Member Spotlight: Meghan McInnis-Domínguez

Posted by Colleen Baer

Meghan McInnis-Domínguez

This month’s member spotlight features Meghan McInnis-Domínguez, a twelve-year member of the MLA who is part of the MLA Task Force on World Languages and AI and a speaker at our upcoming webinar, AI in the Spanish Higher Ed Classroom. Learn more about Meghan’s time on the task force and why the Innovation Room is one of her favorite parts of the annual convention:

“I’ve been a member of the MLA for twelve years, and one of the things I appreciate most about it is the space it creates for conversations that help us think through real changes in our field. At the last convention, I presented two papers on AI that grew out of my work on the MLA Task Force on World Languages and AI. One focused on reframing competencies in world language education in the age of generative AI, and the other explored how to use AI thoughtfully in the Hispanic literature classroom. What surprised me was not just the level of interest, but the seriousness and care with which colleagues engaged these questions. It reminded me that, even in a moment of rapid technological change, there is a real appetite for conversations grounded in pedagogy, ethics, and the values of our disciplines.”

Recommended resource: “Because my work sits at the intersection of Hispanic literature, world language pedagogy, and AI, the MLA has been an especially meaningful intellectual community for me. The conversations I’ve had through the task force and at the convention have pushed my thinking in important ways and helped me approach AI in ways that are pedagogically serious, ethically grounded, and still attentive to the core values of our disciplines.

That is also why the Innovation Room has meant so much to me. When I first presented there, on my use of AI in the Hispanic literature classroom, I got such encouraging feedback. What I love about the Innovation Room is that it gives people a chance to share concrete work, including new courses, programs, collaborations, and resources, and to have real conversations about experiential learning, public humanities, and AI literacy. It’s exciting to see what others are doing in that space, and I always leave feeling inspired by the creativity and generosity of the work being shared.”

Is there someone you’d like to nominate for the MLA member spotlight? Email suggestions to outreach@mla.org.

MLA Executive Director Paula M. Krebs to Step Down in 2027

Posted by Colleen Baer

Paula M. Krebs

Paula M. Krebs, the executive director of the Modern Language Association since summer 2017, has informed the Executive Council that she plans to step down in 2027 after ten years with the organization. The Executive Council will begin the search for Krebs’s successor in the coming weeks with the help of an experienced search firm and aims to have a new executive director in place by the time of her departure.

“As a first-generation college student, I’ve always had a bit of an outsider perspective, and this organization welcomed that, allowing me to take some risks and try some new things,” said Krebs. “But the biggest opportunities have been made possible by the amazing staff of the MLA. Every member of our staff works to support teaching and research in language, literature, writing, and culture and to support the humanities in our society. It has been an honor to work with them, with the Executive Council, and with our members to help to shape the ways we serve and expand our membership and promote the humanities.”

Krebs has led the MLA through a period of significant evolution, guiding the organization as it strategized to respond to the impact of new technologies, the COVID-19 pandemic, and legislative challenges to higher education.

Throughout her tenure, Krebs has prioritized advocating for the humanities. In May 2025, the MLA, along with the American Council of Learned Societies and the American Historical Association, filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse actions taken to devastate the National Endowment for the Humanities, including the elimination of grant programs, staff, and entire divisions and programs. “In the face of these unprecedented and destructive cuts,” Krebs argued, “humanities leaders must fight back together.” Krebs has dedicated herself to documenting the impact of the grant cancellations on members and constituents and to raising funds for the association’s legal expenses. The MLA has also created events and shared resources focused on collective action, academic freedom, legislative threats to higher education, teaching in times of crisis, and more, equipping educators with the tools necessary to navigate a challenging political landscape. Krebs has spoken out in op-eds and with lawmakers on behalf of languages, literature, and the humanities and served from March 2023 to March 2026 as the president of the National Humanities Alliance.

“For the past decade, Paula Krebs has been a superb leader of the MLA,” said Catharine Stimpson, former president of the MLA and current trustee. “She has confronted myriad challenges—financial, cultural, and political. She has responded to them with keen respect for all MLA members and their needs, tireless work, courage, a collaborative spirit, and the capacity to translate new ideas into strong programs. The MLA and all of the humanities owe her an incalculable debt.”

Under Krebs’s leadership, the MLA’s publication program has been especially forward-thinking, building out the newly launched MLA International Bibliography with Full Text and funding an information literacy prize in partnership with EBSCO as well as initiating a partnership with Cambridge University Press to publish the MLA’s premier journal, PMLA. The association also launched MLA Handbook Plus, the first digital subscription resource for MLA style, which provides students access through their institution to the text of the MLA Handbook and a series of classroom guides on timely topics, like the MLA Guide to Digital Literacy. Krebs’s tenure also saw the publication of Manual MLA, the MLA’s first Spanish adaptation of the MLA Handbook, and the receipt of a major gift from Southern Methodist University’s Project Poëtica to fully fund a series of poetry translations from a diverse range of less commonly taught world languages.

In 2018, Krebs urged departments to move away from hosting interviews at the MLA Annual Convention to make the interview process more equitable and create a more welcoming environment at the meeting. Under her guidance, the MLA transformed the interview center into the Professional Development Hub, offering microworkshops, discussion groups, and mentoring, and made sessions on advocating for the humanities a mainstay of the convention program. Krebs has led the MLA in expanding its events offerings and taking advantage of evolving technology to provide professional development programming for members at all career stages, creating year-round webinars and workshops on topics from AI to academic freedom. She has worked to cement the MLA’s relationship with the College Language Association and to make the MLA a more welcoming place for scholars from marginalized groups. During her tenure, the leadership development and departmental advocacy work of the Association of Departments of English and Association of Language Departments became more integrated into the broader MLA as MLA Academic Program Services (MAPS), which now serves a wider range of humanities programs.

Under Krebs’s direction, the MLA has also expanded its grant and award programs, offering new grants to improve the recruitment, retention, or career readiness of undergraduate students; fellowships that allow graduate students to pursue research and learning opportunities beyond their immediate community; and prizes that honor scholarship on Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas.

“In the twenty years that I’ve known Paula Krebs,” said Herman Beavers, 2025–26 president of the MLA, “I’ve come to know her as a champion of inclusion and equity; she has always walked the walk. Over the course of her time as executive director of the MLA, she has been a tireless advocate, not only for the association’s mission and values but in defense of the humanities as well. She has logged tens of thousands of miles on behalf of the MLA and its members. We are deeply in her debt and she will be greatly missed.”

As developments in technology and generative AI have disrupted higher education over the last several years, Krebs has stressed the need for the MLA to respond effectively to these challenges by providing guidance from members to members. The organization established the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching and the MLA Task Force on World Languages and Generative AI with the goal of encouraging critical engagement with AI literacy, developing resources to support educators and students, and advocating on behalf of higher education with policymakers. The MLA’s influential Student Guide to AI Literacy and statements on AI agents and AI and assessment have shaped the public conversation about education technologies in the humanities.

In addition to cementing the MLA’s place as a leading advocate for the humanities, Krebs has made dedicated efforts to build connections across communities of scholars. As liaison to the Committee on Community Colleges, Krebs has led efforts to make the MLA a welcoming place for scholars at access-oriented institutions (AOIs). In 2019, with support from the Mellon Foundation, Krebs launched the MLA Institutes on Reading and Writing Pedagogy to improve the teaching at AOIs by offering training to graduate students and early-career instructors. She has also led the development of the MLA’s Strategic Partnership Network, bringing together institutions with a proven commitment to the humanities with the aim of building a sustainable foundation for the future.

Before becoming the executive director of the MLA, Krebs was the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Bridgewater State University, special assistant to the president for external relations at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow in the president’s office of the University of Massachusetts, and a professor and department chair at Wheaton. Krebs received her PhD from Indiana University, where she specialized in Victorian literature and culture. Prior to her directorship, Krebs was a member of the MLA Executive Council from 2013 to 2017, a member of the Nominating Committee, and a member of the executive committee of the Association of Departments of English.

MLA and SMU English’s Project Poëtica to Launch New Poetry Translation Series

Posted by Colleen Baer

The MLA is pleased to announce that it has received generous funding from Southern Methodist University’s Project Poëtica, an initiative of SMU English, to publish the MLA–Project Poëtica Global Translation Series, a five-volume series of poetry translations from a diverse range of less commonly taught world languages. With Project Poëtica’s goal of expanding poetry’s reach and the MLA’s commitment to publishing high-quality translations, the series will be able to reach readers in the classroom and beyond.

“We are very excited to collaborate on this project with the MLA,” said David Caplan, founding director of SMU English’s Project Poëtica and Daisy Deane Frensley Chair in English Literature at SMU. “Project Poëtica supports the art of poetry. These translations will expose anglophone readers to poets from around the world and to the literary cultures and traditions that inspire them.” 

Paula M. Krebs, executive director of the MLA, said, “The MLA Executive Council and I are exceedingly grateful for SMU English’s generous support. The MLA–Project Poëtica Global Translation Series marks a substantial investment that will allow the voices of poets from around the world to reach students, scholars, and English-language readers everywhere. We look forward to celebrating the publication of each volume at the MLA Annual Convention and through special collaborative events.”

To propose a book in this series, write to scholcomm@mla.org. 

Member Spotlight: Víctor Sierra Matute

Posted by Colleen Baer

Víctor Sierra Matute

For our February MLA member spotlight, we’re highlighting the work of Víctor Sierra Matute, who has been an MLA member since 2015. Read about Víctor’s experience with the MLA and his time on the Program Committee:

“My first MLA convention was Austin 2016, when I was still a PhD candidate. With support from the MLA for graduate students, I received a travel award that made it possible for me to attend. That first convention had a lasting impact on me. I got generous feedback on my work and began building relationships with colleagues with whom I would later collaborate on projects and publications. Since then, I have attended every single MLA convention, whether in person or virtual.

On the Program Committee we see our work as a collective effort to give back to that same community by shaping a program that brings together rigorous scholarship and pedagogical innovation while representing a broad range of topics, languages, regions and traditions. One thing that continues to surprise me about the MLA is how the convention can feel intimate despite its scale (like a small conference within a larger one). Members can shape an experience aligned with their interests while also stepping into conversations beyond their usual areas of expertise and leaving energized by discussions they did not expect. This balance gives the MLA convention a distinctive character that is difficult to find elsewhere.”

Recommended resource: “The exhibit hall [at the convention]. It is a resource I always encourage members to take full advantage of. Beyond discovering new books, it provides spaces for the connections that are central to professional life. Returning to the exhibit hall each year has become a meaningful ritual for me (including planning my ‘book haul’ on the final day) and remains one of the places where the collaborative spirit of the MLA is most visible.”

Is there someone you’d like to nominate for the MLA member spotlight? Email suggestions to outreach@mla.org.

MLA Announces 2025 Edward Guiliano Fellows

Posted by Colleen Baer

The MLA has awarded the association’s Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships to sixteen PhD students and candidates in MLA-related disciplines. The fellowships provide up to $2,000 to support travel and research related to the completion of a dissertation, generation of a publishable peer-edited journal essay, or production of other publishable outcomes. The awards also support experiential-learning experiences for humanities PhDs interested in careers outside academia. “In its third year, this fellowship continues to support an incredible range of humanities research by graduate students. This year’s projects showcase the truly global scope of recipients’ work, including research focused on South Asia, Spain, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and more,” said Paula M. Krebs, the executive director of the MLA. “Thanks to the contributions of Edward and Mireille Guiliano, the MLA has been able to increase our investment in the professional development of our members pursuing a variety of career paths. We’re excited to be able to make this commitment to the future of groundbreaking research.”

The recipients of the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships were honored on 9 January 2026, during the MLA Annual Convention, held in Toronto, Canada. The selection committee members were Logan Connors (Univ. of Miami), Evgeny Dengub (Univ. of Southern California, Dornsife), Daniel Fried (Univ. of Alberta), Stephen Knadler (Spelman College), Anwesha Kundu (Centre College), Nora Martin Peterson (Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln), Danielle O. Pyun (Ohio State Univ.), Lara Vetter (Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte), and Amy Woodbury Tease (Norwich Univ.).

The recipients of the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowships and their project titles are:

  • Yuki Bailey (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) – “Casualties beyond the Battlefield: Women’s Wartime Health through the Lens of World War II”
  • Chandrica Barua (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor) – “Plantation Genres: Race, Labor, and Literature in Colonial South Asia, 1850–1950
  • Ruoyi Bian (Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) – “Governing Desire: Archival Research and Oral Histories of Hong Kong Erotic Cinema, 1980–1997”
  • Anna Brotman-Krass (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor) – “Migrant Domestic Laborers and Care Workers in Spain: The Translation of Performing Arts–Based Activism into Film”
  • Min Ji Choi (Harvard Univ.) – “State-Sanctioned Sanctity: Sonic Ethnography of Oti Byeolsinje (Ot’i Pyŏlsinje)”
  • Catherine A. Evans (Carnegie Mellon Univ.) – “The Provocative Lesbian: Queer Media of the Long Seventies”
  • Sarah Frank (Univ. of Iowa) – “Juggernaut Infrastructure: Modernism and the Machine Age”
  • Salwa Y M Halloway (Princeton Univ.) – “The Policing of Black Sound in West Indian Slave Societies”
  • Oana Alexan Katz (Northwestern Univ.) – “Heritage Unbound: A Digital Archive for Teaching Cultural Memory in Spain”
  • Rachel Kirk (Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge) – “(Un-)natural Disaster, Cultural Loss, and Preservation in the Franco-Creole Caribbean”
  • Eunice Lee (Harvard Univ.) – “Intensive Dictations: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Voice at the BAMPFA”
  • Jade Shiva (Univ. of Texas, Austin) – “Embodied Rhetoric, Storytelling, and the Politics of Care”
  • Anu Sugathan (Univ. of Oregon) – “Visual Storytelling, Gender, and Caste in the Patua Tradition of Naya Village to Tara Books”
  • Tian Jing Teh (Univ. of Southern California) – “Remembering Silences: Southeast Asian Mnemonic Writings and the Disappearance of Inter-Asian Hiroshima”
  • Assel Uvaliyeva (Univ. of Southern California) – “Recovering the Lost Voices of Tatar Avant-Garde”
  • Lauren White (Univ. of Southern California) – “‘An Alien Land of Fences’: Indigenous Borderlands, Networks of Surveillance, and D’Arcy McNickle”

About the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship

The Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship is supported by a fund established by Edward and Mireille Guiliano. The fellowship is designed to encourage graduate students in languages, literatures, and related fields to pursue transformative experiences by exploring research and learning opportunities beyond their immediate community. “We established this fellowship to help eliminate some of the barriers that prevent students from undertaking the research they are passionate about and to give them formative experiences that expand their world view,” said Edward Guiliano. “We want to encourage our fellows to have the confidence to step outside their comfort zones.”

About the Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association of America and its members work to strengthen the study and teaching of languages and literature. Founded in 1883, the MLA provides opportunities for its members to share their scholarly findings and teaching experiences with colleagues and to discuss trends in the academy. The MLA sustains one of the finest publication programs in the humanities, producing a variety of publications for language and literature professionals and for the general public. The association publishes the MLA International Bibliography, the only comprehensive bibliography in language and literature, available online. The MLA Annual Convention features over 700 scholarly and professional development sessions. More information on MLA programs is available at http://www.mla.org.

About Edward and Mireille Guiliano

Edward Guiliano received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and his master’s and
doctoral degrees from Stony Brook University. He joined the faculty at the New York Institute of
Technology (NYIT) in 1974 as an English instructor prior to finishing his PhD. In 2000, he
became president of NYIT and served until early 2017. Mireille Guiliano completed her
bachelor’s degree at Sorbonne Nouvelle and holds the French equivalent of a master’s degree
in English and German. She is the author of the international best seller French Women Don’t
Get Fat, among other writings, and has held leadership roles with LVMH along with other
business endeavors.

2027 Presidential Theme: Emancipatory Narratives

Posted by Colleen Baer

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 the human turmoil that is manifest at the intersection formed by possibility and risk. Possibility because the crossroads often signals the beginning of an adventure; risk because the consequences of a wrong choice can do us irreparable harm. But my training as a scholar of African American literature and culture has often led me to understand the power of counterintuitive thinking. Because emancipatory narratives are distinguished by their commitment to two bedrock concepts: the descriptive and the agential.

I reached this conclusion after consulting a number of commentators whose observations have guided me in difficult moments: James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison. Baldwin emphasized the importance of understanding that we would never be a functioning democracy until Americans accepted the fact of their guilt, that “to get past this guilt, you must act. And in order to act, you must be conscious and take great chances and be responsible for the consequences” (62). Ellison talked about how jazz music turned on the concept of antagonistic cooperation, where one plays both “with and against” (245) the members of the ensemble to cement a legitimate commitment to community building. Toni Morrison, in pithy fashion, said, “[I]f you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”

Emancipatory narratives are committed to acts of description. They describe not only what it means to be oppressed or in bondage but the sensations that come with inhabiting liberatory space. Articulating emancipatory narratives involves the assertion of agency, even when those assertions are certain to invite resistance. Emancipatory narratives, at their best, involve what Robert O’Meally describes as becoming “careful listeners to what the others have to say, as each [speaker] pushes self and opponent to higher and higher levels of articulation” (3). In positing emancipatory narratives as a presidential theme, part of what I am insisting upon is the need for us to step back from our immediate circumstances in order to see that possibilities, be they the product of serendipity or desperation, are ever before us. Emancipation is a product of our ability to embrace and inhabit the voices of others, as they embrace and inhabit our own. There is absolutely no doubt that our situation is precarious. But I have identified the blues as the ultimate emancipatory narrative because, as Ellison wrote, it insists that we “keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in [our] aching consciousness” and “transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism” (129). It declares that even in the face of calamity and contradiction, we find ways to sing. 

I hope that you will join us in Los Angeles as we find ways to sing together. 

To propose a session for the 2027 convention, we encourage you to post a call for papers before 28 February. Session submissions will open in March.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. “The Uses of the Blues.” The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, edited by Randall Kenan, Pantheon Books, 2010, pp. 57–66. 
 
Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan, Modern Library, 2003.
 
Morrison, Toni. “The Truest Eye.” O, The Oprah Magazine, Nov. 2003, www.oprah.com/omagazine/toni-morrison-talks-love. 
 
O’Meally, Robert G. Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of African American Culture. Columbia UP, 2022.

Educational Technologies and AI Agents

Posted by Colleen Baer

Published in the Winter 2025 MLA Newsletter

In October 2025, the MLA Executive Council issued a statement, drafted by the MLA Task Force on AI in Research and Teaching, on educational technologies and AI agents. We interviewed two members of the task force, Matthew Kirschenbaum and Anna Mills, about the importance of the statement and how MLA members can put the statement into action.

People sit at circular tables looking at a screen that says "Planning for What's Next with AI on Your Campus"

What prompted the task force to draft these guidelines?

Matthew Kirschenbaum: I think there’s a widespread sense that as ed tech (including AI and now agentic AI) becomes more and more widespread, universities are ceding more and more of their core functions to third-party vendors and providers. What was once only “software” as a service is now absorbing actual missions and operations. This statement is one small attempt to slow that process down, to give pause by pressing pause. Not because we’re antitechnology, but because we think we’re at the point where faculty members are very close to losing control over the instructional experience, whether we’re talking about infrastructure and support or (increasingly) content and curriculum.

Anna Mills: Responses to the MLA task force’s May 2025 survey showed how widely our perspectives on AI vary, but we noted that 90% of survey respondents wanted us to advocate for “public awareness of the continuing value of human reading and writing processes.” When we saw AI browsers autonomously completing assignments in learning management systems, we recognized a direct threat to that value—and an issue on which we could speak with one voice. In fall 2025, we noted a flurry of social media posts expressing concern about the ChatGPT Atlas and Perplexity Comet releases. Educators across the spectrum—from AI skeptics to enthusiasts—recognized that letting these agents loose in learning environments posed an unnecessary threat to academic integrity. At the same time, we were watching learning management systems like Canvas announce partnerships with AI companies. It became clear to us that if faculty members are to continue to design pedagogy to cultivate human reading and writing, we need to have a say in shaping digital learning environments, and we need tech companies to cooperate.

What’s been the response to the statement from educators?

MK: The responses I’ve seen have been overwhelmingly positive. I think there’s a real hunger out there for people to see their professional organizations taking on advocacy and leadership roles as these technologies infiltrate core teaching and instructional activities. Frankly, there’s a lot of anger out there too, and I think this statement helps show that one of the major professional organizations in the humanities is listening.

AM: Educators have largely seemed grateful. We’ve seen notes of thanks on Bluesky and LinkedIn, coverage in The Verge and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and mentions on various blogs. Faculty members appreciate the call for faculty leadership in decision-making about AI integrations. At the same time, the statement has raised awareness about the distinct threat that agentic AI browsers pose. We are all aware that students can copy an assignment into a chatbot and then copy and paste or retype the chatbot’s output, but it’s worse if the chatbot can complete the assignment directly without the student even needing to know what it was about.

How do you envision this statement being used to enact the changes you want to see and prevent the misuses it describes?

MK: I think the statement does some good simply by existing as a statement under the imprimatur of the MLA. It offers members on individual campuses evidence of more widespread professional consideration and concern, and it carries the weight of an organization that has been a voice for language and literature teaching and scholarship for nearly a century and a half. Hopefully the statement will be a focal point for further attention and discussion, including also educating the membership about the new threats posed specifically by agentic AI.

AM: My hope is that the statement helps catalyze broader public pressure—pressure that leads AI companies to stop their systems from autocompleting assignments in learning management systems. Yes, students will still find ways to cheat with AI, but companies should do what they can to reduce misuse; they shouldn’t just make academic fraud easy and cheap and leave teachers to deal with the consequences. For this to happen, we need many voices calling for AI and ed-tech companies to stop facilitating academic fraud. We’d love to see sister organizations in higher education or K–12 share our statement or write their own. The statement is just the beginning of this discussion, and I’m hopeful we’ll hear a lot more from parent-teacher associations, teachers’ unions, and the media.

What can MLA members do to help put the statement into action?

MK: Use it as an instrument for asserting faculty governance at your institution. Ensure faculty representation on your campus’s IT and ed-tech steering committees, the ones who set policy and sign contracts with outside vendors. It’s not a glamorous form of professional service, but that’s where the decisions get made.

AM: Share the statement with your department, your AI task force, your IT department, and your administrators. Set aside ten minutes in a meeting to read and discuss it. If you feel pressure to redesign your pedagogy to circumvent AI browser agents, share the statement. Point to our argument that blocking AI from autocompleting assignments need not be a task for educators alone. We need cooperation from AI and ed-tech companies. Finally, share and comment on the statement or the issues related to it on social media and tag the companies.

Matthew Kirschenbaum is Commonwealth Professor of Artificial Intelligence and English at the University of Virginia. Anna Mills teaches writing at the College of Marin, California.

Member Spotlight: Brittney M. Edmonds

Posted by Colleen Baer

Brittney M. Edmonds

This month’s member spotlight features Brittney M. Edmonds, who has been an MLA member since 2019. Learn about Brittney’s experience with the MLA and how MLA resources have supported her work:

“I’ve benefited from many aspects of MLA as an organization, particularly its teaching-focused publications. One of my most recent experiences was writing an essay for [the forthcoming] Approaches to Teaching the Works of Colson Whitehead, edited by Stephanie Li. It was meaningful to contribute to a pedagogical resource for an author I’ve long admired and regularly teach. Because I’ve so often relied on the Approaches series in my own classrooms, contributing to it felt like a way of paying that resource both back and forward.”

Recommended resource: “The MLA annual meeting consistently creates space for real conversation, whether in panels, informal gatherings, or chance encounters. I keep coming back every year because it’s a place to exchange ideas, think collectively about our work, and learn from colleagues across institutions and subfields.

I always encourage members to take advantage of the MLA Bibliography. It may seem basic, but it’s consistently my first stop when I begin a new research project. Everything I’ve ever written has started there.”

Is there someone you’d like to nominate for the MLA member spotlight? Email suggestions to outreach@mla.org.

Member Spotlight: Joseph Ortiz

Posted by Anna Chang

Joseph Ortiz

For our December member spotlight, we’re highlighting the work of Joseph Ortiz, who has been a member of the MLA for twenty-four years. Learn about Joseph’s time on the MLA Publications Committee and the resource he recommends to humanities leaders:

“Serving on the MLA Publications Committee gave me enormous insight into the innovative research and teaching that is being done outside my field. Whether teaching Homer’s Odyssey or newly published texts, these scholars are pushing the boundaries of literary study and constantly finding ways to connect literature to 21st-century concerns and to the lived experiences of their students. This work has inspired and emboldened me to experiment in my own teaching and think past traditional disciplinary boundaries. Often, MLA is the only venue where this work can be shared broadly with other teachers and scholars.”

Recommended resource: “As an English department chair, I would highly recommend the ADE-ALD Summer Seminar for any chair, director, dean, or department administrator. Every workshop and talk at the seminar has given me helpful ideas about how better to do my job, and the conversations I’ve had with colleagues has provided a much-needed sense of solidarity.”

2025 ADE and ALD Award Winners

Posted by Colleen Baer

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

Teresa Mangum’s service to the profession has rippled outward from her department, discipline, and institution in myriad ways, consistently characterized by collaboration, inventiveness, and an abiding desire to ensure that in any venue diverse voices were always present. A scholar of Victorian studies, she has served on boards of professional associations such as the North American Victorian Studies Association. She has undertaken roles within the MLA and other organizations that facilitate the work of scholars, including service on the MLA Delegate Assembly and the National Humanities Alliance board of directors. Never one to work simply within one department, Mangum retired as an emeritus professor after having spent more than three decades on the faculty at the University of Iowa, in the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies and the Department of English, while serving for years as director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Study, whose programming integrated campus and community in vibrant events that demonstrate the deep value of humanities disciplines. She has long been a national leader in public humanities work, serving on the National Humanities Alliance board of directors, as a principal investigator on the Mellon grant Humanities for the Public Good, and in other leadership positions that demonstrate a boundless energy to work for the greater good. Teresa Mangum is the epitome of the generous colleague, thoughtful mentor, and meticulous scholar who represents the very best of academia.

Sheri Spaine Long

Throughout her illustrious career, Sheri Spaine Long has had a sustained influence on students and teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, as well as on the broader field of world language education. Spaine Long has held faculty and leadership positions at the University of Alabama, Birmingham; the University of North Carolina, Charlotte; and the United States Air Force Academy. A modernizing force throughout her career, she served as executive director of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese from 2018 to 2023, guiding the organization through the COVID-19 pandemic, securing funding, and increasing membership—all while implementing her vision of a more inclusive, values-driven professional association. She also shaped the field through her editorial leadership of two flagship journals, serving as editor in chief of Foreign Language Annals from 2006 to 2009 and as editor of Hispania from 2010 to 2018. She is the author of the widely adopted textbooks Nexos and Cuadros as well as numerous articles on Spanish language, literature, and culture; leadership development; language pedagogy; and international education. Her national service includes roles on the boards of the ACTFL, the JNCL-NCLIS, and the International Symposium on Languages for Specific Purposes. A lifetime member of the MLA, she has served on the Delegate Assembly and on the forum executive committee for Second-Language Teaching and Learning. She is a generous, inspirational mentor and a masterful community builder. For her decades of leadership in publishing, editing, service, and mentorship, Sheri Spaine Long is richly deserving of the ALD Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.