This month’s member spotlight features Ron Broglio, a member of the MLA since 1998. Read about how Ron has found community in the MLA and why he recommends checking out the MLA’s professional guidelines.
“I am always struck by the people that make the MLA work. As a grad student and an early-career scholar, I thought of the MLA as a large and intimidating bureaucracy. In fact, it is a small crew of very kind people who make all the apparatus work. MLA staff are approachable and helpful. I’m also surprised when I meet people at the annual convention. Behind the names I see in journal essays and on book covers are actual people with their own worlds and complexities and, often, kindness. It is a wonderful experience getting to know the community of other authors in our fields.”
Recommended resource: “In the 1990s and early 2000s I had digital publications, especially with the online journal Romantic Circle. It was an important experimental venue for scholarship. The MLA guidelines for digital scholarship were critical when I went up for tenure. I cited them and gave a copy of the guidelines to the department chair. Currently, I direct a humanities institute at ASU where we hold events encouraging faculty to pursue public humanities. Being able to point to the MLA guidelines on publicly engaged humanities has been useful. It is also a tool I employ with the Consortium for Humanities Institutes and Centers’ Public Humanities Network.”
Is there someone you’d like to nominate for the MLA member spotlight? Email suggestions to outreach@mla.org.