The MLA is pleased to announce that Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, will receive the eighth Phyllis Franklin Award for Public Advocacy of the Humanities. Frieda Ekotto, president of the MLA, will present the award during the MLA Awards Ceremony on 5 January in recognition of Gates’s groundbreaking and sweeping work in the promotion of Black literature, history, and culture. Gates will also take part in the 2024 convention session “Finding Your Roots as Public Humanities,” in conversation with Ekotto.
W. J. T. Mitchell, Gaylord Donnelley Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, will receive the tenth MLA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement. The Executive Council selected Mitchell for the award on the recommendation of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Review Committee. Mitchell is renowned as a scholar and theorist of media, visual art, and literature. The Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement will be presented to Mitchell by Frieda Ekotto during the MLA Awards Ceremony at the January 2024 convention.