Posts Categorized: Convention

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… Read more »

Christopher Newfield, the 2022–23 president of the MLA, has chosen Working Conditions as the presidential theme for the 2023 MLA Annual Conven­tion in San Francisco. The diverse teaching and research of MLA members are better than ever. Our working conditions are not. The presidential theme of the 2023 convention asks us to reflect on what… Read more »

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 »

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 »

Judith Butler, the 2020–21 president of the MLA, has chosen Persistence as the presidential theme for the 2021 MLA Annual Conven­tion in Toronto. The humanities is now compelled to fight for its own survival and to mark the path for persistence during intensely challenging times. Humanities scholars are especially alert to the precarity of our… Read more »

Simon Gikandi, the 2019–20 president of the MLA, has chosen Being Human as the presidential theme for the 2020 MLA Annual Conven­tion in Seattle. The theme invites members to reflect on the role of literature and language in defining the nature of the human in the face of what appears to be its diminishment and… Read more »

Anne Gere, the 2018–19 president of the MLA, has chosen Textual Transactions as the presidential theme for the 2019 MLA Annual Convention in Chicago. Textual transactions are the mutually constitutive engagements of human beings, texts, and their contexts. Transactions are more than mere interactions, in which separate entities act on one another without being changed at… Read more »

The MLA is pleased to announce that Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor of Humanities at Columbia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, will receive the eighth MLA Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement. The Executive Council selected Spivak for the award on the recommendation of the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Review… Read more »

Applications are still being accepted for the inaugural Connected Academics Career Development Boot Camp, which will take place 3–7 January 2018 at the MLA Annual Convention in New York City. PhD students who have advanced to candidacy by January 2018 are invited to apply, and twenty boot camp fellows will be selected. The boot camp… Read more »

Are you interested in participating in an MLA-sponsored excursion during the 2018 convention in New York City? If so, let us know if you have a specific suggestion or contact and which types of excursions you’d be interested in: art galleries or museums, libraries, science or natural history museums, food and wine tastings, or architecture… Read more »