“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.