Project Title: Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology

Project Description: The continued development of the Digital Humanities Resource Infrastructure for Teaching Technology (DHRIFT) platform to provide technical training in digital humanities methodologies with a particular focus on faculty and staff members for historically under-resourced institutions.

Victoria Troianowski Saramago, University of Chicago

Project Title: Against the Current: Electricity and Cultural Production in Brazil’s Anthropocene

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on the cultural legacy of electrification in Brazil from the 1930s to the present.

Jesse Schwartz, CUNY Research Foundation; LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York

Project Title: America’s Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution, Eurasianism, and the Race of Radicalism

Project Description: Research and writing for a book examining the origins and shifts of American political perceptions of Russia as captured in print culture from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Lisa Siraganian, Johns Hopkins University, MD

Project Title: The Personhood Problem, from Corporations to Trees: Synthesizing Political and Philosophical Debates on Persons

Project Description: Research and writing leading to a book on legal and philosophical concepts on personhood—from humans to corporations, algorithms, animals, and the environment.

Rhona Trauvitch, Florida International University

Project Title: Science, Fiction, and Science Fiction: Building a Digital Library of Teaching Resources for Interdisciplinary Curricula

Project Description: A three-year project for development and curricular integration of a digital library of interdisciplinary teaching materials exploring connections between science and fiction.

“It is my honor to serve the MLA as its first vice president of East Asian descent. These pandemic years—with their resurgence of anti-Asian hate, their demands on all of us who care for family members, their suspension of normal schooling—have made clear how scholars and teachers are not disembodied brains but people with other human ties and obligations. I regard these challenges not simply as hurdles but as themselves spurs to critical thinking and imagination.”

— MLA Second Vice President Tina Lu

In December 2022, members elected Tina Lu to the position of second vice president. Lu’s term as second vice president will run through January 2024, and she will become president in January 2025. “Along with her exceptional scholarship, Tina Lu brings impressive leadership experience to the position and a commitment to expanding participation in the humanities,” said MLA Executive Director Paula Krebs. “We are delighted to welcome Professor Lu as the MLA’s second vice president.” David Damrosch (Harvard University), Stacey Lee Donohue (Central Oregon Community College), and Virginia Ramos (University of San Francisco) were elected to at-large seats on the Executive Council for four-year terms. For the full results of the 2022 MLA elections, visit the Elections Results page.

Lu is the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures and the head of Pauli Murray College at Yale University, where she has taught since 2008. Prior to arriving at Yale, Lu spent ten years as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University.

Lu is a scholar of Chinese literature, focusing particularly on the late imperial period, from around 1550 to around 1750. She is the author of Persons, Roles, and Minds: Identity in Peony Pavilion and Peach Blossom Fan (2001) and Accidental Incest, Filial Cannibalism, and Other Peculiar Encounters in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (2009). Lu is also a coeditor of Approaches to Teaching The Story of the Stone (2012), part of the MLA’s Approaches to Teaching World Literature Series. She served on the forum executive committee for LLC Ming and Qing Chinese from 2016 until 2018.

The MLA International Bibliography is accepting applications for three-year field-bibliography fellowships. MLA field bibliographers examine scholarly materials and submit bibliographic and indexing information for citations in the bibliography. Open to all MLA members, including graduate students, the 2023 fellowships will run from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2026.

Field bibliographers perform a valuable service for the profession and receive institutional recognition while deepening their knowledge of the field as well as their research skills. The MLA provides materials and training and waives registration fees for fellows attending training sessions at the MLA convention. On completion of the fellowship, fellows receive a $500 stipend and a certificate at the convention awards ceremony.

For more information and to submit an application, visit the MLA Bibliography Fellowships page. Applications are due 15 March 2023.

The volume Teaching the American Essay, edited by Stephanie Redekop, is now in development in the MLA Options for Teaching series. To learn more about the volume and how to propose an essay, please visit the MLA website. Please send abstracts and CVs to the editor by 15 February 2023.

The MLA International Bibliography congratulates the 2022 Fellowship Award recipients:

• Virginia M. Adán-Lifante, full teaching professor, world languages coordinator, and chair of the department of literatures, languages, and cultures, University of California, Merced
• Allison Bernard, adjunct professor, Columbia University; visiting assistant professor, Wesleyan University
• Aedín Clements, Irish studies librarian, University of Notre Dame
• Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, head, humanities and social sciences department, and librarian for literature, Duke University
• Britt McGowan, university librarian, University of West Florida

The fellows, who have contributed to the bibliography from 2019 to 2022, will be awarded a certificate of accomplishment and a check for $500 during the 2023 MLA Awards Ceremony, which takes place at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, 6 January, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis (Yerba Buena Salon 7). We offer our sincere thanks and appreciation for their service to the MLA International Bibliography!

The Modern Language Association congratulates the three MLA members who were named 2022 fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in recognition of their contributions to literature and language studies.

• Andreas Huyssen, Columbia University
• Fred Moten, New York University
• Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago

The volume Approaches to Teaching the Works of Colson Whitehead, edited by Stephanie Li, is now in development in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Instructors who have taught Colson Whitehead’s works are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey.