Herman Beavers, the 2026–27 president of the MLA, has chosen Emancipatory Narratives as the presidential theme for the 2027 MLA Annual Convention in Los Angeles. As you are no doubt aware, we find ourselves, as a democratic nation of laws and as a profession, at a crossroads. Now, the crossroads is a powerful metaphor; it symbolizes… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Convention
2025 ADE and ALD Award Winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Association of Departments of English and Association of Language Departments service awards, Teresa Mangum and Sheri Spaine Long. The awards will be presented during the MLA Awards Ceremony, which will take place on 9 January at the MLA Annual Convention in Toronto. Teresa Mangum’s service to the profession has… Read more »
Ramón Saldívar Receives Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award
Ramón Saldívar, professor of English and comparative literature and the Hoagland Family Professor of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, will receive the eleventh MLA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement. The Executive Council selected Saldívar for the award on the recommendation of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Review Committee. Saldívar is renowned as a scholar of… Read more »
2026 Presidential Theme: Family Resemblances
Tina Lu, the 2025–26 president of the MLA, has chosen Family Resemblances as the presidential theme for the 2026 MLA Annual Convention in Toronto. Wittgenstein writes about how difficult it is to come up with categorical definitions of what constitutes a game. Even a quick glance reveals so much diversity: “we see a complicated network… Read more »
2024 ALD and ADE Award Winners
Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Association of Language Departments and Association of Departments of English service awards, Amy S. Thompson and Douglas Hesse. Amy S. Thompson, recipient of the ALD Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, is an experienced language educator, accomplished researcher, and inspiring humanities leader. Thompson came into the national… Read more »
2025 Presidential Theme: Visibility
Dana A. Williams, the 2024–25 president of the MLA, has chosen Visibility as the presidential theme for the 2025 MLA Annual Convention in New Orleans. In the essay “Invisible Ink: Reading the Writing and Writing the Reading,” Toni Morrison uses the metaphor of invisible ink to suggest that one characteristic of flawless writing involves the… Read more »
Gates and Mitchell to Be Honored at MLA Annual Convention
2023 Presidential Theme: Working Conditions
2022 Presidential Theme: Multilingual US
Barbara Fuchs, the 2021–22 president of the MLA, has chosen Multilingual US as the presidential theme for the 2022 MLA Annual Convention in Washington, DC. The MLA can play a crucial role in imagining and supporting a linguistically diverse commons, to make language a tool of inclusion rather than exclusion. For those who care about… Read more »
Update on the 2021 Convention
Although the 2021 convention will be shaped by the current crisis and may look different from what we anticipated, we are looking forward to the opportunity to bring MLA members together again in January and are working toward this goal. Many members have already submitted session proposals, which the Program Committee will review in May…. Read more »