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.”
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 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.
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.
“I have been surprised and delighted at how the MLA has pivoted to be more inclusive of community colleges and teacher scholars who work there.”
Recommended resource: “The workforce committee has helped me understand how interconnected workforce issues are across different institution types. The work has been valuable as a way to make open-access workforce issues more visible.
The work Jason [Rhody] and Janine [Utell] are doing for professional development and in creating updated reports like the workforce report and the 2yr/4yr relation report are essential in building a strong profession across disciplines that can respond to our political climate in a way that will help sustain the important work we do. I recommend these readings and programs like last summer’s MLA training for new department chairs.”
For our October member spotlight, we’re highlighting Ignacio Sánchez Prado, a twenty-one-year member of the MLA. Read about Ignacio’s time on the Executive Council and which MLA resources he has found invaluable to his work:
“[W]hen I became a member of the Executive Council, I was immensely and positively surprised about all the work the MLA conducts in many dimensions. Like many people, I used to perceive the MLA as a prestige-centered organization in which senior English professors from R1 universities brought a lot of weight. But this is not the case at all. The governance of the association is incredibly diverse in terms of geography and institution and it was a privilege to serve alongside colleagues working in state schools, community colleges and HBCUs. I came out of my term wishing that more people see this side of the MLA, oftentimes eclipsed by the convention, but perhaps more essential as our field faces so many challenges.”
Recommended resource: “The resources that have always accompanied me are the bibliography and the conference. In terms of the bibliography, it has encouraged me to write scholarship with extensive bibliographical research, and the ways in which it has evolved over time has allowed me to find sources in a precise and rigorous way. In terms of the conference, I have been going nearly every year since I first attended in 2005. There is no question that my career has benefitted enormously by the networks I have found in the conference, beginning as a graduate student and young faculty member, and eventually through my service in divisions and forums. I also value the ways in which it has exposed me to scholarship across all the fields of literary and cultural studies. The book exhibit is my favorite part, as a bibliophile and I always look forward to learn what new books came out and to talk to editors, some of whom became friends over the years.”
Congratulations to the six MLA members who were elected as members of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in October 2025! According to the AAS, members “are elected by their colleagues in recognition of their eminent works of scholarship, artistic endeavors, or public engagement in pre-twentieth-century American history and culture.”
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 Chicano studies and narrative form. The Award for Lifetime Scholarly Achievement will be presented to Saldívar by MLA President Tina Lu during the MLA Awards Ceremony at the January 2026 convention in Toronto.
This month’s member spotlight highlights LeAnne Spino-Seijas, an MLA member since 2017. Read about LeAnne’s experience participating in the MLA Pathways program and how MLA resources have supported her work:
“I am an associate professor of Spanish at the University of Rhode Island. I also direct the International Studies and Diplomacy (ISD) program at the University of Rhode Island. The ISD program is a unique, dual-degree program where students major in international studies and a language, study abroad for at least a semester, and reach a proficiency benchmark before graduation. The MLA Pathways step grant has been instrumental in helping me set up structural support to continue to grow the program, educate students on how to meet the proficiency benchmark, and launch an initiative called Just apply! that helps ISD students identify and apply to internships, scholarships, and jobs.
The MLA does so much to support our profession, our faculty, and our students. I participated in the Humanities Advocacy Day last year and ended up, to my surprise, advocating for the humanities on Capitol Hill with the executive director of the MLA, Paula Krebs. It was one of those moments where I realized just how much the MLA is doing behind the scenes. In supporting the MLA, we support the vitality and longevity of our profession.”
Recommended resource: “I recommend that all faculty, not just department chairs and program directors, read (and publish in!) the ALD Bulletin. The ALD Bulletin contains timely and important information about our profession, including pedagogical, curricular, and departmental matters. I also urge departments, colleges, and universities to ‘count’ this type of scholarship in the tenure and promotion process. Doing so will incentivize this work which will, in turn, improve communication and strengthen our profession.”
The volume Teaching Literary Maximalism, edited by Benjamin Bergholtz and Yonina Hoffman, is now in development in the MLA Options for Teaching series. To learn more about the volume and how to propose an essay, please visit the MLA website. Please send abstracts and CVs to the editors by 15 December 2025.
Congratulations to the six MLA members who were awarded National Endowment for the Humanities grants in August 2025! Their projects include a volume on Walt Whitman’s journalistic writing; a virtual institute on the history of literary education; a research center focused on AI, the humanities, and the health sector; and more.
Deborah Gussman Project Title: Letters of American Author Catharine Maria Sedgwick: An Online Edition Project Description: Preparation for publication of an open-access digital edition of the complete letters of the early American writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick (1789–1867).
Kevin McMullen Project Title: “Missing Me One Place, Search Another”: Locating and Digitally Editing Walt Whitman’s Unsigned Journalism (1846–48) Project Description: Preparation for publication of the journalistic writing of Walt Whitman (1819–92) while editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Cristanne Miller Project Title: Marianne Moore’s Notebooks: A Dynamic Record of Poetry in the Making of Twentieth-Century Culture Project Description: Preparation for publication of selections from twelve of the literary notebooks of the American modernist poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972).
Deborah Mutnick Project Title: The Federal Writers’ Project: New Directions for Research, Teaching, and Public Engagement Project Description: A three-week, combined virtual and residential institute for twenty-five college and university faculty members to study methods for teaching and researching the Federal Writers’ Project.
Andrew Newman Project Title: Making the Good Reader and Citizen: The History of Literature Instruction in American Schools Project Description: A two-week virtual institute for thirty middle and high school teachers on the history of literary education.
Kirsten Ostherr Project Title: Center for Humanities-Based Health AI Innovation (CHHAIN) Project Description: Establishing a collaborative humanities research center at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University focused on integrating humanities knowledge into the development of trustworthy AI tools in the health sector.
Miriam Wallace, who first joined the MLA in 1986, is featured in our August member spotlight. Read about Miriam’s experience with how the MLA has evolved over the years and what impact MLA resources have had on her career:
“[T]he MLA has changed in some great ways—this is now the first place I go for professional advice and connections. The increase in professional panels at all levels from supporting graduate students to focusing on teaching to moving into academic leadership has been an important aspect of reinvigorating the organization. And I’m also heartened by efforts to represent the whole of our profession— we have groups focused on contingent labor, on 2-year colleges as well as 4-year, on regional universities as well as flagships. Especially in a moment when higher education is subject to attacks from all sides, any organization that matters needs to bring together voices from the full range of institutional types and those who work in them. And leveraging the MLA’s voice in concert with other learned societies for instance in joining the lawsuit to halt the demolition of the NEH is another sign of the power of our voices when joined together.”
Recommended resource: “For all those who are teaching regularly, I want to make a plea for including assignments that train students on working with the MLA Bibliography. First, it’s a great introduction to the entire conception of how to research a topic without simply going to a handy electronic collection. I started doing this years ago working with librarians—and it was revealing. Students were either going straight to JSTOR or to google.scholar (I used to just walk down the stacks)— and they really didn’t understand the limitations of those methods. Librarians sometimes offered too many options to students—by dialing into the bibliography we were able to focus on developing search skills (think a version of prompt engineering), showcasing developing areas of scholarship (ecocritical or disability focused or medical humanities work in say Victorian literatures), and starting to see themselves as in conversation with a larger scholarly world. And finally, while many of us depend on the bibliography (and we are lucky to be in a field where there’s a single very strong database like this), if our students aren’t using it, we may lose the resource on smaller, less-well-funded campuses as libraries track usage carefully in making budget decisions.”
