CANDIDATE INFORMATION 2016 MLA Elections ______Contents

Background Information

Notes on Association Governance 1

Elections for Second Vice President, Executive Council, Delegate Assembly 1

Elections for Forum Executive Committees 1

Making Suggestions for the 2017 Executive Committee Elections 2

Abbreviations Used in Biographical Summaries 2

Candidate Information

Voting for Second Vice President 3

Voting for At-Large Members of the Executive Council 7

Voting for Special-Interest Delegates 14

Voting for Regional Delegates 33

Region 1: New England and Eastern Canada 33

Region 2: New York State 38

Region 3: Middle Atlantic 43

Region 4: Great Lakes 49

Region 5: South 55

Region 6: Central and Rocky Mountain 61

Region 7: Western United States and Western Canada 66

CANDIDATE INFORMATION 2016 MLA Elections ______

Note: To be counted, online ballots must be submitted by midnight EST on 10 December 2016 and paper ballots must be received at the MLA office no later than 10 December 2016.

Notes on Association Governance  Two elected bodies play a role in association governance. The Executive Council is a fiduciary body and has responsibility for managing the business of the association. It has seventeen voting members (the three officers and fourteen members) and one nonvoting member (the executive director). The Delegate Assembly, which has nearly three hundred voting members, recommends actions to the council regarding the conduct of association business and the association’s directions, goals, and structure.  The MLA constitution (see www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/MLA-Constitution) outlines the specific duties of the officers, the council, and the assembly in articles 5, 7, and 9, respectively.

Elections for Second Vice President, Executive Council, Delegate Assembly  MLA elections are held annually in the fall to elect a second vice president of the association and to fill vacancies on the Executive Council and in the Delegate Assembly. Nominations have been made by the Nominating and Elections Committees, whose members are elected by the Delegate Assembly.  Nominees to elected positions in the association are asked to submit biographical summaries and are invited to submit statements on matters of professional concern. This document contains summaries and statements submitted by this year’s nominees, and it is intended for use by those members who request paper ballots for the 2016 elections. Candidate information appears in the same order as the nominees’ names appear on the paper ballot, and, for the Delegate Assembly elections, the number preceding each nominee’s name corresponds to the number assigned to the nominee on the ballot. Specific details about each of the election categories precede the candidate information for that category.  The candidate information in this document is also included in the online ballot system that all 2016 MLA members have been invited to use to cast their votes in the 2016 elections. In the online system, the names of the candidates for second vice president, the Executive Council, and the Delegate Assembly are links. Clicking on a candidate’s name will open a window containing the candidate’s biographical summary and election statement.

Elections for Forum Executive Committees  Elections are held each fall to replace outgoing members of the executive committees. Nominations are made by the membership and by the executive committees.  Instructions for voting appear on the paper ballot sheet. The names of the candidates appear on the accompanying sheet. The online ballot system includes all forum executive committee contests. 2 – Candidate Information

Making Suggestions for the 2017 Executive Committee Elections  At the bottom of the paper ballot is a space that members can use to suggest nominees for the 2017 executive committee elections. Names written in on the ballot will be forwarded to the appropriate executive committees, which must select at least one nominee each year from the names suggested by the membership.  It is also possible to suggest nominees through the MLA Web site. When exiting the online ballot system, members will be given the opportunity to use the online suggestion form. The form can also be accessed directly from the Committees page.

Abbreviations Used in Biographical Summaries AAAS Association for Asian American Studies AATF American Association of Teachers of French AATG American Association of Teachers of German AATI American Association of Teachers of Italian AATSEEL American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages AATSP American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese AAUP American Association of University Professors AAUW American Association of University Women ACLA American Comparative Literature Association ACLS American Council of Learned Societies ACTFL American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages ADE Association of Departments of English ADFL Association of Departments of Foreign Languages ASA American Studies Association ASECS American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies AWP Association of Writers and Writing Programs CCCC Conference on College Composition and Communication CEA College English Association CIES Council for International Exchange of Scholars CLA College Language Association DAAD Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) ETS Educational Testing Service FIPSE Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education FLAS Foreign Language and Area Studies (fellowship prog. in the US Dept. of Educ.) HASTAC Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory ICLA International Comparative Literature Association IREX International Research and Exchanges Board LASA Latin American Studies Association MELUS Society for the Study of the Multiethnic Literature of the United States MMLA Midwest Modern Language Association NACCS National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies NCTE National Council of Teachers of English NDEA National Defense Education Act Candidate Information – 3

NEA National Endowment for the Arts NEH National Endowment for the Humanities NEMLA Northeast Modern Language Association NWSA National Women’s Studies Association PAMLA Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association RMMLA Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association SAMLA South Atlantic Modern Language Association SCMLA South Central Modern Language Association SSHRC Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada SSRC Social Science Research Council (New York) TESOL Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages WCML Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages WPA Council of Writing Program Administrators

Part I: Voting for Second Vice President The person elected second vice president will serve in that office from 9 January 2017 through the close of the January 2018 convention and will automatically become first vice president in 2018, serving in that office through the close of the January 2019 convention, and president of the MLA in 2019, serving in that office through the close of the January 2020 convention. This year all nominees are from fields other than English or American language and literature; the MLA constitution (article 6.D) stipulates that the second vice president shall be elected from the field of English or American only in alternate years. (From 9 Jan. 2017 through 7 Jan. 2018, the first vice president will be Anne Ruggles Gere, English, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the president will be Diana Taylor, Spanish, New York Univ.) The Hare voting method will be used in the election of second vice president. (Using this voting method will, except in the case of a tie, eliminate the need for a separate runoff election in the spring.) Members are asked to rank the candidates listed below in order of preference. On the ballot sheet, members should write “1” next to the name of their first choice, “2” next to the name of their second choice, and “3” next to the name of their third choice. Please note that voting for only one candidate means casting no vote in the subsequent rounds of balloting that the Hare voting method incorporates.

Rank these candidates in order of preference.

Simon E. Gikandi. Robert Schirmer Prof. of English, Princeton Univ. PhD, Northwestern Univ. Previous appointments: Univ. of Michigan, 1991–99; Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, 1987–91; California State Univ., Bakersfield, 1986–87. Visiting appointments: Harvard Univ., 1989–90; Humanities Inst., Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York, 2006; Dept. of Comparative Lit., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 2006; Hurst Visiting Prof., Washington Univ. in St. Louis, 2009; Mellon Distinguished Visiting Prof., Univ. of Witwatersrand, 2014; Wang Distinguished Prof., Dept. of English, George Washington Univ., 2014. NEH summer inst. fellowship, 1987; Mellon fellowship, Harvard Univ., 1989; ACLS fellowship, 1989; Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, 2001; senior fellow, Michigan Soc. of Fellows, Univ. of Michigan, 2002–07; senior fellow, Princeton Univ. Soc. of Fellows, 2005–08. Invited lectures: James Hoffman Memorial Lecture, Dartmouth Coll., Feb. 2006; Addison Gayle Memorial Lecturer, Baruch Coll., City Univ. of New York, Mar. 2011; Sagan Natl. Colloquium Lecturer, 4 – Candidate Information

Ohio Wesleyan Univ., Sept. 2011; Audrey Richards Annual Lecture in African Studies, Univ. of Cambridge, Mar. 2012; Goldstone Memorial Lecture, New York Univ., Mar. 2014; T. F. Prince Lecture, Univ. of Southampton, Oct. 2014; Rushton Lecture, Univ. of Virginia, Feb. 2015. President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, Princeton Univ., 2014; cowinner, James Russell Lowell Prize (for Slavery and the Culture of Taste), MLA, 2011; Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship (for Slavery and the Culture of Taste), Melbern Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M Univ., 2012; cowinner, Melville Herskovits Award (for Slavery and the Culture of Taste), African Studies Assn., 2012. Panelist: CIES, 1995–98; ACLS, 1998, 2008; NEH, 2002; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2003–04; Guggenheim Foundation, 2008–12. Selection comm., Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, 2007–10. Exec. comm., African Lit. Assn., 1992–95; selection comm., Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize, African Studies Assn., 2011–15; Soc. for African Philosophy in North America; North Amer. Soc. for British Studies; ASECS. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on African Lits., 1991–95; Publications Comm., 2002–05 (ch., 2004–05); Lowell Prize Selection Comm., 2004–05 (ch., 2005); PMLA Ed. Board, 2007–09; ed., PMLA, 2011–16. Ed. or advisory boards: African Literature Today, 1989–99; Research in African Literatures, 1994– ; Comparative Studies in Society and History, 1995–2004; Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 1995– ; Studies in Travel Writing, 1997– ; Contemporary Literature, 1998– ; Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2002– ; Journal of African Culture, 2004– ; Comparative Literary Studies, 2005– ; Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2008– ; Anglistica: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011– ; Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing. Publications include: Reading Chinua Achebe: Language and Ideology in Fiction (1991), Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature (1992), Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism (1006), Ngugi wa Thiong’o (2000), Slavery and the Culture of Taste (2011); coauthor, The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English since 1945 (2007); ed., Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (Norton, 2003), Encyclopedia of African Literature (2003), The Novel in Africa and the Caribbean since 1950 (2016); coed., The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature (2004); contrib., Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century (2000), The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies (2004), Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (2005), Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “the Middle Ages” outside Europe (2009), Human Bondage in the Cultural Contact Zone: Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Slavery and Its Discourses (2010), Rerouting the Postcolonial: New Directions for the New Millennium (2010), A Companion to Comparative Literature (2011), Theory after “Theory” (2011), The Victorian World (2012), New Directions in the History of the Novel (2014); articles in PMLA, Modern Language Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Culture, Research in African Literatures, Cultural Studies, New Formations, Modernism/Modernity, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Transition, Callaloo, African Literature Today, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, Essays and Studies, Michigan Quarterly Review, English Studies in Africa, Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society, Anglistica: An Interdisciplinary Journal, World Literature Written in English. Statement As a long-standing member of the MLA, I have been involved in the organization’s activities on many levels and in different capacities. I have chaired the Publications Committee and the James Russell Lowell Prize Selection Committee, and I recently completed five years as editor of PMLA. I have a good sense of the work of the MLA as the most important and influential professional forum for the study of language and literature and a key defender of the humanities. I’m also keenly aware of the challenges the MLA faces: how to be more effective in making a literary education central to our democratic culture, provide more opportunities for young scholars, and improve working conditions for teachers of literatures and languages. I believe that the MLA should be a conduit for continuous and vigorous debates on the major issues of our time, especially where these issues intersect with our expertise in languages and literatures. To do so, the organization must welcome innovations in its structures and expand its areas of focus. My ambition is to develop partnerships between the MLA and other national organizations and to make it a leader in the reshaping of the North American public sphere and the emerging global commons. If elected, I would bring Candidate Information – 5 to the organization some of the qualities that I have brought to PMLA: I would push for an expansion of fields and constituencies, listen carefully to the voices that are not always heard, and push continuously for intellectual diversity.

Ato Quayson. Prof. English, Univ. of Toronto. PhD, Univ. of Cambridge. Dir., Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, Univ. of Toronto. Previous appointment: Univ. of Cambridge, 1995–2005. Cambridge Commonwealth Scholar, 1991–94; junior research fellow, Wolfson Coll., Univ. of Oxford, 1994–95; fellow, Du Bois Inst. for African-Amer. Studies, Harvard Univ., 2004. Fellow, Cambridge Commonwealth Soc., 1994– ; fellow, Ghana Acad. of Arts and Sciences, 2006– ; fellow, Royal Soc. of Canada, 2013– . Visiting appointments: Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2000; Wellesley Coll., 2011–12; New York Univ., spring 2016. Award for Best Book in Non– North Amer. Urban History in 2013–14 (for Oxford Street), Urban History Assn. Juror, Noma Award, 2000– 03; intl. jury, Africa’s 100 Best Books, 2001–02; chief examiner in English, Intl. Baccalaureate, Sept. 2005– July 2007; panelist, European Research Council, 2010–13, 2015–17. Dir., Centre of African Studies, Univ. of Cambridge, 1997–2005; steering comm., Diasporas, Migration, and Identities Program, Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom), 2005–10. Management comm., C. L. R. James Inst. (New York), 1997–2004; exec. board, African Lit. Assn., 2012–15; African Studies Assn. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Postcolonial Studies in Lit. and Culture, 2008–Jan. 2013; Comm. on Disability Issues in the Profession, 2009–12; Delegate Assembly, 2013–Jan. 2016; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2015–18; Elections Comm., 2016–17. Founding ed., Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2014– . Ed. boards: Postcolonial Text, 2007– ; University of Toronto Quarterly, 2008– ; New Literary History, 2009– ; African Diasporas, 2009– ; Research in African Literatures, 2010– . Publications include: Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing: Orality and History in the Work of Rev. Samuel Johnson, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, and Ben Okri (1997), Postcolonialism: Theory, Practice, or Process? (2000), Calibrations: Reading for the Social (2003), Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (2007), Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism (2014); ed., Fathers and Daughters: An Anthology of Exploration (2008), The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, 2 vols. (2012), The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel (2015); coed., Relocating Postcolonialism (2002), African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory (2007), Labor Migration, Human Trafficking, and Multinational Corporations: The Commodification of Illicit Flows (2012), A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (2013); introd., Nelson Mandela, No Easy Walk to Freedom (2002); contrib., Essays on African Writing, vol. 2 (1995), The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, vol. 3 (1997), Contemporary African Fiction (1997), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), An Introduction to Contemporary Fiction: International Writing in English since 1970 (1999), Black British Culture and Society (2000), A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (2000), The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature, vol. 2 (2000), Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures (2005), The Novel, vol.1 (2006), The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel (2009), Diasporas: Concepts, Intersections, Identities (2010), The New Blackwell Companion to the City (2011), The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies (2013), Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2nd ed., 2014); articles in Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Research in African Literatures, New Literary History, PMLA, Cultural Anthropology, City and Society, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, University of Toronto Quarterly, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Public Culture, African Studies Review, Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, Cambridge Quarterly, Interventions, Essays and Studies, Yearbook of English Studies, Journal of African History, Performance Research. Statement The most important thing that a long career in teaching, research, and administration has taught me is that there is a paucity of opportunities for career mentoring both within and across institutions. Mentoring applies to all levels of the university and must be conceived in terms of opportunities for sharing experiences in envisioning, planning, and systematically dealing with various issues and problems throughout one’s career. I think for example of workshops in which early-career faculty members are paired with more 6 – Candidate Information experienced members in a public forum to discuss work in progress. Another idea would be to share insights about pedagogy in nonevaluative contexts (i.e., not only when people are coming up for tenure and have to endure the interminable and torturous class visits from senior colleagues). I dream of the possibility of creating regional consortia of institutions where opportunities for sharing mentoring expertise across universities might be created. The strength inherent in face-to-face interactions within the academy remains somewhat undervalued. I see the university as a place for the orchestration of a public commons where people learn from one another not only by reading what other scholars write but also by watching and bearing witness to how they adjudicate other people’s work, share their passion for teaching, and generally facilitate the augmentation of knowledge within the public commons of the university. If given the opportunity, I intend to work assiduously with others to devise ways in which this can be made a central part of the MLA’s mandate.

Naoki Sakai. Goldwin Smith Prof. of Asian Studies, Cornell Univ. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Previous appointment: Univ. of Chicago, 1984–88. Toyota Foundation collaborative research fellowship, 1984–86; fellow, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., 1991–92, 2004– 05; SSRC research grant, 1993–94; Japan Foundation research fellowship, 1997–98; German Amer. Academic Council grant, 1998; Natl. Science Council (Taiwan) grant, 2015–18. Visiting appointments: Tokyo Univ. of Foreign Studies, 1997–98; Univ. of Leipzig, 1998; Shinghan Distinguished Prof., Yonsei Univ. (South Korea), 2006; Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona, 2008; Konstanz Univ., 2011; Natl. Chiao Tung Univ. (Taiwan), 2015–18. Invited lectures: Yale Univ., 2002; School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell Univ., 2002; Brown Univ., 2003; Catholic Univ. of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, 2004; Nida School of Translation (Italy), 2012; Univ. of Toronto, 2013; Univ. of Hong Kong, 2014; Tsinghua Univ. (China), 2015. Humanities Council, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., 1993–96, 2011–14; reviewer, New Faculty Fellows Program, ACLS, 2012–13. Adviser, Flying Univ. of Transnational Humanities, Hanyang Univ. (South Korea), 2009– ; adviser, Inst. for Comparative Modernities, Cornell Univ., 2009– ; dir., Flying Univ. of Transnational Humanities, Cornell Univ., 2016. Comité scientifique, Terra-HN, 2011– ; Assn. for Asian Studies; Transeuropéennes; LASA; Intl. Soc. for Intellectual History; Assn. for Cultural Typhoon; Intl. House of Japan. MLA activities: William Riley Parker Prize Selection Comm., 2003–05 (ch., 2005); PMLA Advisory Comm., 2003–06. Senior ed. (1996– 2003) and assoc. ed. (2003– ), Traces: A Multilingual Series of Cultural Theory and Translation, Hong Kong Univ. Press (English ed.). Ed. or advisory boards: Critical Space (批評空間), 1989–99; Positions: Asia Critique, 1993– ; Postcolonial Studies, 2000– ; Tamkang Review, 2006– ; Multitudes, 2007–14; JunCture, 2009– ; Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2009– ; Japan Review, 2009– . Publications include: Voices of the Past: The Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Discourse (1992; Japanese trans., 2002), The Stillborn of the Japanese as Language and as Ethnos: “Japanese” History—Geopolitical Configuration (in Japanese, 1996; Korean trans., 2003; new Japanese ed., 2015), The Problem Called Japanese Thought: Translation and Subjectivity (in Japanese, 1997; 3rd ed., 2012), Translation and Subjectivity: On Japan and Cultural Nationalism (1997), Poiesis of Nationalism (in Korean, 2003), Japan/Image/the United States: The Community of Sympathy and Imperial Nationalisms (in Japanese, 2007), Hope and the Constitution (in Japanese, 2008), The End of Pax Americana and Japanese Nationalism of Hikikomori (in Japanese, 2016); coauthor, Pride and Prejudice (in Korean, 2003), The Destruction of “World History”: Translation, Subjectivity, History (in Japanese, 2004), Introduction to Racism Studies (in Japanese, 2012); ed., The Cultural History of Modern Japan, vols. 1 and 7 (in Japanese, 2002); coed., Deconstructing Nationality (in Japanese, 1996; English trans., 2005), Asia in Globalization: The Actuality of Cultural Studies (in Japanese, 1998), Specters of the West and the Politics of Translation (2001), Globalization Studies: From Total War System to Globalization (in Japanese, 2003), Unlearning National History (in Japanese, 2006), Translation, Biopolitics, Colonial Difference (2006), “Overcoming Modernity” and the Kyoto School: Modernity, Empire, and Universality (in Japanese, 2010), The Trans- Pacific Imagination: Rethinking Boundary, Culture, and Society (2012); guest ed., Shisō no kagaku (1990), Shisō (1996); guest coed., Translation (2014); contrib., Traduzione e cittadinanza (2009), Biopolitics, Ethics, and Subjectivation (2011), Worldwide: Archipels de la mondialisation. Archipiélagos de la globalización (2012), Imagining Mass Dictatorships: The Individual and the Masses in Literature and Cinema (2013), Candidate Information – 7

Translating beyond Europe: Zur politischen Aufgabe der Übersetzung (2013), European–East Asian Borders in Translation (2014), Rethinking Language and Culture in Japanese Education: Beyond the Standard (2014), Values, Identity, and Equality in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Japan (2015), Ähnlichkeit: Ein kulturtheoretisches Paradigma (2015); articles in Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Japanese Studies, Shisō, Journal of Asiatic Studies, Cahiers du genre, International Journal of Critical Thought, Positions: Asia Critique, Profession, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Statement The historical conditions surrounding universities are shifting throughout the world. In many institutions, New Public Management (NPM), characterized by free-market rhetoric and intensive managerial practices, administers humanistic disciplines, while public support for the humanities appears to be receding. Our student bodies include more and more international students, while fewer and fewer American-born students focus on languages and literatures. My background in two disciplines with different genealogies and audiences, comparative literature and East Asian area studies, provides me with a broad perspective for thinking about possible futures for the humanities. The comparative study of literature(s), originally limited to the European canon, is no longer confined to the so-called West. Similarly, area studies, introduced in the political climate of the Cold War with a view to studying specific peoples and countries outside the West, must now address topics and theories that span the boundary between the West and the non-West. In all the disciplines represented in the MLA, we need to move beyond the presumption that the West is unambiguously distinguishable from the rest and respond to growing student interest in theoretical and boundary-crossing approaches; we must continue the MLA’s mission as an advocate of in-depth language study beyond English in an increasingly connected world. We also need to find effective ways to convince administrators, legislators, and the broader public about the value of our work beyond the logistics of NPM. I would like to contribute to the MLA by seeking ways to respond to these challenges, along with many others.

Part II: Voting for At-Large Members of the Executive Council Three persons will be elected for four-year terms that will begin 9 January 2017 and run through the close of the January 2021 convention. The MLA constitution (article 8.A.5) stipulates that the at- large membership of the council must include at least one and no more than six representatives from each of the following fields: English or American, French, German, Spanish, and other (e.g., other languages and literatures, comparative literature, folklore, linguistics). Since all these fields will continue to be represented on the council in 2017, candidates from any field may be elected this year. In addition, because no designated field is represented by more than three council members, all three persons elected this year may be from the same field. The fields represented by the nominees are English (Potkay, Schilb, Shockley, Williams), Spanish (Compitello), and other (Hayot, Noda). The MLA constitution (art. 8) also states that the at-large membership of the council “shall also include at least one representative, but no more than eight, from each of the eligible membership levels (i.e., regular, graduate student, and life), except that the number of regular members on the council shall always be in proportion to the regular membership of the association.” Because regular members compose 62.9% of the membership, they are constitutionally entitled to eight of the twelve at-large council seats. Since only five of the nine at-large members of the council with continuing terms in 2017 are regular members (see the listing below, in which student members are marked with an * and life members with a §), all three persons elected this year must be regular members. Emily Apter, French, New York Univ. (2015–6 Jan. 2019) Brian Croxall, English, Emory Univ. (2014–7 Jan. 2018) 8 – Candidate Information

*Lenora Hanson, English, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison (2016–12 Jan. 2020) §Margaret R. Higonnet, English, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs (2014–7 Jan. 2018) David Palumbo-Liu, comparative literature, Stanford Univ. (2015–6 Jan. 2019) David Tse-chien Pan, German, Univ. of California, Irvine (2016–12 Jan. 2020) *Rafael A. Ramirez Mendoza, Spanish, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (2016–12 Jan. 2020) §Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, French, Vanderbilt Univ. (2014–7 Jan. 2018) Vicky Unruh, Spanish, Univ. of Kansas (2015–6 Jan. 2019)

Vote for any three nominees.

Malcolm Alan Compitello. Prof. Spanish, Univ. of Arizona. PhD, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. Head, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, Univ. of Arizona, 1995– ; dir., Humanities Seminars Program, Coll. of Humanities, Univ. of Arizona, 2011– . Previous appointment: Michigan State Univ., 1977–95. Fulbright grant (Spain), 1971–72; publication grant, Spanish-Amer. Cultural Exchange, Inc., 1982; postdoctoral research grant, US-Spain Joint Commission for Educational and Cultural Affairs, 1983–84; NEH focus grant, 1997–98, 1998–99; conference grant, Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Univs., 2002. Visiting appointments: Middlebury Coll., summer 1980; Univ. of Verona, Oct. 2009. Distinguished teaching award, Humanities Seminars Program, Univ. of Arizona, 2006; Excellence in Global Education Award, Office of Global Initiatives and Center for English as a Second Language, Univ. of Arizona, 2011; Silver Medal for Distinguished Collaboration, Instituto Franklin, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, 2012; Merle E. Simmons Distinguished Alumni Award, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana Univ., 2015; Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession, ADFL, 2015. Board of directors, Borderlands Theater, 1996–97; Educ. Comm., Arizona- Mexico Commission, 1996–2000; exec. comm., Partnership across Langs. (K–16 initiative), Univ. of Arizona, 1996– ; Arizona Langs. Articulation Task Force, 1999– (ch., 2007–08, 2010–11, 2013–14); honorary pres., Tucson-Segovia Sister Cities, 2006–10. Reader, AP Spanish Exam, Coll. Board, June 1991. Exec. Comm., ADFL, 2003–05; pres., ADFL, 2005; pres., Arizona chapter, AATSP, 2006–09. MLA activities: Program Comm., 2013–16; forum exec. comm., LLC 20th- and 21st-Century Spanish and Iberian, 2016–Jan. 2021. Exec. ed., Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, 1996– . Ed. boards: Journal of Urban Cultural Studies; Revista de ALCES XXI: Journal of Contemporary Spanish Literature and Film; MVM: Cuadernos de Estudios Manuel Vázquez Montalbán; Hispanic Urban Studies, Palgrave Macmillan; Hispanic Studies Review. Publications include Ordering the Evidence: Volverás a Región and Civil War Fiction (1983); coed., Critical Approaches to the Writings of Juan Benet (1984), Rewriting the Good Fight: Critical Essays on the Literature of the Spanish Civil War (1989), Madrid: De Fortunata a la M-40: Un siglo de cultura urbana (2003); foreword, Benjamin Fraser, Understanding Juan Benet (2013); contrib., Prosa hispánica de vanguardia (1986), Iberia and the Mediterranean (1989), Toward a Cultural Archive of La Movida: Back to the Future (2014), Marxism and Urban Culture (2014); articles in ADFL Bulletin, International Journal of Iberian Studies, Journal of the Constructed Environment, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, El mundo, Cities, Arachne, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, La página, Letras peninsulares, Insula, Revista hispánica moderna, Revista monográfica, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Ram’s Horn, American Hispanist, Hispanic Journal, Anales de la narrativa española contemporánea, Anales de la novela de posguerra. Statement I embrace the MLA’s mission, which today is more crucial than ever. The value of what our membership teaches and studies has come under increasing criticism. The nature of the workforce in our disciplines has been substantially altered, with deleterious consequences for teachers and learners. I support the MLA’s efforts to drive home how important the study of languages, literatures, and cultures is to producing an enlightened citizenry with the ability to think critically about the myriad of complex issues that confront us. The organization must continue to advocate forcefully for its membership in its struggle to find Candidate Information – 9 fair and equitable working conditions inside and outside of traditional channels of academic employment. It must expand its efforts to champion innovative new approaches to our scholarship and teaching. Attracting new constituencies is also vital to the MLA’s long-term health, as is connecting with other professional organizations in sustained efforts to separate fact from fiction about the “crisis” of the humanities. I bring to my candidacy for the Executive Council many years of academic leadership, program building, and service to the profession that augment my contributions as a teacher-scholar. Over the course of my career I have helped the MLA set its agenda through my work with the ADFL and as a member of the Program Committee, both at particularly important moments of institutional reorganization. I am humbled to have been the 2015 recipient of the ADFL Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession in recognition of my contributions.

Eric Hayot. Distinguished prof. comparative lit. and Asian studies, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Previous appointments: Univ. of Arizona, 2001–07; Univ. of Northern Iowa, 2000–01; Auburn Univ., 2000–01. Mellon Foundation fellowship, Huntington Library, 2005; global fellow, Intl. Inst., Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 2005–07; Folger Inst. grant, 2009; Fulbright scholar (Germany), Inst. of Intl. Educ., 2013–14; assoc. fellow, Heidelberg Center for Transcultural Studies, Univ. of Heidelberg, 2013–14. Visiting appointments: Beijing Foreign Studies Univ., spring 1998; Princeton Univ., spring 2013; Univ. of Pennsylvania, fall 2015. Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Coll. of Humanities, Univ. of Arizona, 2003; Erasmus Award (for advising), Dept. of Comparative Lit., Penn State Univ., 2008, 2010; Modernist Studies Assn. Book Prize (for The Hypothetical Mandarin), 2010; Class of 1933 Distinction in the Humanities Award, Coll. of the Liberal Arts, Penn State Univ., 2010; Faculty Scholar Medal, Penn State Univ., 2014. Panelist, Boren Fellowships, Acad. for Educational Development, 2003, 2005. Advisory board (2009–10), second vice pres. (2011–12), vice pres. (2012–13), pres. (2013–14), and past pres. (2014–15), ACLA; program comm., Modernist Studies Assn., 2010. MLA activities: Publications Comm., 2010–13; Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies Selection Comm., 2011–13 (ch., 2012). Series ed., Global Asias, Oxford Univ. Press; assoc. ed., Comparative Literature Studies, 2008– ; assoc. ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, 2013– ; coed., Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 2014– . Advisory boards: Arizona Quarterly, 2004– ; Journal of Modern Literature, 2010– ; Atlantic Studies, 2014– . Publications include Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel quel (2004), The Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain (2009), On Literary Worlds (2012), The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities (2014); coed., Sinographies: Writing China (2007); guest ed., Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (2006), Comparative Literature Studies (2011); guest coed., Comparative Literature (2005), Game Studies (2009); contrib., Pacific Rim Modernisms (2009), Global Chinese Literature (2010), Modernism and Copyright (2011), A Companion to Comparative Literature (2011), The Routledge Companion to World Literature (2011), The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms (2012), The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature (2014), Divided Lenses: Screen Memories of War in East Asia (2016); articles in Critical Inquiry, English Language Notes, Comparative Literature, Social Text, New Literary History, Modern Language Quarterly, PMLA, Representations, Contemporary Literature, Comparative Literature Studies, Postmodern Culture, Mediations: Journal of the Marxist Literary Group. Statement I do not know how to solve all the problems the humanities face. But there are things we can do to make things better for the faculty members and the students the MLA represents and serves. I am especially interested in working on two linked problems: the current state of graduate education and the rise in precarious contingent employment across the university. While advocating strongly against the national, state, and local policies that have enabled the corporatization of the university (often as a means of destroying it), we can also focus more locally on the ways in which departments and colleges can respond to the current situation—first, by changing how we prepare graduate students and, second, by proposing models for the decent and fair treatment of both our students and our colleagues. For me this begins with graduate reform. I see the current situation (I reject the term crisis) as, naturally, a threat but also as an opportunity to 10 – Candidate Information produce a renewed vision of the role the humanities (and the graduate and undergraduate teaching done under its aegis) can play in contemporary society.

Mari Noda. Prof. Japanese, Ohio State Univ., Columbus. PhD, Cornell Univ. Assoc. dir., Natl. East Asian Langs. Resource Center, Ohio State Univ. Previous appointments: Portland State Univ., 1987–90; Japan Women’s Univ. (Tokyo), 1986–87. SSRC dissertation fellowship, 1981–83; research fellow, Natl. Lang. Research Inst. (Tokyo), 1981–83. Visiting appointments: Columbia Univ., 2008–09; Guizhou Normal Univ., 2013–14. Clark Award for Excellence in Teaching, Cornell Univ., 1979; US Ambassador Award for Excellence in English, Soc. for Testing English Proficiency (Japan), 1984; honoree, Ohio Asian Leaders and Legends, 2012. Advisory Comm. on Japanese, Natl. Foreign Lang. Center, 1993–97; board of advisers (2006– ) and academic dir. (2014– ), ALLEX (Alliance for Lang. Learning and Educational Exchange) Foundation; lang. program dir., Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies, 2008–09; board of directors, Columbus Japanese Lang. School, 2012–14. Board of directors (1992– 95, 1999–2002) and pres. (2008–09), Amer. Assn. of Teachers of Japanese; board of directors (2007– ) and pres.-elect (2015–17), Japan-America Soc. of Central Ohio; Exec. Comm., ADFL, 2009–Jan. 2012; Assn. for Asian Studies; Amer. Assn. for Applied Linguistics; ACTFL; Soc. for Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Lang. Ed. board, Japanese Language and Literature, 2000– . Publications include Faculty Guide to Japanese: the Spoken Language: Multimedia Collection (1998); coauthor, A Performance-Based Pedagogy for Communicating in Cultures: Training Teachers for East Asian Languages (2002), Acts of Reading: Exploring Connections in Pedagogy of Japanese (2003), Japanese: The Written Language (2006); contrib., Shaping the Next Generation (1997), Reflecting on the Past to Shape the Future (2000), Individualized Instruction in East Asian Languages (2013), Japanese Language Education in the U.S.—Past, Present, and Future (in Japanese, 2014), Language and Food: Verbal and Nonverbal Experiences (2014); articles in Foreign Language Annals, Japanese Language and Literature. Statement The MLA is uniquely positioned to serve the profession by identifying and addressing challenges while also cherishing the passion of the members. There are two areas that I would like to see the MLA address in the coming decade, if I were to be given the opportunity to serve on the Executive Council: labor issues and issues related to the advanced levels. The labor issues involve the increasing reliance on non- tenure-track and temporary faculty members and the reduction in the number of tenure-track positions. In some instances, the stability of programs is in jeopardy, and the stability of positions is an issue for those individuals who are devoted to and passionate about teaching. The lack of stability can also affect the depth of programs. In some languages, Chinese for example, due to the investment in secondary school programs by supporting governments, higher education can expect to see a surge in the nonbeginning population in the near future. The MLA can work to advocate advanced-level instruction in languages that previously did not have levels beyond intermediate and also advanced-level learning opportunities in the study-abroad environment. I have worked closely with the issues surrounding contingent appointments as a former chair of my home department for eight years and as former president of the Association of Teachers of Japanese (currently American Association of Teachers of Japanese). I have worked toward advanced levels in East Asian languages as an active faculty member at the National East Asian Languages Resource Center at Ohio State University.

Adam Potkay. William R. Kenan, Jr., Prof. of Humanities, Coll. of William and Mary. PhD, Rutgers Univ. Ch., Dept. of English, Coll. of William and Mary (CWM), July 2013–June 2016. NEH fellowship, 2006–07. Visiting appointments: Univ. of Aberdeen, fall 1997; Columbia Univ., fall 2001. Dissertation award, Northeastern Assn. of Grad. Schools, 1993; Alumni Fellowship Award for Excellence in Teaching, CWM, 1996; Phi Beta Kappa Award for the Advancement of Scholarship, Alpha of Virginia, 1997; Margaret L. Hamilton Term Professorship in English, CWM, 2005–08; cowinner, Harry Levin Prize (for The Story of Joy), ACLA, 2009; Plumeri Award for Faculty Excellence, CWM, 2009–11; Arts and Sciences Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence, CWM, 2012–13. Clifford Prize Comm. (1998), Candidate Information – 11

Nominating Comm. (2002), organizing comm. for 2009 convention, and organizing comm. for 2014 convention (ch.), ASECS; co-organizer of 2000 conference, David Hume Soc.; co-organizer of 2006 conference, Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Soc.; organizing comm. for 2014 conference, North Amer. Soc. for the Study of Romanticism. MLA activities: PMLA Ed. Board, 2008–10. Advisory ed. (1990–Spring 1995, Fall 1996–2001), interim ed. (1995–96), assoc. ed. (2001–04), and book review ed. (2007–16), Eighteenth-Century Life; advisory ed., Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1999–2002. Ed. or advisory boards: The Friend: Comment on Romanticism, 1991–95; British Ideas and Issues 1660–1820, AMS Press; Eighteenth- Century Life, 2006– ; Ethos (Poland), 2014– . Publications include The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume (1994), The Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume (2000), An Education on the Delaware: St. Mary’s Hall and Doane Academy, 1837–1999 (2000), The Great Good Book: The Bible and the Roots of Western Literature (audiobook, 2004), The Story of Joy: From the Bible to Late Romanticism (2007; Portuguese trans., 2010; Romanian trans., 2010), Heaven in a Wild Flower: The British Romantic Poets (audiobook, 2009), Wordsworth’s Ethics (2012); coauthor, The Bible as the Root of Western Literature: Stories, Poems, and Parables (audiobook, 2008); ed., Henry Fielding, The History and Adventures of Joseph Andrews (2008); coed., Black Atlantic Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Living the New Exodus in England and the Americas (1995), On Human Flourishing: A Poetry Anthology (2015); guest ed., Eighteenth-Century Life (2001); guest coed., Eighteenth-Century Life (1992); foreword, The Eudaimonic Turn: Well-Being in Literary Studies (2012); contrib., Re-reading Box Hill: Reading the Practice of Reading Everyday Life (2000), Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, vol. 5 (2000), British Writers: Retrospective Supplement (2002), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment (2002), Wordsworth in American Literary Culture (2005), A Companion to the Eighteenth-Century English Novel and Culture (2005), “Soundings of Things Done”: The Poetry and Poetics of Sound in the Romantic Ear and Era (2008), Theory and Practice in the Eighteenth Century: Writing between Philosophy and Literature (2008), The Eighteenth-Century Novel, vol. 6–7 (2009), A Companion to Romantic Poetry (2010), The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences (2011), The Sublime: From Antiquity to the Present (2012), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. 3 (2012), Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden (2013), A Companion to British Literature, vol. 3 (2014), The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (online, 2014), The Oxford Handbook of William Wordsworth (2015), The Pocket Instructor: Literature (2015), Approaches to Teaching the Novels of Henry Fielding (2015), The Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660–1789 (2015); articles in PMLA, Ethos, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Social Research: An International Quarterly of the Political and Social Sciences, SEL, Raritan Quarterly, Wordsworth Circle, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Eighteenth-Century Life, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Hume Studies, Language Sciences, Philosophy Now, Early American Literature, Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Victorian Poetry. Statement As a thirty-year member of the MLA, a three-time PMLA author, a former PMLA Editorial Board member, and a frequent participant at our annual conventions, I am concerned about how to engage and retain MLA members as they mature. My perception is that too many of my contemporaries have dropped out of our organization after attaining some degree of workplace security. What can be done, through MLA outreach and possible re-visioning of PMLA and other MLA publications and forums, to maintain a larger percentage of teachers and scholars in the MLA? The more members who actively participate in the MLA, the more comprehensive and persuasive our organization’s voice will be within higher education, government, and the media. A related area of urgent concern is furthering MLA advocacy for contingent faculty members, working toward the goals of job security, fair pay, and benefits. (In my three-year term as chair of a large English department at my mid-size state university, I converted several contingent positions into renewable five-year-contract senior lectureships with benefits.) Finally, the MLA needs ceaselessly to stress the vital importance of the humanities, and especially language training and multilingualism, for both liberal arts education and interculturally competent global citizenship. 12 – Candidate Information

John L. Schilb. Prof. English and Culbertson Ch. of Writing, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. PhD, Binghamton Univ., State Univ. of New York. Previous appointments: Univ. of Maryland, College Park, 1990–98; vice pres., Associated Colls. of the Midwest, 1984–90; Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington, 1983–84; Denison Univ., 1978–83; Carthage Coll., 1977–78. Nancy Dasher Book Award (for Contending with Words), CEA of Ohio, 1994; Certificate of Teaching Excellence, Univ. of Maryland, College Park, 1995; honorable mention (for Between the Lines), W. Ross Winterowd Award, JAC, 1996; Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize (for Rhetorical Refusals), MLA, 2008; Indiana Univ. Trustees Teaching Award, 2013. Dir., Cape Fear Writing Project (part of Natl. Writing Project), 1984. Commission on Response to Lit., NCTE, 1985–88; exec. board, Assn. of Teachers of Advanced Composition, 1989–91; Outstanding Dissertation Award Comm., CCCC, 1990–94 (ch., 1992–93); exec. comm., Coll. Section, NCTE, 2006–12; Consultant-Evaluator Service, WPA, 2012– . MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Teaching as a Profession, 1992–96; Delegate Assembly, 1996–98, 2010–Jan. 2013; Program Comm., 2008–11; exec. comm., Div. on the Teaching of Writing, 2011–Jan. 2016; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2014–17. Ed., College English, 2005–12; general ed., Series in Composition and Rhetoric, Peter Lang Publishing, 1991–98. Ed. boards: PRE/TEXT: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, 1988– ; Reader, 1993– ; Works and Days, 1995– ; Rhetoric Review, 1995– ; Studies in Writing and Rhetoric, CCCC, 1996–99; College English, 1998–2005; Present Tense, 2011– . Publications include Between the Lines: Relating Composition Theory and Literary Theory (1996), Rhetorical Refusals: Defying Audiences’ Expectations (2007); coed., Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age (1991), Constellations: A Contextual Reader for Writers (1992; 2nd ed., 1995), Writing Theory and Critical Theory (1994), Making Literature Matter: An Anthology for Readers and Writers (1999; 6th ed., 2015), Ways of Making Literature Matter: A Brief Guide (2001), Making Arguments about Literature: A Compact Guide and Anthology (2005), Arguing about Literature: A Brief Guide (2014); contrib., Reconstructing American Literature (1983), Women’s Personal Narratives: Essays in Criticism and Pedagogy (1985), Gendered Subjects: The Dynamics of Feminist Teaching (1985), Literary Nonfiction: Theory, Criticism, Pedagogy (1989), New Visions of Collaborative Writing (1991), Practicing Theory in Introductory College Literature Courses (1991), Pedagogy Is Politics (1992), PRE/TEXT: The First Decade (1993), Teaching the Conflicts: Gerald Graff, Curricular Reform, and the Culture Wars (1994), Writing Histories of Rhetoric (1994), Academic Advancement in Composition Studies (1996), Post-Process Composition Theory (1999), Rhetorical Bodies (1999), The Writing Program Administrator’s Resource (2002), Disciplining English (2002), Renewing Rhetoric’s Relation to Composition (2009); articles in College English, College Composition and Communication, Rhetoric Review, Reader, Pedagogy, JAC: The Journal of Advanced Composition, PRE/TEXT, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Change, Present Tense, Critical Exchange, Writing Instructor. Statement A long-time member of the MLA, I’ve served in the Delegate Assembly, on the Program Committee, on two division executive committees, and on the PMLA Advisory Committee. These experiences have made me keenly aware that the MLA is a key advocate for the humanities. It’s a role that I’ll seek to maintain, even strengthen, if I’m elected to the Executive Council. Today’s storytellers include agenda-driven politicians, entrepreneurs, administrators, and pundits. They view studies of language and literature as incidental to history; for them, STEM and business curricula are its protagonists. Often these narrators ridicule tenure and faculty governance, dreaming of schools run by machines. Though not all public accounts of our work are so apocalyptic, many of them depict our concerns as trivial or extinct. The MLA resists such tales, striving to ensure that our profession not only endures but flourishes. I’d like to help. Having taught writing, literature, and film, I think fields benefit from cross-conversation. I’d like the council to offer us more chances to learn from one another. Let’s establish a vast archive of sample strategies and policies that could improve our working conditions and boost our public status. Let’s create more venues for trading ideas about teaching, including ways to incorporate global contexts and digital tools. Let’s share advice for building careers in the humanities, whether they’re academic posts or vocations elsewhere. Let’s make certain that the MLA’s governance is multivoiced, democratic, and collaborative. Together let’s rewrite stories that diminish what we are and can be. Candidate Information – 13

Evie Shockley. Assoc. prof. English, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. PhD, Duke Univ.; JD, Univ. of Michigan Law School. Codir., Rutgers English Diversity Inst., 2011– . Previous appointment: Wake Forest Univ., 2001–05. Thurgood Marshall Dissertation Fellowship, Dartmouth Coll., 2000–01; writer in residence, Hedgebrook, 2003; scholar in residence, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2007; ACLS fellowship, 2008; research associate, Africana Studies Program, Williams Coll., 2008–09; Leo Maitland Fellowship, Millay Colony for the Arts, 2011; faculty fellowship, Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers Univ., 2011–12; MacDowell Poetry Fellowship, MacDowell Colony, 2013; Heimark Artist in Residence, Center for the Study of Slavery and Social Justice, Brown Univ., 2016. Visiting appointment: Bread Loaf School of English, summer 2012. Honor Book for Poetry (for the new black), Black Caucus, Amer. Library Assn., 2012; Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry (for the new black), Hurston/Wright Foundation, 2012; Theodore H. Holmes and Bernice Holmes Natl. Poetry Prize, Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton Univ., 2012; Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award, Rutgers Univ., 2013–14; Stephen E. Henderson Award (for outstanding achievement in lit. and poetry), African Amer. Lit. and Culture Soc., 2015. Board of Trustees, Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County (NC), 2003–05 (sec., 2004–05); consultant, NEA, 2014. ASA, PEN America. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on 20th-Century Amer. Lit., 2008–Jan. 2013; Comm. on the Status of Women in the Profession, 2014–17. Coed., jubilat, 2007–11; creative writing ed., Feminist Studies, 2013– ; ed. comm. and press council, Rutgers Univ. Press, 2013– . Publications include a half-red sea (poems, 2006), the new black (poems, 2011), Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (2011); introd., M. NourbeSe Philip, She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (2nd ed., 2014); afterword, Amy Carroll, Secession (2012); contrib., Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry (2005), Jamaica Kincaid and Caribbean Double Crossings (2006), Katrina’s Imprint: Race and Vulnerability in America (2010), Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook (2010), Russell Atkins: On the Life and Work of an American Master (2013), Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon (2013), The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry (2015); articles in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, American Periodicals, Jacket2, Contemporary Literature, Callaloo, Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, African American Review. Statement Our professional organization should empower individual members by facilitating collective action that creates better employment conditions, furthers our work, and amplifies our voices in the public discourse. If elected, I will work toward seeing the MLA exercise its power to the benefit of all the various constituencies of our profession. I have been educated and have taught at private and public institutions, at large research-intensive universities and smaller ones that place greater emphasis on teaching. My fields of research, editorial work, and recent service to the MLA have contributed importantly to my analysis of race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, and religion—issues we confront with increasing visibility and frequency in our classrooms, the professoriat, and higher education generally. Publishing and teaching literary criticism and creative writing alongside a number of contingent faculty members, I am conscious of how the interests of contingent and permanent faculty members can (seem to) diverge and of our need to build on existing points of convergence. Relatedly, my work with graduate student placement has familiarized me with many issues confronting new PhDs as they seek employment. Operating in these different arenas, I often lament the compartmentalized nature of our conversations about the profession. As a member of the Executive Council, I would be positioned to think holistically, yet with specificity, about the challenges we face and to help the MLA promote the policies and positions that will support the full spectrum of our work as teachers, researchers, and writers in a heterogeneous world.

Dana A. Williams. Prof. English, Howard Univ. PhD, Howard Univ. Ch., Dept. of English, Howard Univ., 2009– . Previous appointment: Louisiana State Univ., 1999–2003. Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, Northwestern Univ., 1999–2000; fellow, John Hope Franklin Humanities Inst., Duke Univ., 2008–09. Advisory board, Hurst/Wright Foundation, 2014– . Exec. Comm., ADE, 2012–Jan. 2015; pres., ADE, 2014–Jan. 2015; program ch. (2012–14) and pres. 14 – Candidate Information

(2014–16), CLA. MLA activities: Comm. on the Lits. of People of Color in the United States and Canada, 2006–09; forum exec. comm., LLC African Amer., 2012–Jan. 2017. Publications include Contemporary African American Female Playwrights: An Annotated Bibliography (1998), “In the Light of Likeness—Transformed”: The Literary Art of Leon Forrest (2005); ed., African American Humor, Irony, and Satire: Ishmael Reed, Satirically Speaking (2007), Conversations with Leon Forrest (2007), Contemporary African American Fiction: New Critical Essays (2009); coed., August Wilson and Black Aesthetics (2004); guest ed., CLA Journal (June 2013, Sept. 2013); contrib., African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook (1999), Encyclopedia of African-American Literature (2007), From the Plantation to the Prison: African-American Confinement Literature (2008), New Essays on the African American Novel: From Hurston and Ellison to Morrison and Whitehead (2008), The Funk Era and Beyond: New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture (2008), The Cambridge Companion to African American Women’s Literature (2009), Approaches to Teaching Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works (2009), August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle (2010), Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon (2013), The Trouble with Post-Blackness (2015), Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson (2016); articles in CLA Journal, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Profession, PMLA, Langston Hughes Review, Zora Neale Hurston Forum, Studies in American Fiction, International Journal of the Humanities, African American Review, Bulletin of Bibliography. Statement As a member of the Executive Council, I would support the MLA’s ongoing commitment to promoting excellence in teaching and learning languages and literatures. One could argue convincingly that the academy exists in a perpetual state of crisis. This seems all the more true now, however, as funding challenges, ideological differences, and calls for more diversity in faculty and student populations and curricula provide an opportunity to reimagine the way the university functions and to what end. I would like to help the MLA highlight the ways fuller awareness of and engagement with humanities themes across time and cultures might help us solve problems of the human condition in the contemporary moment. The pressing issues related to faculty labor (from job security for contingent faculty members to workload for tenured faculty members), to the corporatization of the university, and to the challenge of increasing the number of faculty members of color in the professoriat remain. And we must take seriously the MLA’s role in generating a response to these issues and in advocating on behalf of those least empowered. All the while, we must imagine new models of intellectual pursuit that challenge the models that fail student and faculty populations and that injure the things we value most.

Part III: Voting for Special-Interest Delegates Sixteen persons will be elected to replace delegates whose terms expire on 8 January 2017. The term of office will be from 9 January 2017 through the close of the January 2020 convention. The numbers preceding the nominees’ names correspond to the numbers assigned to the nominees on the paper ballot sheet. The names of the special-interest delegates with continuing terms in 2017 appear at the MLA Web site (www.mla.org/del_assembly_members).

Vote for one nominee in any or all of the seventeen special-interest contests. Candidate Information – 15

I. Composition, Rhetoric, and Writing (1 contest)

10. Jennifer Buckley. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Iowa. PhD, Columbia Univ. James Davis Scholarship, Rare Book School, 2008; Whiting Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities, Columbia Univ., 2010–11; research fellow, Harry Ransom Center, Univ. of Texas, Austin, 2014–15. Publications include articles in Theatre Survey, Modernism/Modernity, SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies. Statement Having taught composition, writing, and rhetoric in classrooms and writing centers located in a variety of institutions—secondary schools, a community college, and private and public universities—I have seen how scholars and instructors at all levels and ranks have expanded their practice and the field to encompass multimodal composition, second-language writing, and writing across the curriculum, even as their resources have diminished. As large public universities like my own continue to be pressured by state governments to shift toward tuition-based budgetary models, a surge in student enrollments (including international students learning English) has resulted in the increased hiring of non-tenure-track faculty members to teach first-year writing and English-language courses. In my first years as an assistant professor, I worked to ensure that my non-tenure-track colleagues gained representation in faculty governing bodies as well as somewhat improved job security. While there is much work still to be done at my institution, as a special-interest delegate I would seek to contribute to the MLA’s ongoing efforts to secure fair labor practices and supportive working conditions for full- and part- time writing and language instructors, including graduate students and adjunct faculty members. Many of us incorporate digital and multimodal composition and rhetorics into our scholarship and our pedagogy; increasing numbers of us are also teaching online or hybrid writing, rhetoric, and literature courses. As a delegate I would urge the MLA to draft new, research-based recommendations or statements on teaching composition, writing, rhetoric, and literature courses online.

11. Beth Connors-Manke. Asst. prof. writing and rhetoric, Univ. of Kentucky. PhD, Univ. of Kentucky. Outstanding Instructor Award, Dept. of Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, Univ. of Kentucky, 2015; Teachers Who Made a Difference Award, Coll. of Educ., Univ. of Kentucky, 2016. Rhetoric Soc. of America, NCTE, CEA. Features and assoc. ed., North of Center (community newspaper), 2009–13; managing ed., Whole Horse Project, 2014– . Publications include articles in Whole Horse Project, North of Center; review in Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Statement My biggest concern at the moment is the way English, as a humanities discipline, conceptualizes itself as public-facing, so that we may best address the political attacks on higher education. As an academic whose training is literary and who now teaches composition and rhetoric, I have experience in the breadth of our field, which I believe is our strength in the current historical and political moment. We must further develop a robust, ethical understanding of academic labor in order to better argue for its value in our society.

II. Continuing and Distance Education (1 contest)

12. Elizabeth Johnston. Continuing educ. teacher, Kingsborough Community Coll., City Univ. of New York. PhD, Columbia Univ. FLAS fellowship, 2003–04 (Arabic), 2004–05 (Arabic), summer 2006 (Hebrew); DAAD grant, summer 2008; postdoctoral fellowship, Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin), 2012–13. 16 – Candidate Information

Publications include contrib., Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, vol. 5 (2014); article in Middle Eastern Literatures. Statement After completing my doctorate I began working in CUNY Start, a continuing education transition program that helps underprepared students develop the skills they need to successfully meet college-level expectations and coursework. I teach developmental reading and writing to students from predominantly low-income and disadvantaged backgrounds. Many are also from first- or second-generation immigrant families. Their ages range from seventeen to sixty. While a few enter with a deep love of learning, most are driven primarily by the practical needs of contributing to their households and improving their futures. Continuing and distance education programs are charged with the admirable task of providing a vast array of coursework and training to a widely disparate population in a way that is equitable, accessible, and affordable. One challenge facing these programs, which I deal with daily in my work, is the question of how best to serve and educate adults who may not be prepared for the demands of postsecondary education. We need curricula that are practical and engaging and that make the classroom (traditional and online) a more hospitable and relevant place for our diverse student body. A second challenge is financial. When states’ funding is inadequate—or worse, cut—the burden of cost falls increasingly on students, a situation that threatens to further exacerbate our society’s ever-widening economic gaps. We must work to ensure that public funding keeps tuition for continuing and distance education low, while simultaneously demanding that teachers in these programs can earn a living wage.

13. John A. Whatley. Academic program dir., Centre for Online and Distance Educ., Simon Fraser Univ. PhD, Simon Fraser Univ. (SFU). Assoc. member, Dept. of English and School of Criminology, SFU. Award of Excellence (for online MA program in applied legal studies), Canadian Assn. for Univ. Continuing Educ., 2011. Conference coordinator, Intl. Gothic Assn., 2014–15. Managing dir., SFU Publications, 2003– 16. Publications include Voicing the Essay: Reading and Writing for Depth (2015); contrib., The Encyclopedia of the Gothic (2013), A Companion to American Gothic (2013); articles in Gothic Studies, Journal of Distance Education, Canadian Literature. Statement Distance and online pedagogy: All aspects of distance and online postsecondary program development and design; comparative modes of course delivery, uses of online technologies in university education, as well as distributed learning models and their theory. Research interest in the media and pedagogy of computer-assisted online education. Specific interest in the synchronous online classroom and active teaching online. English literature: Crime and literature, the essay, Romantic and gothic literature, world literature. I am currently developing a strong research interest in the relation between crime and gothic literature. Crime and the gothic modes often overlap; many of my papers apply social science and literary theory to the contexts of the gothic novel. I am interested in the relations among fictional character, self and other fashioning, outcome, and fictional theories of criminality.

III. Creative Writing (1 contest)

14. Joseph Campana. Alan Dugald McKillop Ch. in English and assoc. prof. English, Rice Univ. PhD, Cornell Univ. NEA creative writing fellowship, 2007; individual artist’s grant, Houston Arts Alliance, 2009, 2014; Theodore Morrison Fellow in Poetry, Bread Load Writers’ Conference, 2014. Isabel MacCaffrey Award (for best essay in Spenser studies), Intl. Spenser Soc., 2006; Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award (for published poems), 2007; Crompton-Noll Award (for best essay in lesbian, gay, queer studies), GL/Q Caucus for the Modern Langs., 2009; Iowa Poetry Prize (for Natural Selections), Univ. of Iowa Press, 2011; SCMLA Book Award (for The Pain of Reformation), 2013; Elizabeth Matchett Stover Candidate Information – 17

Memorial Award (for best poem), Southwest Review, 2013. Inaugural selection comm., City of Houston Poet Laureate Program, 2012–13. Exec. comm., Intl. Spenser Soc., 2007–09. Ed. for 1500–1659, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 2011– . Publications include The Book of Faces (poems, 2005), Natural Selections (poems, 2012), The Pain of Reformation: Spenser, Vulnerability, and the Ethics of Masculinity (2012); coed., Renaissance Posthumanism (2016); guest ed., SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (2015); articles in PMLA, Modern Philology, ELH, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Studies, Spenser Studies, Shakespeare International Yearbook, Prose Studies, Literature Compass, and others; poems in Poetry, Slate, Conjunctions, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Field, Post Road, Plume, and others. Statement It’s hard to think of a time in my own professional life when it has seemed more the case that the passionate advocates for the singularity of the literary arts need allies, an ever greater sense of common ground, and an ever greater sense of shared urgencies. Those ideals can seem elusive in spite of many valiant efforts to bring closer the practitioners of literary studies and of creative writing. Even when they share homes, these practices are as often neighbors as they are strangers. I’ve lived through these tensions in my own writing life as a poet and a scholar. I have experienced the incredible synergy that arises when distinct communities of writers enrich one another in conversation. I have also experienced the disconnection and tension that come when a sense of commonality remains elusive. As universities struggle not only to defend the humanities and the arts but to present an ever more prominent public profile, the literary arts can be central to such efforts. It would be a pleasure to help continue the work others at the MLA have done to ensure synergy and a sense of shared pursuit among writers and scholars.

15. Kimberly Johnson. Prof. English, Brigham Young Univ., UT. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley; MFA, Univ. of Iowa. NEA fellowship, 2005; visiting scholar, Amer. Acad. in Rome, 2011; Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, 2011. P. A. Christensen Lectureship, Coll. of Humanities, Brigham Young Univ., 2013–14. Pres., Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Assn., 2009–11; Grants and Awards Comm., Renaissance Soc. of America, 2014–15. Publications include Leviathan with a Hook (poems, 2002), A Metaphorical God (poems, 2008), Made Flesh: Sacrament and Poetics in Post-Reformation England (2014), Uncommon Prayer (poems, 2014); ed., The Complete Sermons of John Donne (2005); ed. and trans., Virgil, The Georgics: A Poem of the Land (2009); coed., Divisions on a Ground: Essays on English Renaissance Literature in Honor of Donald M. Friedman (2009), Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry (2013); contrib., Shakespeare Up Close: Reading Early Modern Texts (2012); essays, poems, or translations in New Yorker, Slate, Yale Review, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Milton Quarterly, George Herbert Journal. Statement Some years ago, I attended a session at an MLA conference cosponsored by the MLA and the AWP. In his panel remarks, the AWP president lamented the divisions between the constituencies of our English departments, the perceived gulf that separates creative writers from literary scholars. As a professor whose appointment straddles literary and creative fields, I have a career-long investment in articulating commonalities between disciplines. An increasing number of institutions have in recent years developed graduate or undergraduate programs in creative writing. Particularly at this historical moment, the MLA can help shape the various conversations surrounding market pressures on both literature and creative writing graduate students, the urgent need for our institutions to encourage and support diverse voices of all kinds, issues of professionalization, and expectations for creative writing faculty members within literature departments. I would be honored to participate in this developing conversation by representing Creative Writing in the Delegate Assembly. 18 – Candidate Information

IV. Disability Issues (1 contest)

16. Colleen Glenney Boggs. Prof. English, Dartmouth Coll. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Codir., Futures of Amer. Studies (summer inst.), Dartmouth Coll., 2010– . Mellon Foundation dissertation fellowship, 1999–2000; Amer. Philosophical Soc. fellowship, 2009–10; Mellon Foundation grant (for medical humanities network), Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth Coll., 2014–15; NEH visiting research fellowship, Amer. Antiquarian Soc., 2015–16. Grant reviewer, Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2010; fellowship reviewer, AAUW, 2012; external reader, Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize, Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, Texas A&M Univ., 2014–15. Wise-Sussman Prize Comm., ASA, 2004; ch., Yasuo Sakakibara Prize Comm., ASA, 2006–08; Norman Foerster Prize Comm., Amer. Lit. Section, 2010. MLA activities: PMLA Ed. Board, 2016–18. Series coed., Edinburgh Studies in Transatlantic Literatures, Edinburgh Univ. Press, 2013– . Publications include Transnationalism and American Literature: Literary Translation 1773–1892 (2007), Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity (2013); ed., Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War (2016); contrib., The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol 4 (2006), Transatlantic Literary Studies, 1680–1830 (2012), The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2012); articles in American Literature, PMLA, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Cultural Critique, Arizona Quarterly, Symbiosis. Statement My recent scholarly interests lie at the intersection of disability studies with warfare and with animal studies. In my current work on the American Civil War, I examine how the military draft made disability normative for civilian life. Growing out of this historical research, I have become interested in addressing how our academic profession does or does not engage with the current wars, the physical and psychological injuries of service(wo)men, and the often hidden role of disability in the life of a nation engaged in the “war on terror.” As a professional organization, the MLA is uniquely positioned to examine how we address wartime disability as an area of scholarly interest, pedagogical challenge, and community engagement. I am interested in thinking about military disability in relation to the scholarship, pedagogy, and professionalism that lie at the core of the MLA’s mission. Second, disability has been important to my work in animal studies. In my class on women and animals, students examine Temple Grandin’s work on disability in relation to gender and species. From a pedagogical perspective, I aim to implement the ways in which disability studies ties in with best practices of universal access course design. I am interested in transferring a best-practices approach to the MLA convention itself, providing better access to peripheral events such as receptions, improving the navigation of spatial distances between and within conference hotels, broadening the use of technology to facilitate different kinds of access, and accommodating therapy animals in conference spaces.

17. Julie Passanante Elman. Asst. prof. women’s and gender studies, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia. PhD, George Washington Univ. Provost’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award, Univ. of Missouri, 2016. Board of directors, Center for LGBTQ Studies, 2011–12. Conference proposal reviewer, NWSA, 2015; coch., paper prize selection comm., Caucus on Critical Disability Studies, ASA, 2016. Ed. board, Disability Studies Quarterly, 2015– . Publications include Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation (2014); articles in Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Television and New Media, Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology. Statement My interdisciplinary scholarship, teaching, and service combine disability, queer, feminist, literary, and media studies. As a delegate representing Disability Issues, I would bring my experience serving on the editorial board of Disability Studies Quarterly and in disability studies caucuses within the ASA and the NWSA. I would be dedicated to improving disabled people’s work conditions in the academy as well as Candidate Information – 19 supporting the ongoing development of accessible pedagogy, mentorship, and transdisciplinary research in critical disability studies. Disabled people face ongoing discrimination in hiring and retention, whether or not their disabilities are visible, and of course ableism intersects with and intensifies race-, class-, gender-, and sexuality-based discrimination. To support a new call for slow scholarship to collectively resist the corporate university’s inexhaustible demand for productivity and efficiency, we need to draw from disability critiques of productivity to consider the many ways in which disabled scholars remain alienated from full access to all forms of academic labor. As disability studies expands, we must critique the uncompensated emotional and physical labor of university “diversity service” that disproportionately affects people of color and disabled, female, or LGBTQ people, and we must work toward ameliorating inaccessibility at all levels of the profession as we critique academia’s oppressive pace. I would work alongside the Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession and the Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession to provide mentoring opportunities for grad students and junior scholars and expand discussions and resources for creating truly accessible pedagogy and scholarship.

V. Ethnic Studies (2 contests)

18. Susan Z. Andrade. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Pittsburgh. PhD, Univ. of Michigan. Rockefeller fellowship, Howard Univ., 1994–95; Fulbright-Nehru senior scholar, United States–India Educational Foundation, Jan.–May 2014. Panelist, SSRC/ACLS fellowships, 1997, 1998; panelist, NEH, 2004. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Postcolonial Studies in Lit. and Culture, 2007–Jan. 2012; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2011–14; forum exec. comm., LLC African to 1990, 2015–Jan. 2019. Ed. or advisory boards: Safundi, 2000–05; Ariel: A Review of International English Literature; advisory board, Research in African Literatures. Publications include The Nation Writ Small: African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958–1988 (2011); coed., Atlantic Cross-Currents: Transatlantiques (2001); guest ed., Novel: A Forum on Fiction (2008); contrib., Crisscrossing Boundaries in African Literature, 1986 (1991), Cultural Institutions of the Novel (1996), Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 157 (1996), Negotiating the Postcolonial: Emerging Perspectives on Tsitsi Dangarembga (2002), Africa after Gender? (2007), The Legacies of Modernism: Historicising Postwar and Contemporary Fiction (2012); articles in Modern Language Quarterly, Research in African Literatures, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, PMLA, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, Cultural Critique, Callaloo. Statement I am deeply honored to be nominated for the Delegate Assembly. My MLA responsibilities include current membership on the executive committee of the forum LLC African to 1990 and previous membership on the executive committee of the Division on Postcolonial Literature and Culture. I am a comparatist, and I teach African, South Asian, Caribbean, and United States literature. I have long had a commitment to feminist scholarship and pedagogy. An immigrant, I came to the United States from Tanzania in 1969 under the then recently enacted Hart-Celler bill, which removed national origin as a factor in determining who was allowed to enter. It forever changed the complexion of the United States. As an assistant professor decades later, I found the MLA intimidating, but I have come to realize that it consciously makes space for the voices of junior faculty members, adjuncts, lecturers, and grad students. If elected I would work to make these democratic structures more visible to permit greater intellectual self-expression within. I also admire that the Delegate Assembly takes political positions on important current events, including the mistreatment of major authors, and I hope to help make the organization’s voice heard in the world. Increasing involvement goes hand in glove for me with making sure that we as an organization continue our efforts to illustrate the intercultural complexity of many canonical and peripheral literary texts.

19. Tamara Chin. Assoc. prof. comparative lit., Brown Univ. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Mellon fellowship, 1998–99; visiting scholar, Inst. for the Study of the Ancient World, New York Univ., 2009; ACLS fellowship, 2011–12. Cowinner, Harry Levin Prize (for 20 – Candidate Information

Savage Exchange), ACLA, 2016; honorable mention, Joseph Levenson Pre-1900 Book Prize (for Savage Exchange), Assn. for Asian Studies, 2016. Juror, John J. Winkler Memorial Prize (for essay by undergrad. or grad. student in classics), John J. Winkler Memorial Trust, 2007–08. Publications include Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (2014); contrib., Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority (2012); articles in Representations, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, ELH, Critical Inquiry. Statement My research and teaching have explored comparative approaches to ethnic studies. This includes bringing the insights of United States–based ethnic studies into dialogue with interethnic and transregional histories in non-Western, East-West, colonial, and premodern contexts. Detractors of ethnic studies pay insufficient attention to the debt of scholars across area studies to United States–based work on modern race and ethnicity. My interest is to help promote greater recognition of—and institutional support for—the interdisciplinary reach and future flourishing of the field. ☼ 20. Scott L. Baugh. Assoc. prof. English, Texas Tech Univ. PhD, Oklahoma State Univ. McAlester Foundation research fellowship, 1999; Lawrence Schovanec Teaching Development Scholarship, Teaching Acad., Texas Tech Univ., 2016. Outstanding Scholarship Award, Film and History League, 2004. Governing board, Popular Culture Assn., 2004–07; bylaws exec. comm. (2005) and governing board (2005–07), Amer. Culture Assn.; joint governing board, Popular Culture Assn. / Amer. Culture Assn., 2007–10; SCMLA; Southwest Popular/Amer. Culture Assn. Publications include Latino American Cinema: An Encyclopedia of Movies, Stars, Concepts, and Trends (2012); ed., Mediating Chicana/o Culture: Multicultural American Vernacular (2006; 2nd ed., 2008); coed., Born of Resistance: Cara a Cara Encounters with Chicana/o Visual Culture (2015); contrib., The Columbia Companion to American History on Film (2003), The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture (2007), The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics (2016); articles in Journal of Film and Video, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Intertexts. Statement I am honored to be nominated as an ethnic studies representative: I welcome the opportunities and responsibilities that Delegate Assembly membership would entail. Over my sixteen-year academic career, my scholarship and teaching have revolved around multiculturalism and social justice issues with special attention to Latina/o political art; Chicana/o cultural expression; and intersections of gender, sexual, and racial/ethnic identity. As a cinema and media studies specialist, I not only focus on multimedia primary texts and the multiple literacies engaging them but also extend these ideas to interrogate the discursive roles interdisciplinarity and emerging technologies currently play throughout our profession. My recent grassroots service record includes four years as graduate director of professional development in my department, volunteer work as a career counselor at last year’s MLA convention, and fellowship-supported participation this summer in Graduate Career Consortium activities. Over the last twelve years, I have been elected to leadership positions on executive committees in professional organizations, negotiating area-specific issues (especially for Latina/o studies) as well as larger professional debates. The issues I would address in the assembly include professional development and standards of career advancement; alt-academics, especially the MLA’s Connected Academics initiative and advocacy programs; academic job markets, especially for non-tenure-track positions; hiring practices, especially equitable application processes and interview modes; support for progressive digital humanities; trends in online publishing; and shifts toward multimodal/distance education and commensurate instructional support, especially given current accessibility mechanisms. These issues certainly have future bearing on ethnicity studies and the MLA’s larger charge over our profession. Candidate Information – 21

21. Chandrima Chakraborty. Assoc. prof. English and cultural studies, McMaster Univ. PhD, York Univ. SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, 2005–06; SSHRC research grant, 2011–14; SSHRC Insight Program grant, 2012–17; SSHRC Connection Program grant, 2016–17. Honorable mention, Best Canadian PhD Dissertation on South Asia, Canadian Asian Studies Assn., 2005; Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman Award, NRI Welfare Soc. of India, 2014. Adjudication comms.: Ontario Grad. Scholarships (humanities), 2010–11; SSHRC Insight Program, 2014. Consultant, Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime, 2016–17. Exec. comm., Canadian Assn. for Commonwealth Lit. and Lang. Studies, 2003–05; triennial conference comm., Assn. for Commonwealth Lit. and Lang. Studies, 2006–07. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC South Asian and South Asian Diasporic, 2012–Jan. 2017. Ed. board, South Asian History and Culture, 2009– . Publications include Masculinity, Asceticism, Hinduism: Past and Present Imaginings of India (2011); ed., Mapping South Asian Masculinities: Men and Political Crises (2015); contrib., Sport in South Asian Society: Past and Present (2005), Representing the Rural: Space, Place, and Identity in Films about the Land (2006), Rabindranath Tagore: Reclaiming a Cultural Icon (2009), The Politics of Sport in South Asia (2009), South Asian Racialization and Belonging after 9/11: Masks of Threat (2016); articles in TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Postcolonial Text, Studies in Canadian Literature, Economic and Political Weekly, South Asian History and Culture, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, International Journal of the History of Sport. Statement I teach undergraduate and graduate courses on ethnic literatures and cultures with the intent of bringing to the fore understudied authors, artistic productions, and marginalized/minoritized histories. Through my research and teaching, I hope to foster critical conversations on difficult pasts or difficult inheritances to shape an engaged public that can strive not just for redress but also for justice and accountability for past injustices. As evident from the recent free, public conference (May 2016) on the Air India tragedy that I organized at McMaster University, which brought together for the first time creative artists, family members of those who died in the bombing of Air India flight 182, scholars, students, and the wider public to engage in a dialogue about the Air India tragedy and its aftermath, I continually strive through my research, public talks, and teaching to engage both students and the community at large in conversations about national history and public memory to encourage responsibility for our shared present and future. I am excited by the prospect of serving as a member of the Delegate Assembly. I hope to solicit feedback from, and represent, members working in the field of ethnic studies and contribute to the MLA’s ongoing efforts to highlight the importance of the humanities in cultivating politically informed citizens.

VI. Foreign Language Teaching (1 contest)

22. Clarissa Clo. Assoc. prof. Italian and European studies, San Diego State Univ. PhD, Univ. of California, San Diego. Dir., Italian Studies Program, San Diego State Univ., 2005– . Visiting research fellow, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, Univ. of California, San Diego, 2010. Board of directors, San Diego Italian Film Festival, 2007– ; board of directors, Italian Amer. Acad. of San Diego, 2011– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Italian Amer., 2015–Jan. 2020. Assoc. ed. and reviews ed., g/s/i: gender/sexuality/italy, 2014– ; ed. board, Italica: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of Italian, 2014–19. Publications include guest ed., Lettore di provinicia (2005); guest coed., Studies in Documentary Film (2011); contrib., Ruts: Gender Roles and Realities (1996), African Diasporas: Ancestors, Migrations, and Boundaries (2008), Generazione in movimento: Viaggio nella scrittura di Enrico Palandri (2010), Teaching Italian American Literature, Film, and Popular Culture (2010), The Cultures of Italian Migration: Diverse Trajectories and Discrete Perspectives (2011), Postcolonial Italy: Challenging National Homogeneity (2012; Italian ed., 2014), Italian Political Cinema: Public Life, Imaginary, and Identity in 22 – Candidate Information

Contemporary Italian Film (2016); articles in Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies, Studies in Documentary Film, Research in African Literatures, Italian Culture, Annali d’italianistica, Forum Italicum. Statement As associate professor and director of a language program, I am familiar with the professional challenges that foreign language teachers face as scholars and researchers and with the challenges we face as academic administrators. While teaching is the most rewarding aspect of our profession and is considered in our reviews, our academic publications in areas preferably not related to pedagogy are what really count for our promotion and professional clout. Meanwhile, service, especially in small language programs and departments, is extremely demanding but not highly esteemed. In short, foreign language teaching as a whole is often considered service for other units and departments and not as a vital component of our students’ education and an indispensable aspect of global citizenship. There can be no internationalization without learning at least one other language and culture, preferably more, yet foreign languages are often disposable on our campuses and waived in study-abroad programs, which have now become a global English affair no matter the country visited. To counter these trends, which privilege quantity over quality and homogenization and standardization over individualized educational interests, we must pursue a politics and strategy that reclaim the value of any and all foreign languages and cultures studied—and studied not in isolation but in conjunction with other disciplines in the humanities and the sciences, making use of all available tools, from more traditional but still valid approaches to the newest digital technologies.

23. Hua Li. Assoc. prof. Chinese, Montana State Univ., Bozeman. PhD, Univ. of British Columbia. Title VI course development grant, Montana State Univ., 2011. Publications include Contemporary Chinese Fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua: Coming of Age in Troubled Times (2011); articles in Science Fiction Studies, Forum for World Literature Studies, Rocky Mountain Review, Chinese Literature Today, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, China Information: A Journal on Contemporary China Studies, 文化研究 [Culture Research], Illumine: Journal of the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society Graduate Students Association (Univ. of Victoria), B.C. Asian Review (Univ. of British Columbia). Statement As a scholar of Chinese literature and a teacher of Mandarin Chinese, I am particularly interested in crossing the boundaries between teachers of language and teachers of literature and culture as well as blurring the line between foreign literature and foreign language teaching. If I am elected to the MLA Delegate Assembly to represent Foreign Language Teaching, I would advocate and engage in discussion of pedagogical methods of embedding literary studies in language learning and vice versa. Foreign literature classes should not be taught solely as upper-division content courses or translation courses. It would be beneficial for language students to learn a foreign language within a genuine literary and cultural context. Many literature and language professors and instructors on United States campuses have explored various approaches to achieving this goal. One is the bilingual model, which involves reading, class discussion, and expository writing in both English and a second language such as Chinese. Another is the model of including class discussion in a second language within a content course taught mostly in English. A third approach is the model of combining translation with the study of advanced grammar. A fourth is the model of combining an advanced conversation course in a second language with literary studies. I believe these sorts of efforts will also tend to increase enrollments in language classes.

VII. Gays and Lesbians in the Profession (1 contest)

24. Lawrence M. La Fountain-Stokes. Assoc. prof. Amer. culture, Romance langs., and women’s studies, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. PhD, Columbia Univ. Dissertation workshop fellowship, Intl. Migration Program, SSRC, summer 1997; junior faculty fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Natl. Fellowship Foundation, 2006. Board of directors, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City Univ. of New York, 1999–2002. Officer, GL/Q Caucus for the Candidate Information – 23

Modern Langs., 2011–14; LASA. MLA activities: Comm. on the Lits. of People of Color in the United States and Canada, 1999–2002; exec. comm., Discussion Group on Puerto Rican Lit. and Culture, 2001–05. Ed. board, Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 2006–08. Publications include Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (2009), Uñas pintadas de azul / Blue Fingernails (short stories, 2009), Abolición del pato (short stories, 2013); contrib., Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Identities (1999), Queer Globalizations: Citizenship and the Afterlife of Colonialism (2002), Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression (2003), Passing Lines: Sexuality and Immigration (2005), Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles (2008), Miradas al margen: Cine y subalternidad en América Latina y el Caribe (2008), Representación y fronteras: El performance en los límites del género (2009), Out in Chicago: LGBT History at the Crossroads (2011), Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader (2011), Resentir lo queer en América Latina: Diálogos desde/con el Sur (2014), Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (2014), The AmeRícan Poet: Essays on the Work of Tato Laviera (2014), Heridas abiertas: Biopolítica y representación en América Latina (2014), Queering Paradigms V: Queering Narratives of Modernity (2016), Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories (2016), The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature (2016), Blacktino Queer Performance (2016), Nuestro Caribe: Poder, raza y postnacionalismos desde los límites del mapa LGBTQ (2016); articles in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter Coll., City Univ. of New York), Debate feminista, E-misférica, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Habana elegante, Letras femeninas, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Revista iberoamericana, Revista Re-d: Arte, cultura visual y género, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly. Statement While great strides have been made, academia can still be an inhospitable work environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals. Requests for the disclosure of personal information, prejudice, health coverage, and challenges for partner hiring are some of the issues faced by persons who are or are perceived to be LGBT. These can be compounded by other factors such as racism, misogyny, and ableism. At the same time, great opportunities and particular challenges arise, such as the possibilities for student and fellow faculty member mentorship and campus and workplace activism. I am committed to representing the needs of LGBT faculty members, staff members, students, and nontraditional or independent scholars and to advocating for broader awareness in the MLA both of our professional challenges and of the centrality of LGBT and queer studies.

25. Ben Sifuentes-Jauregui. Prof. Amer. studies and comparative lit., Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. PhD, Yale Univ. Vice chancellor, Undergrad. Academic Affairs, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. Warren I. Sussman Award for Excellence in Teaching, Rutgers Univ., 2013. Board of directors, Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies, City Univ. of New York, 2002–08; member (2008– ) and codir. (2012–14), Collective of the Tepoztlán Inst. for the Transnational History of the Americas. MLA activities: Comm. on the Lits. of People of Color in the United States and Canada, 2008–11 (coch., 2009–11); forum exec. comm., TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Lit., 2012–Jan. 2017. Assoc. ed., Signs, 2005–14; ed. board, Journal of American Studies: Eurasian Perspectives, 2014– . Publications include Transvestism, Masculinity, and Latin American Literature: Genders Share Flesh (2002), The Avowal of Difference: Queer Latino American Narratives (2014); coed., Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories (2016); articles in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Dispositio/n, Journal of Gender Studies, Latin American Literary Review, Letras hispanas: Revista de literatura y cultura, Nueva sociedad, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, Revista de literatura hispánica, Revista iberoamericana. Statement LGBTQ issues are at the center of my scholarly endeavors, particularly as these relate to questions of Latino American cultural difference, Latino studies, and race and ethnicity. My contribution and participation within the MLA will bring these perspectives to a series of professional and disciplinary 24 – Candidate Information discussions. It is important to continue bringing LGBTQ and race matters into our intellectual conversation and to consider how these matters shape literature, theory, and cultures. Also, it is necessary to advocate for an LGBTQ presence in our profession that can define new methodologies for our teaching and offer our students new contexts to reimagine their work and selves.

VIII. Independent Scholars and Alternative Careers (2 contests)

26. Anna Beskin. Intl. fellowships coordinator, Fordham Univ. PhD, Fordham Univ. Institutional service (Fordham Univ.): coch., Early Modern Reading Group, spring 2009–fall 2010; grad. conference moderator, fall 2010, spring 2013; mentor to incoming grad. students, fall 2011, fall, 2013, fall 2015; mentor to students in Pedagogical Practicum, spring 2013, spring 2014; organizer, Early Modern Dissertation Writing Group, spring 2013–fall 2015. Travel grant, Shakespeare Assn. of America, spring 2015; Folger Shakespeare Library grant, spring 2015. Provost’s Certificate of Recognition for Outstanding Teaching by a Grad. Teaching Asst., Univ. of South Florida, 2006–07. Certificate, Teaching Effectively Online Seminar, Pace Univ., 2010. Ed. board, Rhetorikos (Fordham Univ.), spring and fall 2013. Conference presentations: Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, 2006; NEMLA, 2011; SAMLA, 2011; Sixteenth Century Soc. and Conference, 2013; Shakespeare Assn. of America, 2014, 2015; Renaissance Soc. of America, 2016. Publications include contrib., The Literary Encyclopedia (online, 2013); article in Explicator. Statement As a recent PhD in English in a nonacademic career, I am personally and professionally invested in ensuring that graduate students, individuals working in nonacademic careers, and independent scholars have a greater presence and deeper sense of community within the MLA as well as the humanities in general. The MLA recognizes the need for greater support and has designed valuable undertakings with its Connected Academics initiative. Furthermore, many PhD-granting departments have initiated programs to better prepare their graduate students for alternative careers outside academia, but more remains to be done. In my current role as international fellowships adviser at Fordham University, I meet with humanities graduate students who want to make themselves more competitive for both the academic and nonacademic career tracks by applying for highly prestigious international fellowships such as the Fulbright, Rhodes, or Marshall. While they are familiar with these large awards, they are not sure of how to navigate the unfamiliar landscape of careers outside the traditional academy. This unfamiliarity is not unique to my institution, as many students only begin to consider these career tracks late in their academic studies. Should I be elected, I will advocate for partnering with humanities graduate directors and graduate student organizations to establish networks that help graduate students and PhDs benefit from learning about nonacademic careers earlier in their studies as well as how best to translate their teaching and research experience into skills attractive to nonacademic employers.

27. Celestine Woo. Lead faculty member and prof. English, Bard Early Coll., Harlem Children’s Zone Promise Acad. PhD, New York Univ. Scholars for the Dream Award, CCCC, 1998; Outstanding Faculty Adviser Award, Fort Lewis Coll., 2002, 2006. Middle States Accreditation Steering Comm., Middle States Commission on Higher Educ., 2007–09. Mentor, Apex for Youth (New York, NY), 2010– . Reader, Advanced Placement intl. English lang. exam, Educational Testing Service, 1997–2002; reader, Advanced Placement English lang. exam, 2005–06. Publications include Romantic Actors and Bardolatry: Performing Shakespeare from Garrick to Kean (2008), Burnished Sol (poetry chapbook, 2009); contrib., The Personal Narrative: Writing Ourselves as Teachers and Scholars (1999), In Our Own Voice: Graduate Students Teach Writing (2000), Literary Gestures: The Aesthetic in Asian American Writing (2005), The Encyclopedia of British Literature 1660– 1789 (2015), Shaping Shakespeare for Performance: The Bear Stage (2016); articles in European Romantic Candidate Information – 25

Review, American Notes and Queries, Lion and the Unicorn, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, Profession, Midwest Quarterly, Explicator. Statement I am currently a full-time faculty member in an early-college program, a partnership between Bard College and a pair of charter high schools run by the Harlem Children’s Zone. Early-college programs, in which high school students enroll in college credit–bearing courses, are growing in popularity and, perhaps concomitantly, in mixed assessment. They constitute one of the multiplying nontraditional career paths for academics in our increasingly technologized, corporatized, overadministered, and underfunded academy. I am very interested in working to disseminate information about and respect for such hybrid, unusual job options as well as in analyzing their benefits and drawbacks for both individual academics and academia as a whole. I am honored to be nominated for the Delegate Assembly. As a midcareer academic, who has adjuncted and has held tenure-track positions at a community college, a small public liberal arts college, and a larger college (Empire State College, SUNY, where I received tenure and promotion), I bring a depth and breadth of experience and understanding to my perception of contemporary challenges within academe. The creation of myriad hybrid academic/administrative positions holds promise vis-à-vis the growing dearth of tenure-track jobs but poses questions and problems in turn about academic freedom and much else. My hope is that my perspective and experiences will enrich MLA discussions along these lines. ☼ 28. Jerome Singerman. Senior humanities ed., Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. PhD, Harvard Univ. Robert L. Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies, Medieval Acad. of America, 2014. Councillor (2016–19) and Centennial Planning Comm. (2016–19), Medieval Acad. of America. Publications include Under Clouds of Poesy: Poetry and Truth in French and English Reworkings of the Aeneid, 1160–1513 (1986); coauthor, Mythen der Liebe (2010), Myths of Love: Echoes of Ancient Mythology in the Modern Romantic Imagination (2014); article in Magazine Antiques. Statement I completed my PhD in comparative literature in 1981 and, after several years of teaching in temporary positions, made the move into scholarly publishing, first at Johns Hopkins and then, since 1989, at the University of Pennsylvania Press, where I oversee the lists in a broad range of humanities fields. If elected, I would come to the Delegate Assembly not just as someone who has explored and thrived in an alternative career—if by alternative we mean to designate a nonfaculty position—but also as someone with the strong conviction that we lessen the perceived value of advanced degrees in the humanities both within our own universities and in society at large when we use language that implicitly privileges the one path over the other. I would come, too, as someone who has devoted the greater part of his working life to a publishing culture undergoing historic changes and who is strongly committed to a balanced discussion of the issues we face. The scholarly monograph and the academic journal are evolving rapidly rather than face imminent extinction, and authors no less than publishers inhabit an increasingly complex ecosystem. There are hugely important decisions to be made about the structure and financing of scholarly publishing. What we put in place will determine for years to come not only how published materials are accessed but also who is afforded access to the publication process and who, if we are not sufficiently mindful, is at risk of being shut out of the system.

29. David Weimer. Librarian for Cartographic Collections and Learning, Harvard Univ. PhD, Harvard Univ. Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard Univ., spring 2015. ACLA, C19: The Soc. of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Soc., Soc. of Early Americanists. Publications include article in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. 26 – Candidate Information

Statement I have been lucky enough to find a job that combines the aspects of research and teaching I learned and loved in getting my PhD in English. Many university libraries are increasingly emphasizing teaching among their librarians as they continue to adapt to the needs of changing student populations and growing universities. These adaptations mean that librarian positions will be more and more desirable for literature and language scholars, not as alternative careers but as professions that undertake the work they sought in entering PhD programs. As a delegate, I would offer guidance to jobseekers interested in librarianship and also, as scholars find careers outside of the professoriat, advocate for ways that the MLA can facilitate scholarship coming from a diverse set of professional positions. Even as I hope that I could bring these positions in libraries and special collections to the attention of jobseekers, I would hope more broadly to facilitate within the MLA ways that junior and senior scholars alike can integrate their work into the institutions that surround them, including but not limited to libraries and special collections.

IX. Less-Taught Languages (1 contest)

30. Rebecca Johnson. Crown Junior Ch. in Middle East Studies and asst. prof. English, Northwestern Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. Mellon dissertation fellowship, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2007–08; SSRC intl. dissertation research fellowship, 2007–08; ACLS dissertation completion fellowship, 2009–10; faculty fellow, Kaplan Inst. for the Humanities, Northwestern Univ., 2014–15. Weinberg Coll. Distinguished Teaching Award, Northwestern Univ., 2015. Publications include contrib. (of essay), Recognition: The Poetics of Narrative: Interdisciplinary Studies on Anagnorisis (2009); contrib. (of trans.), Fifteen Iraqi Poets (2013); articles in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly; review in Eighteenth-Century Studies; translation in Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature. Statement It is a well-known irony that some less-taught languages are among the most commonly spoken. This irony shows how academic organizations have retained Eurocentric intellectual structures that reflect the political capital associated with a language rather than its relevance to literary studies. My scholarly agenda aims at recovering the ways that European and non-European literatures have been historically interdependent and how Middle Eastern literatures have played central roles in the formation of what we think of as European forms and tendencies. To fully understand these issues, more professional resources need to be devoted to creating cooperation between scholars and teachers of less-taught languages and those of major European ones. We must rethink the position of foreign languages within the MLA and engage in a large-scale conversation about institutional structures—including geographic and period designations—that reinforce the marginalization of less-taught languages. I am also interested in creating avenues for increased cooperation between foreign language teachers and literature scholars. Because of the two-tier hiring system and the extensive time commitment necessary to attain competency in a less-taught language, students often encounter literary texts in these languages only as linguistic exercises or as literary objects in translation. Distributing language learning across the curriculum and promoting collaborative teaching are ways to address this issue, as is creating more tenure- line positions that integrate language teaching and literary scholarship. We can no longer tolerate a system where scholarship in less-taught languages moves to the center while the teachers of those languages continue to be marginalized.

31. Anna M. Klobucka. Prof. Portuguese and women’s and gender studies, Univ. of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. PhD, Harvard Univ. Research fellowship, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1989–90; research fellowship, Luso-Amer. Foundation and Natl. Library (Portugal), 2000, 2007; visiting intl. fellowship (Cardiff Univ.), Assn. of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland, 2015. Intl. steering comm., Concordia Candidate Information – 27

Portuguese Lang. Village, 2006–10; natl. screening comm. (for Spain and Portugal), Fulbright U.S. Student Program, 2009, 2011–12. Sec. (1999–2002), vice pres. (2003–04), and pres. (2005–06), Amer. Portuguese Studies Assn. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 1999–2001; exec. comm., Div. on Luso-Brazilian Lang. and Lit., 2003–07; exec. comm., Discussion Group on Romance Literary Relations, 2007–Jan. 2012. Coed., Journal of Feminist Scholarship, 2011– . Ed. boards: Journal of Lusophone Scholarship, 2004– ; Modern Languages Open, 2013– . Publications include The Portuguese Nun: Formation of a National Myth (2000; Portuguese ed., 2006), O formato mulher: A emergência da autoria feminina na poesia portuguesa (2009); coauthor, Ponto de Encontro: Portuguese as a World Language (2007; 2nd ed., 2012); coed., After the Revolution: Twenty Years of Portuguese Literature, 1974–1994 (1997), Embodying Pessoa: Corporeality, Gender, Sexuality (2007; Portuguese ed., 2010), Gender, Empire, and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections (2014); contrib., Closer to the Wild Heart: Essays on Clarice Lispector (2002), A arca de Pessoa: Novos ensaios (2007), A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires (2008), Portuguese Modernisms: Multiple Perspectives on Literature and the Visual Arts (2011), Europe in Black and White: Immigration, Race, and Identity in the “Old Continent” (2011), Fernando Pessoa’s Modernity without Frontiers: Influences, Dialogues, and Responses (2013), New Portuguese Letters to the World: International Reception (2015); articles in Colóquio/Letras, Luso-Brazilian Review, Cadernos de literatura comparada, Portuguese Studies, Symplokē, SubStance, Slavic and East European Journal, Veredas, Estudos portugueses e africanos, Discursos, Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, Forma breve: Revista de literatura, Travessia. Statement At a time of declining foreign language enrollments in United States colleges and universities, the standing of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) has been fraught with both peril and promise (some LCTLs are, after all, the world’s most commonly spoken languages). In a political and cultural context of globalization coexisting with the rise of xenophobic and nativist perspectives, and in the working environment of the managerial university, we need to be more attentive than ever to opportunities for strategic invention and realignment in shaping our curricula and institutional structures. Such opportunities will always be situationally specific—affected not only by the college setting one works in (public or private, small or large, urban, regional, etc.) but also, and especially, by the language(s) in question: about the only characteristic Mandarin Chinese and, say, Catalan have in common as academic subjects is their shared status as LCTLs. As a literary scholar whose experience includes teaching language in diverse institutional contexts and authoring a Portuguese language textbook, I am keenly aware of damaging divisions and hierarchies between language and content courses and between faculty members in many departmental and university settings. I believe the LCTL community needs to work to bridge such gaps. As a native speaker of Polish whose academic career has been primarily in Portuguese, I understand the variety of empirical conditions and political concerns affecting LCTLs. It would be an honor and a responsibility I would take very seriously to represent our interests in the Delegate Assembly.

X. Politics and the Profession (1 contest)

32. Bishnupriya Ghosh. Prof. English, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. PhD, Northwestern Univ. Ch., Dept. of English, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), 2013– 16. Previous appointments: Univ. of California, Davis, 2001–05; Utah State Univ., 1994–2000. NEH summer scholarship, 1996; Rockefeller fellowship, Inst. for Research on Women, Rutgers Univ., 1999–2000; resident fellowship, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB, 2000–01; resident fellowship, Univ. of California Humanities Center, spring 2009; fellow, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., 2012–13. Emerging Scholar Award, AAUW, 1999; Outstanding Grad. Faculty Mentor, Dept. of English, UCSB, 2008. Panelist, NEH, 2009–10; panelist, ACLS, 2010–11. Board of directors, AAUW, 1996–98. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2011–Jan. 2014; forum exec. comm., TC Postcolonial Studies, 2012–Jan. 2017. Ed. or 28 – Candidate Information advisory boards: Camera Obscura, 2008– ; Journal of Transnational American Studies, 2010– ; Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2013– . Publications include When Borne Across: Literary Cosmopolitics in the Contemporary Indian Novel (2004), Global Icons: Apertures to the Popular (2011); coed., Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women’s Literature and Film (1997); contrib., “And the Birds Began to Sing”: Religion and Literature in Post-colonial Cultures (1996), Critical Essays on Salman Rushdie (1999), The Enemy Within: The Films of Mrinal Sen (1999), Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (2000), Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2001), Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists around the World (2002), Amitav Ghosh: Critical Perspectives (2003), Postcolonialism and Education: Challenging Traditions and Disrupting Boundaries (2003), Arundhati Roy, Critical Perspectives (2006), States of Trauma: Gender and Violence in South Asia (2008), Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering (2009), Figurations in Indian Film (2013), Animating Film Theory (2014), A Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film (2015); articles in Representations, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, O-Zone: A Journal of Object-Oriented Studies, Jump Cut, Art India, Bioscope, World Picture, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Public Culture, Journal of Literature and Culture, Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Boundary 2, Postmodern Culture, Communicare (South Africa), Film Appreciation (Taiwan), Film Criticism, Screen. Statement As a faculty member and former department chair, I have been concerned with the general upper administrative reach into faculty governance in the areas of job security (including tenure and promotion), academic freedom, and resource allocation. I would like to see the MLA continue to develop best practices in these areas. A second, and related, issue concerns changing evaluative criteria for emerging modes of scholarship. Of these, I am especially interested in the nature and scope of humanistic collaborative enterprises. When considering raises or matters of tenure, collaborations are often quantified using models based in the sciences; but such quantification misses the mark on the very different kinds of humanistic collaborative work under way at our universities. MLA guidelines in this area would protect practitioners (especially untenured faculty members) and thereby enhance such work. Last, collaborations point us to research foci that transversally articulate across literary-historical periods—for example, environmental or cognitive humanities that bring together students and faculty members working in fields from medieval studies to the early twenty-first century. The restructuring of MLA rubrics reflects this conceptual change. It would be intellectually stimulating to continue the conversation in a series of events or panels on the relation between coverage-based and focus-based models of field organization.

33. Andrew C. Long. Adjunct prof. writing, Keck Grad. Inst. PhD, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York. Junior faculty research grant (Amer. Univ. of Beirut), Hewlett Foundation, 2005; McConnell Family Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2007. Publications include Reading Arabia: British Orientalism in the Age of Mass Publication, 1880– 1930 (2014); articles in Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, Middle East Critique, Nineteenth- Century Literature, Prose Studies, Studies in the Novel. Statement My interest in election to the Delegate Assembly is grounded in the following issues: 1. Contingent labor: I believe we must push back against the conversion of tenure-track positions into lectureships and ensure that existing lectureships offer meaningful compensation and benefits, job security, and a path to promotion. 2. Age: Like many members, I am over forty with an extensive and successful record of teaching and scholarship. Yet, as many of us know, our experience and accomplishment are not valued when we apply for jobs or grants. Age discrimination is real and a concern for the MLA, especially since the pool of applicants for good jobs includes many long-time part-timers or older recent graduates. We must address this problem through discussion, education, and, possibly, legislation. Candidate Information – 29

3. Global job market: More than ever United States–trained faculty members are pursuing jobs in universities around the world, and they take with them liberal values in matters of professionalization and academic culture. Serious problems might arise when a United States–trained professor at a foreign university teaches a text about gender or insists on transparency at a department meeting. These situations occur here in the United States as well, but abroad a faculty member might be fired, arrested, and deported. We must do our best to support the civil and human rights of faculty members teaching abroad and continue to question whether United States universities should engage with foreign universities and university systems that support discriminatory and repressive regimes.

X. Two-Year Colleges (2 contests)

34. Douglas L. Howard. Prof. English, Suffolk County Community Coll., Ammerman Campus, State Univ. of New York. PhD, New York Univ. Board of directors, New York CEA, 2015– . Publications include ed., Dexter: Investigating Cutting Edge Television (2010); coed. The Gothic Other: Racial and Social Constructions in the Literary Imagination (2004), The Essential Sopranos Reader (2011); contrib., This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (2002), Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from HBO (2006), Reading Deadwood: A Western to Swear By (2006), Milton in Popular Culture (2006), Reading 24: TV Against the Clock (2007), Modern and Postmodern Cutting Edge Films (2008), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature (2009), Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale (2009), The Essential Cult TV Reader (2010), On the Verge of Tears: Why the Movies, Television, Music, Art, Popular Culture, Literature, and the Real World Make Us Cry (2010), Interrogating The Shield (2012); articles in Chronicle of Higher Education, Literature and Theology; blog posts in CST Online. Statement I am honored to be considered for a position in the Delegate Assembly and would welcome the opportunity to serve the discipline in this capacity. I am particularly concerned about the current state of the humanities as it affects students and faculty members at the two-year level. While there are important conversations going on about workforce development and career opportunities for students in science and technology fields, we do not want our colleges, universities, communities, and, most important, our students to lose sight of what the humanities have to offer. The humanities do more than help students, whether they major in them or not, to acquire and develop skill sets that can ably serve them and complement their work in other disciplines. For when students go on to advanced study at the four-year level or go out into the job market, the experience of the humanities, as part of any curriculum, will have helped to prepare them for what lies ahead. The humanities enrich students’ lives in immeasurable ways and provide them with perspective for an increasingly demanding and complex world. Now, more than ever, we need to promote the humanities in our institutions to keep them from being marginalized in the service of degree specializations or in the name of curricular compliance. In my role as a member of the assembly and in collaboration with my colleagues from other institutions, I would enthusiastically take up this charge.

35. David R. Leight. Prof. humanities, Reading Area Community Coll., PA. MA (rhetoric), Temple Univ., Philadelphia; MA (English), Lehigh Univ. Coordinator, Coll.-Level Writing Program, Reading Area Community Coll., PA, 2005– . Publications include contrib., Theorizing Composition: A Critical Sourcebook of Theory and Scholarship in Contemporary Composition Studies (1998), Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World (1999). Statement Two-year-college faculty members are in a difficult position with respect to the MLA. Those of us who are long-time members, since 1989 in my case, know that the institution offers a wonderful conference, an excellent journal, and a variety of affiliate organizations. But we also know that the conference, journal, 30 – Candidate Information and affiliates rarely speak to us directly. Even though many of us teach literature and would be greatly helped by opportunities to share our ideas and to renew our study and research, we have only rare access to them. Faculty members at two-year colleges are spread thin, and our institutional responsibilities and teaching loads often preclude our research into and writing about the subjects we teach. Adjunct faculty members, who often come to my campus straight from graduate programs, have even less support. One need only browse PMLA or the convention program to see how few two-year-college faculty members are represented compared to faculty members and graduate students in four-year colleges and universities. The MLA needs to develop ways for two-year-college faculty members to help one another and to make connections with their four-year-college peers. Specifically, the MLA should advocate for two-year colleges to financially support full-time and adjunct faculty members’ professional development; provide support for new two-year-college faculty members and adjuncts, who teach a wide variety of students at our colleges; and connect two-year-college faculty members to their colleagues working on similar projects or to colleagues who might be interested in similar research and writing opportunities. ☼ 36. Loknath Persaud. Prof. Spanish, Pasadena City Coll., CA. PhD, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. Mellon fellowship, Univ. of Southern California, 1982–83. Exec. board, AATSP, 2010–13. Statement It is an honor to be nominated for a Delegate Assembly seat representing community colleges. I have taught for thirty years in the community-college system, and I have had to deal with many issues as coordinator of foreign languages and departmental representative in the Academic Senate of Pasadena City College for over ten years. I would gladly participate in the assembly’s discussions and help find solutions to questions that beset us all, namely, the increasing skepticism within academia and society about the benefits of the humanities and the study of languages and the mounting reliance of language programs on the work of underpaid part-time faculty members. It is not difficult to see the effects of this loss of emphasis on the humanities. Just a cursory look, for example, at information in our mass media would point to the need to highlight the societal benefits of the study of the humanities and foreign languages. Learning to write clearly, think critically, and synthesize opinions and gaining a greater understanding of our fractious world are necessary parts of the education of our citizens, so training in the humanities and foreign languages is not an inconsequential frill or an insignificant segment of a student’s education. We must address the public and the powers that be about the necessary education of citizens and also devise strategies to halt the steady erosion of working conditions and unwarranted indignity meted out to many who would like to gain or maintain a foothold in our profession.

37. Peter Elias Sotiriou. Prof. English, Los Angeles City Coll., CA. PhD, Univ. of Southern California. Fund for Instructional Improvement grant, California Community Colls., 1991. Nina Theiss Award for Outstanding Services to the Teaching of English, English Council of California Two-Year Colls., 2009. Second vice pres., English Council of California Two-Year Colls., 1994– 2003; Teacher/Scholar Comm. (2003) and Research Initiative on Assessment (2008), Two-Year Coll. English Assn. Ed. board, Writing Instructor, 2000. Publications include Integrating College Study Skills: Reasoning in Reading, Listening, and Writing (1984; 6th ed., 2002), Composing through Reading: An Integrated Approach to Writing (1991; 2nd ed., 1994), Critical Thinking and Popular Culture: Reading and Writing the American Experience (1998), Reading to Write: Composition in Context (2002), The Pedagogical Implications of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: Alternatives for Teaching Students How to Read and Write (2012), Teaching and Learning in the Humanities: How Hans-Georg Gadamer Speaks to Students, Teachers, and Scholars (2015); coauthor, Steps to Reading Proficiency (1982; 5th ed., 2000); articles in International Journal of Humanities Education, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Journal of Advanced Composition, Writing Instructor. Candidate Information – 31

Statement In my teaching and scholarly career, I have been particularly interested in the intersection of teaching and scholarship. I was a member of a committee for the NCTE that drafted a position paper on the teacher- scholar in the two-year college in 2005. If I am elected to represent the two-year college in the Delegate Assembly, I intend to further this discussion of the teacher-scholar in our profession and hope to continue a dialogue with college and university English teachers regarding the English classroom as a site for scholarly inquiry. Furthermore, I hope to establish an ongoing dialogue between the two-year-college teacher-scholars of the MLA and the MLA membership’s fertile theorizing and literary research strength. Finally, I want to encourage the members of the assembly and the MLA membership to be active in re-visioning the humanities in the twenty-first century—a discipline that has been besieged and marginalized by corporate neoliberal practices and one whose plight I investigated in my most recent work, Teaching and Learning in the Humanities.

XI. Women in the Profession (2 contests)

38. María del Pilar Melgarejo. Lecturer Spanish, Southern Methodist Univ. PhD, Univ. of Pittsburgh. Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 2011–12. Publications include El lenguaje politico de la Regeneración en Colombia y México (2010); contrib., Estudios culturales latinoamericanos: Retos desde y sobre la región andina (2003), Gilberto Freyre e os estudos latino-americanos (2006), Genealogías de la colombianidad: Formaciones discursivas y tecnologías de gobierno en los siglos XIX y XX (2008), La estela de Caicedo: Miradas críticas (2009); articles in Afro- Hispanic Review, Monographic Review / Revista monográfica, Hispanic Issues On Line, Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies, Latinoamérica: Anuario de estudios latinoamericanos, Fronteras de la historia. Statement I am committed to addressing the ways in which gender and equality are crucial in the policies and practices of the profession. As a member of the Delegate Assembly I will promote a critical debate that can have real outcomes regarding issues like faculty salary inequities, mentoring, service commitments, hiring, family leave, and promotion. There should be a common agreement about institutional practices in the academic workplace. I look forward to promoting awareness that can result in concrete proposals to address and improve the place of women in the profession today.

39. Gillian Price. Spanish teacher, Hilton Head Preparatory School. PhD, Univ. of Virginia. Ch., World Langs. Dept., Hilton Head Preparatory School. Buckner W. Clay Award in Humanities, Inst. of the Humanities and Global Cultures, Univ. of Virginia, 2013. Staff member, Walt Whitman Archive, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2006. Ed. asst., Dieciocho, 2008–12. Publications include interviews in Hispamérica. Statement Historically, the MLA has played a leadership role in making recommendations that promote equal opportunities for men and women in academia, but considerable work remains to be done. Fostering a healthy and safe working environment free of gender and sex discrimination and sexual harassment must be a priority. The MLA must continue its long-standing dedication to the eradication of discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices. The MLA should also develop a model for evaluating research, teaching, and service impartially—not blindly, but accounting for gender differences in how such work is assigned and acknowledged by students, faculty members, and administrators. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I will also advocate for policies that promote healthier work-life balance for graduate students and faculty members, including family leave and support for adjunct professors’ careers. I am deeply concerned with the erosion of humanities education, evident in the slashing of tenure- track jobs that support research and in the exploitation of contingent faculty members. In my experience in 32 – Candidate Information both college and high school settings, this pattern places pressure on humanities departments to justify their existence not only to administrators but also to the students themselves, who increasingly opt for more practical majors that are, at some public institutions, available to students at lower tuition rates. High schools, community colleges, and traditional four-year institutions must collaborate on supporting humanities education. As a member of the Delegate Assembly I will foster a dialogue on our shared concerns. ☼ 40. Anne Garland Mahler. Asst. prof. Spanish, Univ. of Virginia. PhD, Emory Univ. Previous appointment: Univ. of Arizona, 2013–16. Grant, Ford Foundation– LASA Special Projects, 2015; grant, Director’s Fund for Excellence, Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, Univ. of Arizona, 2015. ACLA, ASA, Caribbean Philosophical Assn., Caribbean Studies Assn., LASA, MELUS. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., CLCS Global South, 2015–Jan. 2019. Asst. to the ed., Latin American Literary Review Press, 2006–07. Publications include articles in Latin American Research Review, Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. Statement If elected to this position, I will work to make the MLA a stronger voice for structural change on the following issues, which continue to negatively impact women in our profession: salary inequity, gender bias in promotion and tenure evaluations, unequal distribution of service obligations, gender bias in student evaluations, underrepresentation in recruitment and retention, inadequate family policies that result in a “baby penalty” for women faculty members and graduate students, sexual harassment and bullying, marginalization in male-dominated professional circles, and disproportionate representation of women in the ranks of teachers holding non-tenure-track and part-time positions. I also plan to advocate for the creation of more MLA events dedicated to networking opportunities for women at all ranks and for more discussion and advocacy around the unique service burdens placed on women of color in our profession. I look forward to the opportunity to work with colleagues in the Delegate Assembly to strengthen the MLA’s support of women in the profession.

41. Olimpia Rosenthal. Asst. prof. Spanish and Portuguese, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. PhD, Univ. of Arizona. Marshall Foundation dissertation fellowship, 2013; Mellon summer inst. fellowship, Newberry Library, 2013; Intl. Workshop Award, Antipode Foundation, 2014–15. Publications include articles in Journal of Lusophone Studies, Letras (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru), Teatro: Revista de estudios culturales. Statement If elected to the Delegate Assembly as a representative for Women in the Profession, I would emphasize two main issues. First, I believe it is crucial to remain attentive to hiring practices, pay equity, and promotions that help ensure faculty diversity based on gender. In addition to advocating an increase in the number of women in academic and administrative positions, we should consider the range of factors that can influence their retention and success, including parental leave, equal recognition for women participating in collaborative projects, and mentoring. Second, I think that recognizing diversity among women is fundamental to being a responsible representative who can speak to the interests of a wide range of individuals. The obstacles that women of color face may not always be the same as those confronted by the LGBT community; as a representative it is my commitment to ensure that all issues are addressed attentively and prioritized equally. The current political climate in this country has made possible important developments in areas such as marriage equality, but it has also led to troubling reversals on issues such as reproductive rights. It is important to continue to strengthen the type of political associations that, like Women in the Profession, are attentive to gender-based politics both within academia and beyond. Candidate Information – 33

Part IV: Voting for Regional Delegates Thirty-four persons will be elected to replace delegates whose terms expire on 8 January 2017. The term of office will be from 9 January 2017 through the close of the January 2020 convention. The numbers preceding the nominees’ names correspond to the numbers assigned to the nominees on the paper ballot sheet. The names of the regional delegates with continuing terms in 2017 appear at the MLA Web site (www.mla.org/del_assembly_members).

Vote in only one region but in any or all of the contests within that one region.

I. New England and Eastern Canada (5 contests) Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont; New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec

100. Jennifer Andrews. Prof. English, Univ. of New Brunswick. PhD, Univ. of Toronto. Ch., Dept. of English, Univ. of New Brunswick, 2013–16. Fulbright doctoral scholarship, 1998; SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship 1998–99; SSHRC research grant, 1999–2001, 2002–06, 2014–16; SSHRC journal grant, 2008–11, 2011–14. Adjudication comms.: SSHRC, 2004–06, 2007, 2011, 2013, 2016; Awards to Scholarly Publications Programs (ASPP), Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2010–14. Member, Academic Council, ASPP, 2014–16. Sec.-treasurer (2014–15) and vice pres. (2015–16), Canadian Assn. of Chairs of English; campus representative, Assn. of Canadian Coll. and Univ. Teachers of English. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Canadian Lit. in English, 2001–04; Delegate Assembly, 2003–05. Coed., Studies in Canadian Literature, 2003–12; advisory board, International Fiction Review, 2004–10. Publications include In the Belly of a Laughing God: Humour and Irony in the Poetry of Native Women Writers (2011); co-author, Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions (2003); contrib., Unsettled Remains: Canadian Literature and the Postcolonial Gothic (2009), American Remakes of British Television: Transformations and Mistranslations (2011), Parallel Encounters: Culture and the Canada–US Border (2013), Canadian Literature and Cultural Memory (2014), Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Crime Fiction, Television, and Film (2014); articles in Native American Indian Studies, American Indian Quarterly, American Literary History, English Studies in Canada, Canadian Review of American Studies, Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Statement As a member of the MLA since 1994 and a scholar who has studied Canadian and American literature comparatively from that time onward, I will champion the inclusion of Canadian perspectives within the MLA, an organization that often feels overly nationalistic. Region 1, New England and Eastern Canada, historically was shaped by the fluidity of borders (particularly through its Indigenous communities). It makes sense to be more attentive to and proactive in recognizing and engaging with the region using a cross-border lens, which might include thinking through differences and similarities with respect to funding opportunities, job prospects, the teaching of composition, and the community-college system. I am also deeply committed to two issues that are critical to the MLA membership as a whole: alt-academic careers and mentoring of women. Having supervised multiple PhDs who successfully transitioned into other career paths, I would urge the MLA to recognize more explicitly the valuable contributions these members of our community make and to figure out how to make the MLA relevant to those who do not remain in academia yet possess an immense amount of useful knowledge. Finally, speaking as someone who has juggled research, administrative posts, and children and who had excellent mentors, I believe we need to ensure that academia is more welcoming to everyone who might wish to have some work-life balance (whatever that might look like), despite the tendency in academia to be myopically focused on career success. 34 – Candidate Information

101. Prasad Bidaye. Prof. English, Humber Coll. PhD, Univ. of Toronto. Ontario Grad. Scholarship, 2000–01, 2001–02; SSHRC doctoral fellowship, 2002–04; India studies research fellowship, Shastri Indo-Canadian Inst., 2006. Shirley Uldall Memorial Book Prize, Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), Univ. of Toronto, 2005; Diljit and Gulshan Juneja Award for South Asian Studies, CSAS, Univ. of Toronto, 2007. Juror (for grant competition), Canada Council for the Arts, 2009. Publications include guest coed., University of Toronto Quarterly (2015); contrib., Transnationalism, Activism, Art (2013). Statement In almost every aspect of my professional life, I encounter and embrace the interrelationship of diversity, difference, and dialogue. My research is focused on two very different areas: Anglophone postcolonial South Asian literature and Afro-futuristic DJ culture. My day-to-day work as a professor and program coordinator is centered on developing curricula and pedagogies for teaching critical thinking, reading, and writing skills to students from every program in my polytechnical institution, a set of tasks that demands a creative engagement with liberal arts education and skill-based training paradigms. On a larger scale, my professional community is built from a network of two-year colleges and research-based universities primarily on the Canadian side of the border, though with a watchful eye on the American scene. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would contribute by drawing on this set of experiences at all levels. In the past, I have observed and admired how our association has been receptive to creating a space for diverse theoretical frameworks, scholarly practices, languages, and identities. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would be committed to the ongoing work of expanding and enriching that space. I also support the initiative to facilitate graduate students’ professional pathways in a marketplace where employment is becoming increasingly precarious, and I wish to support faculty members in a global culture where the humanities should be valued as essential to student success, regardless of the discipline. ☼ 102. Anke K. Finger. Assoc. prof. German studies and comparative literary and cultural studies, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs. PhD, Brandeis Univ. Program dir., Digital Humanities and Media Studies, Humanities Inst., Univ. of Connecticut, 2016– . DAAD summer research fellowship, 2015. Reviewer (dissertation fellowships), ACLS, 2014–17. Pres., Connecticut chapter, AATG, 2005–09; Culture Task Force, AATG, 2005–10; Dissertation Award Comm., Soc. for Cinema and Media Studies, 2015–16. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Lit. and Other Arts, 2010–Jan. 2015. Cofounder and assoc. ed. (2005–07) and coed. (2008–15), Flusser Studies: Multilingual Journal of Cultural and Media Theory; assoc. ed., CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 2009– . Ed. or advisory boards: Zeitschrift für interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht, 2009– ; Evental Aesthetics: An Independent Journal of Philosophy, 2013– ; FlusserBrasil, 2014– . Publications include Das Gesamtkunstwerk der Moderne (2006), Die Kunst der Migration: Von Sesshaften, Nomaden, Luftmenschen und Gesamtkunstwerken (2011); coauthor, Vilém Flusser: An Introduction (2011); ed., Vilém Flusser, The Freedom of the Migrant: Objections to Nationalism (2003); coed., The Aesthetics of the Total Artwork: On Borders and Fragments (2011), KulturConfusão: On German-Brazilian Interculturalities (2015); contrib., Communicating across Borders: Developing Intercultural Competence in German as a Foreign Language (2008), Das dritte Ufer: Vilém Flusser und Brasilien (2009), A filosofia da ficção de Vilém Flusser (2011), Atmosphären: Dimensionen eines diffusen Phänomens (2012), Companion to Comparative Literature, World Literatures, and Comparative Cultural Studies (2013), The Death and Life of the Total Work of Art: Henry van de Velde and the Legacy of a Modern Concept (2015); articles in German Quarterly, South Central Review, Colloquia Germanica, Feminist Studies, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Unterrichtspraxis. Statement An active MLA member since the early 1990s—as a presenter, organizer of panels, and member of the executive committee of the Division on Literature and Other Arts—I am a strong advocate for the Candidate Information – 35 humanities in general and for the public humanities, digital humanities, and extensive scholarly communication in particular. With a plethora of media at our disposal, humanities scholars and teachers today have a multitude of opportunities to explore and communicate what is indispensable about literatures, languages, and human creativity in a national and international context preoccupied with STEM and quantitative data. Were I to be elected to the Delegate Assembly, advocacy for the humanities—especially literatures, languages, and human creativity in the digital and public realms—will be a priority, accompanied by a strong focus on bringing graduate education into the twenty-first century (following former MLA president Sidonie Smith) and on moving beyond a persistent “two cultures” (C. P. Snow) divide for undergraduate students, who often remain mired in STEM vs. humanities culture clashes. At the University of Connecticut I have been able to advocate for all three areas as the program director of Media Studies and Digital Humanities at the Humanities Institute (in addition to serving as a board member twice), as a PhD adviser and graduate program director who is currently designing a new graduate certificate for Media Studies and Digital Humanities, and as section chair of a very large German studies program offering dual degrees in engineering and German studies (EuroTech).

103. Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg. Prof. English, Babson Coll. PhD, Miami Univ., Oxford. Faculty dir., Women’s Entrepreneurial Development Lab, Babson Coll., 2013– . Innovators among Us Award (for pedagogical innovation), Babson Coll., 2004; Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Babson Coll., 2006; Nan Langowitz Women Who Make a Difference Award, Babson Coll., 2007; Prof. of the Year Award (voted by graduating class), Babson Coll., 2007, 2008, 2009; Mandell Family Term Ch., Babson Coll., 2007–12; Faculty Scholarship Award, Babson Coll., 2012; Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award, Babson Coll., 2012; Changemaker Award, Lewis Inst. for Social Innovation, Babson Coll, 2012. Commissioner, vice ch., and ch., Barnstable County Human Rights Commission, 2007–10. Ch., Board of Directors, Made by Survivors, 2010–15; board member, Historians against Slavery, 2013–16. Ed. boards: Teaching in Higher Education, 2008–15; Human Rights Quarterly, 2011– ; Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 2014– . Publications include Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights (2007); coed., Theoretical Perspectives on Human Rights and Literature (2011), Teaching Human Rights in Literary and Cultural Studies (2015); contrib., Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice (1998), Violence and American Cinema (2000), Terror, Media, and Liberation (2005), The Cambridge History of African American Literature (2011), Screening Torture: Media Representations of State Terror and Political Domination (2012), Critical Terms for the Study of Gender (2014), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights (2016); articles in International Journal of Human Rights, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, Journal of the African Literature Association, Humanity, South Atlantic Review, Kulturaustausch, Liberal Education: Journal of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters. Statement I have been a member of the MLA since my graduate school days (1990). The best description of how I experience this membership came from one of my dissertation committee members, who, upon entering a hotel lounge full of attendees at an MLA annual meeting, joyfully exclaimed, “My tribe!” If elected as a representative for New England and Eastern Canada, I hope to nurture this sense of community connection and belonging for all MLA members. I have devoted my career as a faculty member in English to helping build a subfield in human rights and literature with a particular emphasis on race and gender. As a regional representative to the Delegate Assembly, I hope to bring this sensibility to my role, including encouraging the MLA to use its considerable power to advance human rights–related concerns. I will support efforts of the MLA to strengthen commitment to and funding for the humanities in secondary and higher education more broadly, and I will support efforts and organizing toward economic justice and inclusivity for all faculty members, especially those in the segment of the professoriat euphemistically called “contingent labor.” ☼ 36 – Candidate Information

104. Elena Cueto. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Bowdoin Coll. PhD, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette. Publications include Autos para siluetas de Valle-Inclán: Simbolismo y caos sobre el espejo cóncavo (2005), Reconciliaciones en escena. El teatro de la Guerra Civil (2008); coed., Historias de la pequeña pantalla: Representaciones históricas en la televisión de la España democrática (2009); contrib., Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture (2001), Visualizing Spanish Modernity (2005), Encrucijadas históricas de la España contemporánea: Textos y contextos que marcan época (2011), Armed Resistance: Cultural Representations of the Anti-Francoist Guerrilla (2012); articles in Miríada hispánica, Communication and Society, Journal of Catalan Studies, Colorado Review of Hispanic Studies, Hecho teatral, Catalan Review, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Transitions: Journal of Franco-Iberian Studies, Revista hispánica moderna, El Pasajero: Revista de estudios sobre Ramón del Valle-Inclán, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Theatralia, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures, Romance Languages Annual. Statement In comparison to the category university, the designation college continues to connote for many an institution where research is not a priority or even an activity. Even though the volume of scholarship produced by liberal arts college faculty members in the last two decades suggests otherwise, as a collective we are often overlooked or bypassed for appointments to leadership roles in national organizations, promotion reviews, scholarship committees, and editorial boards because we lack a university affiliation. Thus, as a professor at a liberal arts college, if elected I would like to raise the visibility of faculty members from this kind of institution, where active research and publication are integral parts of the pursuit of excellent teaching.

105. Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Western Ontario. PhD, Univ. of British Columbia. Previous appointment: Université de Montréal, 2006–12. Grant, Fonds de Recherche du Québec—Société et Culture, fall 2010; SSHRC Insight Program grant, 2014–16. Collegium for African Amer. Research, ACLA, African Lit. Assn. Publications include guest coed., Research in African Literatures (2016); contrib., Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia (2003), Bridges across Chasms: Towards a Transcultural Future in Caribbean Literature (2004); articles in University of Toronto Quarterly, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Research in African Literatures, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society, Comparative Studies of South Asian, Africa, and the Middle East, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. ☼ 106. Stuart J. Murray. Canada Research Ch. in Rhetoric and Ethics, Carleton Univ. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Dir., Digital Rhetorics + Ethics Lab, Carleton Univ. Previous appointments: Ryerson Univ., 2006–11; Univ. of Toronto, 2004–06. SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, 2004– 06; SSHRC grant, 2009–12, 2012–14; Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant, 2011–13, 2012–13, 2014–15; Canadian Foundation for Innovation grant, 2013–18; visiting scholar, Centre de Recherche en Éthique, Université de Montréal, 2016. Undergrad. Teaching Award, Univ. of Toronto, 2005–06; inaugural member (elected), Coll. of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, Royal Soc. of Canada, 2014– . Ed., Qui Parle, 2002–04; ed., MediaTropes, 2008– . Ed. boards: Canadian Journal of Communication, 2012– ; Canadian Review of American Studies, 2012– ; Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2012– ; Quarterly Journal of Speech, 2013– . Publications include coed., Critical Interventions in the Ethics of Healthcare: Challenging the Principle of Autonomy in Bioethics (2009); contrib., Qualitative Inquiry and Human Rights (2010), Power and the Psychiatric Apparatus: Repression, Transformation and Assistance (2014), Extreme Punishment: Comparative Studies in Detention, Incarceration and Solitary Confinement (2015); articles in Philosophy Candidate Information – 37 and Rhetoric, Social Science and Medicine, Critical Public Health, Journal of Medical Humanities, Bioethics, Body and Society, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Human Studies, Canadian Review of American Studies, Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine, English Studies in Canada. Statement I am honored to be nominated as a regional delegate. My professional concerns involve the rising precarity of academic labor coupled with the systematic erosion of the principles and mechanisms of collective academic governance. Given the increasingly entrepreneurial focus of our institutions, language departments and programs have been particularly vulnerable to cuts, restructuring schemes, and constructive obsolescence. I look forward to thinking together about creative ways to address the ongoing economic crisis and imposed austerity measures in our colleges and universities—such as the defunding of higher education, inequitable labor practices, mounting student debt, and the un- and underemployment of our graduates. I am particularly concerned for the future of the humanities PhD and would foster international dialogue. And I would encourage the MLA to develop its digital media platforms, its outreach to graduate students and non- tenure-track faculty members, and its role as a vocal advocate for the study of languages, literatures, and cultures. As a rhetoric scholar whose research considers ethical theory and practice, my work is multidisciplinary and often collaborative. It leverages humanities and social science theories and methodologies to intervene across professional and public domains, e.g., mental health, prison populations, the effects of emergent biomedical technologies, biopolitics, and digital cultures. For me, humanities disciplines are clearly relevant to our socioeconomic and political issues—but they must be demonstrated as crucial if we hope to find socially just ways of living together. I would bring this professional commitment to the MLA as a delegate for our region.

107. Dana Seitler. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Toronto. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2009–Jan. 2012; forum exec. comm., LLC Late-19th- and Early-20th-Century Amer., 2012–Jan. 2017. Publications include Atavistic Tendencies: The Culture of Science in American Modernity (2008); ed., Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux (2003); articles in American Literature, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Criticism, American Quarterly. ☼ 108. Nicole Burgoyne. Grad. student German, Harvard Univ. MA, Harvard Univ. Institutional service (Harvard Univ.): departmental representative, Grad. Student Council, 2010–11; grad. conference coch., 2013; research asst., 2013– ; grad. student liaison, Dept. of Germanic Langs. and Lits., 2014–15. Fulbright research and teaching fellowship (Univ. of Vienna), 2008– 09; grad. fellowship, William A. Ackman Fund for Holocaust Studies, Harvard Univ., 2012–14; DAAD research grant, spring 2014; FLAS fellowship, 2014–15. Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching, Harvard Univ., 2011–12. Conference presentations: NEMLA, 2011; Berkeley- Tübingen-Wien-Harvard Working Group on the Emergence of German Modernism, 2012, 2015; Massachusetts Foreign Lang. Assn. (fall pedagogy conference), 2013; MLA, 2015, 2017; German Studies Assn., 2015, 2016. Statement My experience teaching at Harvard University as a graduate student since 2011 and as an instructor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts (2016–17) has given me a sense of the varying situations of schools of different sizes in our region and profession. I look forward to learning about and representing the interests of my colleagues from the area and beyond. Having just completed seven years in Harvard’s German PhD program, I can speak to all stages of graduate study and know that the experience varies from institution to institution. Furthermore, as a graduate student on the job market who adjuncts at a nearby college, I will represent the interests of individuals at this career stage. Finally, my research finds its home in the German 38 – Candidate Information and Slavic literature departments as well as the history department. I will act on behalf of both literary critics and historians and attempt to increase interaction between these two groups of members of the MLA.

109. Jonathan Fitzgerald. Grad. student English, Northeastern Univ. MA, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston. Institutional service (Northeastern Univ.): conference planning comm., English Grad. Student Assn., spring 2016. Conference travel grant, Assn. for Computers and the Humanities, 2015; fellow, NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, Northeastern Univ., 2015– ; travel grant, Keystone Digital Humanities Conference, 2016. Organizer, Northern Shores Writers’ Retreat, Eastern Nazarene Coll., 2012–13. Contributing ed., Knowledge, Nature, Culture: An Introduction to the Humanities and Social Sciences, spring 2011. Conference presentations: Christ in Contemporary Cultures: A Cultural Studies Conference (Gordon Coll.), Sept. 2006; NEMLA, 2009; Religion Newswriters Assn., 2012; Making, Unmaking, and Remaking the Early Modern Era: 1500–1800 (Early Modern Center, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), Feb. 2015; Keystone Digital Humanities Conference, 2015, 2016. Publications include contrib., Wise Blood: A Re-Consideration (2011); article in Journal of African Literature; book review in Literary Journalism Studies. Statement The reports of the death of the humanities are greatly exaggerated. True, this is a difficult time for our profession, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by the challenges. Rather, my experience as a student and as a nontraditional faculty member at a number at colleges and universities has actually made me hopeful. In the ten years between when I completed my master’s degree and entered a PhD program, I held many nontraditional academic positions including adjunct professor, writing tutor, writing center coordinator, visiting professor, student newspaper adviser, and online instructor. That is to say, I am very much aware of the challenges facing young scholars in the current academic job market. And yet, though it hasn’t always been easy, I have managed to carve out a life in academia through a mix of tenacity, hard work, flexibility, and a little bit of good fortune. If elected to the position of regional delegate, I will do my best to represent my colleagues in a way that draws on my experience—that is, by being realistic about the times we are living in as well as optimistic for the future of our profession. I believe in the MLA and its ability to promote positive change, and I’m eager to play my part in that effort. The next few years promise to bring both opportunities and challenges to our field, and I’m committed to working as an advocate, encourager, ally, and colleague for our collective betterment.

II. New York State (5 contests)

110. Orlando Bentancor. Asst. prof. Spanish and Latin Amer. cultures, Barnard Coll. PhD, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

111. Lena Burgos-Lafuente. Asst. prof. Spanish, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York. PhD, New York Univ. Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, 2014–15. Premio de Crítica Literaria Concha Meléndez, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña (San Juan, PR), 2004. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Puerto Rican, 2015–Jan. 2020. Publications include Melancólicas inquisiciones: Lectura y sujeto en Borges (2006); guest ed., CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (2014); guest coed., Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies (2015); contrib., Caribe abierto: Antología crítica (2012); introd., Julia de Burgos, Cartas a Consuelo (2014); articles in Revista exégesis, Revista de estudios hispánicos. Statement As an interdisciplinary scholar at a large public university that increasingly confronts the defunding of the humanities, I’ve witnessed how emerging scholars try to deal with a rapid professionalization that contrasts with the scarcity of academic jobs available. I’ve experienced how scholars in the humanities who Candidate Information – 39 are marked by race, class, gender, and sexuality are especially vulnerable. I’m preoccupied with the issues of precarity in the profession and wish to address them at the institutional level. Serving in the Delegate Assembly would provide a strong launchpad for this advocacy. I’m committed to building webs of support for my cohort (including part-time faculty members) and those following us, who are currently graduate students, especially in the fields of Latin American and Caribbean studies. I find it imperative to work toward increasing access to full-time positions with fair workloads, to ensure our emerging scholars will be able to pursue their research and writing in equitable conditions. ☼ 112. Christopher GoGwilt. Prof. English and comparative lit., Fordham Univ., Bronx. PhD, Princeton Univ. NEH summer stipend, 1991. Modernist Studies Assn. Book Prize (for The Passage of Literature), 2012. Trustee (1995–99, 2008–10) and second vice pres., first vice pres., and pres. (2011–16), Joseph Conrad Soc. of America. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 1993–95. Ed. board, Conradiana, 2014– . Publications include The Invention of the West: Joseph Conrad and the Double-Mapping of Europe and Empire (1995), The Fiction of Geopolitics: Afterimages of Culture from Wilkie Collins to Alfred Hitchcock (2000), The Passage of Literature: Genealogies of Modernism in Conrad, Rhys, and Pramoedya (2011); contrib., Enduring Western Civilization: The Construction of the Concept of Western Civilization and Its “Others” (1995), High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889–1939 (1996), Conrad in the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Approaches and Perspectives (2005), Geographies of Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces (2005), A Historical Guide to Joseph Conrad (2010), Ford Madox Ford and America (2012), Conrad and Language (2016); foreword, André Vltchek and Rossie Indira Vltchek, Exile: Conversation with Pramoedya Ananta Toer (2006); articles in Comparative Literature Studies, Conradiana, Cultural Critique, Modernism/Modernity, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, New German Critique, PMLA, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, Victorian Studies, Yale Journal of Criticism. Statement As a New York State delegate, I would advocate for MLA initiatives on matters of diversity and inclusion throughout the profession, for combining the strengths of old paradigms of philological study with the innovations of new models and new theories of literary and cultural study, for securing better working conditions for contingent faculty members while resisting attacks on the tenure system, and for establishing a just and equitable distribution of academic work (teaching, research, and shared governance) both in the immediate and in the long-term future. I have no magic solutions for the problems our profession faces, but I have served as English department chair (2001–04; spring 2016), as program director for comparative literature (1997–2000; 2011–14), as a member of the board of directors for Fordham University Press (2005– 14), and as a member of my university’s Faculty Senate (since 2005, for a variety of terms). I have many years of experience enduring and seeking not to succumb to administrative nihilism. It would be an honor to serve the MLA as a New York State delegate.

113. Peter Platt. Prof. English, Barnard Coll. DPhil, Oxford Univ. Ch., Dept. of English, 2008–14; Univ. Senate, 2015–17, 2009–11, 2004–06. Publications include Reason Diminished: Shakespeare and the Marvelous (1997), Shakespeare and the Culture of Paradox (2009); ed., Wonders, Marvels, and Monsters in Early Modern Culture (1999); coed., Shakespeare’s Montaigne (2014); contrib., Shakespearean Criticism, vol. 42 (1998), A Companion to Shakespeare (1999); articles in Lo sguardo, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. Statement As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would draw on my six years as chair of the Barnard College English department, where, among other things, I was able to shape and revise the curriculum in accordance with changing needs and trends in our discipline. Working closely with the Columbia University 40 – Candidate Information chair, I also became familiar with the similarities and differences between departments at research universities and smaller colleges. In addition, as a three-term university senator, I have worked on tenure and promotion grievance committees, trying to make sure that faculty members were treated fairly and to redress the problems if the committee believed that they were not. Recently, I have been involved in the attempt to reconcile student and faculty desires for openness to debate in the classroom, seeking to avoid reducing free-speech issues in class to an us-versus-them problem. ☼ 114. Carrie Tirado Bramen. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. PhD, Stanford Univ. Drescher Leave Program grant, United Univ. Professions, 1998–99; fellowship, Charles Warren Center for Studies in Amer. History, Harvard Univ., 2005–06; NEMLA Summer Research Fellowship, Amer. Antiquarian Soc., 2009; Anne LaBastille Memorial Residency, Adirondack Center for Writing, 2014. Milton Plesur Excellence in Teaching Award, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York, 1996; Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, State Univ. of New York, 1999; cowinner, Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize (for The Uses of Variety), Harvard Univ. Press, 1999. Advisory Council (2014–17) and ch. (2015–16), Amer. Lit. Section; fellowship selection comm., Amer. Antiquarian Soc. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 1999–2001, 2004–06. Series advisory board, Innovation and Activism in American Women’s Writing, Rowman and Littlefield, 2016– . Publications include The Uses of Variety: Modern Americanism and the Quest for National Distinctiveness (2000); guest ed., Nineteenth-Century Prose (2002); contrib., Power, Race, and Gender in Academe: Strangers in the Tower? (1999), The Puritan Origins of American Sex: Religion, Sexuality, and National Identity in American Literature (2001), A New Literary History of America (2009), The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011), American Religious Liberalism (2012), The Latino Nineteenth Century (2016); articles in Modern Fiction Studies, Textual Practice, American Quarterly, Novel, New England Quarterly, Socialist Review, Latin American Literary Review. Statement As a regional representative from New York State in the Delegate Assembly, I will emphasize issues related to public higher education that center on access, affordability, and student debt. These issues are directly related to the crisis in undergraduate enrollment in humanities courses, especially at public colleges and universities, where students are pressured to view college as vocational training. The liberal arts are increasingly seen as a luxury that only the affluent can afford. This mindset makes a lot of sense given that the average debt for a SUNY undergraduate is $25,000. Although SUNY prides itself on keeping in-state tuition relatively low compared to other state university systems, student debt is relatively the same for graduates of public and private colleges and universities in New York state (NYU, $28,000; Skidmore, $23,000) (ticas.org). When I ask my students if they would take more courses in the humanities if tuition were significantly less, they answer with a resounding yes. I would also like the Delegate Assembly to raise issues of access on the graduate level: How big is too big for a doctoral program in English? Should we reduce the size of what William James called the “Ph.D. Octopus”? If so, are we letting market demand dictate the size of a graduate program? Should we instead be thinking of doctoral level study as avocational rather than vocational? These are all questions that urgently need to be addressed.

115. Daniel G. Breen. Assoc. prof. English, Ithaca Coll. PhD, Duke Univ. Ch., Dept. of English, Ithaca Coll. Ed. board (Renaissance section), Literature Compass, 2005– . Publications include contrib., Renaissance Retrospections: Tudor Views of the Middle Ages (2013); articles in Literature Compass, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Studies in Philology. Candidate Information – 41

Statement My perspective is shaped by the eleven years I have spent teaching at a four-year comprehensive college, where undergraduates constitute 90% of the student body. In such an atmosphere, languages and literature are valued primarily because of what they contribute to undergraduate education; within this context there are presently, in my view, two extremely significant series of problems. The first is conceptual and derives from the sense of vague hostility to humanities disciplines characteristic of contemporary professional culture. The language of utility and relevance typically takes as its implicit target fields of study that do not correspond self-evidently to categories of private-sector employment, and the pervasiveness of such rhetoric in turn exerts pressure on undergraduate curricula and on graduate funding to emphasize professional instead of liberal education. The second series is practical and is developing from a single circumstance: across the United States, the numbers of undergraduate majors in languages and literatures are declining. This decline is worrisome not only because of the consequences it may have for the structure of undergraduate programs of study and for faculty recruitment but also and primarily because it suggests that fewer students are taking the opportunity to think critically and reflectively and to consider what truly global citizenship might mean by adopting perspectives available only through the study of languages and literatures. The MLA should continue to advocate for a model of education that engages directly with these problems, and I would welcome the chance to be part of that effort. ☼ 116. Louise Geddes. Asst. prof. English, Adelphi Univ. PhD, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York. Digital appropriations ed., Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriations, 2015– ; ed. board, This Rough Magic, 2015– . Publications include contrib., The Year’s Work in English Studies, vol. 94 (2015), vol. 95 (2016); articles in Shakespeare, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, This Rough Magic. Statement For seven years, I have been an assistant professor of English at a small, liberal arts college, during which time my institution, like many, has struggled with the place of the arts in the face of declining enrollments and increasing pressure on quantifiable student success. I wish to join the Delegate Assembly to give my voice in support of the humanities at this difficult time in our profession. The MLA has a long-standing tradition of being the humanities advocate, through both the diverse and innovative intellectual work it fosters and its tireless support of people in the profession. Sadly, the work I wish to support as an assembly member will address the lingering concerns of previous years. First, we must find ways to continue to advocate for contingent and adjunct faculty members, ensuring appropriate working conditions. Second, we must ensure that the increasing proliferation of online instruction in institutions of higher education is conducted responsibly and that it in no way undermines the place of the professor. Finally, we must consider ways to support PhD students and ensure that institutions are ethically responsible for preparing their graduates for the challenges of the academic job market and for the possibility of finding work outside academia. As the space for the humanities continues to shrink, we need to ensure that the MLA, and academic organizations in general, are no less hospitable to those unable to secure traditional academic employment.

117. John Robert Ziegler. Asst. prof. English, Bronx Community Coll., City Univ. of New York. PhD, Fordham Univ. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2010–Jan. 2013. Ed. board, Supernatural Studies, 2012– . Publications include contrib., The Encyclopedia of the Zombie: The Walking Dead in Popular Culture and Myth (2014); articles in Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, Postscript: A Journal of Graduate Theory and Criticism, Monsters and the Monstrous, Postcolonial Text. 42 – Candidate Information

Statement Having previously worked at both public and private two- and four-year institutions in a range of positions from adjunct professor to writing center director, I am currently a tenure-track assistant professor at Bronx Community College, CUNY, which serves an extraordinarily diverse student population. My range of professional experience has shown me firsthand the importance of resolving problems such as overreliance on contingent labor and the lagging evolution of promotion and tenure standards. This perspective has been enriched by my work as an elected representative in BCC’s Faculty Senate, which during this past year has engaged with issues such as better representation and professional development opportunities for nonfaculty instructional staff and how to attract, retain, and promote more faculty and staff members of color. Better working conditions for faculty and staff members allow us to better serve students, which is our primary mission. Working toward such improvements is vital at a time when lessened public support and funding create a struggle whose effects I have seen and in which I have taken part in as an active participant in the PSC-CUNY and its long-standing contract dispute with the city and state. I am a longtime member of the MLA and a former representative for New York State in the Delegate Assembly. The MLA can be an important and influential public voice in these debates and policy decisions, and, as a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would be both excited and honored to be part of that work again. ☼ 118. Alexander Lash. Grad. student English, Columbia Univ. MPhil, Columbia Univ.; MA, Fordham Univ. Institutional service (Columbia Univ.): rapporteur, Univ. Seminar on Shakespeare, 2014– ; coordinator, Early Modern Dissertation Seminar, Dept. of English, 2015–16; conference co-organizer, Dept. of English, spring 2016. Folger Inst. participant, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2011, 2015–16. Conference presentation: Shakespeare Assn. of America, 2016. Publications include contrib., The Literary Encyclopedia (online, 2015); review in Renaissance Quarterly. Statement It is an honor to be nominated as a graduate student representative to the assembly. The various economic and structural pressures facing our profession are well known and acutely felt by graduate students. The MLA has responded to the current crisis by sponsoring research and tracking of employment outcomes and by producing recommendations for how departments of literature and language can best treat graduate students and contingent faculty members. As a graduate student representative to the assembly I would see a key part of my role as advocating for the inclusion of marginalized voices in the association’s work in these areas. Considering the continued centrality of the association and its convention in our hiring practices, I am also committed to working toward increased accessibility for graduate students and adjuncts.

119. Leslie Nickerson. Grad student English, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. MA, St. Bonaventure Univ. Institutional service (Univ. at Buffalo): voting grad. student member, Dept. of English, 2011– ; Grad. Review Comm., Dept. of English, 2011–12; exec. comm., Dept. of English, 2012–13; vice pres., English Grad. Student Assn., 2012–13; teaching asst. mentor, Dept. of English, fall 2013; senator, Grad. Student Assn., 2013–15. NEMLA grad. fellow, 2015–16; Opler-Doubrava Fellowship, Dept. of English, Univ. at Buffalo, 2015–16. Grad. Student Excellence in Teaching Award, Univ. at Buffalo, 2016. Board of directors, Analytical Psychology Soc. of Western New York, 2014– ; organizer, Buffalo Adjunct Movement, 2014– . Asst. to ch., Summer Fellowship Comm., NEMLA, 2015–16. Conference presentations: State Univ. of New York Council on Writing Conference, 2013; plenary address, Niagara Univ. Undergrad. Shakespeare Conference, Nov. 2013; ASECS, 2014, 2016; NEMLA, 2016; Shakespeare Pedagogy and Adaptation (Humanities Inst., Univ. at Buffalo), Apr. 2016. Statement As a delegate for New York State, I plan to represent the interests and needs of graduate students and contingent faculty members in the profession. I have a proven track record of advocacy for these groups through my institutional service as a voting graduate student member in my department, my work on the Candidate Information – 43

Executive Committee and Graduate Review Committee in my department, my service as both an executive board officer and a senator for my departmental graduate student organization within the Graduate Student Association at the University at Buffalo, and my organizing work with the Buffalo Adjunct Movement. I am committed to providing a voice for graduate students and contingent faculty members within the MLA and to supporting efforts to make the work of the primary professional organization in our field more reflective of our needs. I believe the MLA can and should take a strong stand in support of a living wage, benefits, and improved working conditions for its contingent faculty members. I also believe that the MLA should dedicate more resources to professional development and mentoring opportunities for graduate student members, especially as we look ahead toward navigating the job market.

III. Middle Atlantic (5 contests) Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia

120. Matthew Robert Bush. Assoc. prof. Spanish and Hispanic studies, Lehigh Univ. PhD, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder. Dir., Latin Amer. Studies Program, Lehigh Univ., 2012– . Frank Hook Asst. Professorship, Lehigh Univ., 2013–15. LASA. Publications include Pragmatic Passions: Melodrama and Latin American Social Narrative (2014); coed., Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America: Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era (2016); contrib., La luz y la guerra: El cine de la Revolución mexicana (2010); articles in A contracorriente, Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana, MLN, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana, Revista iberoamericana, Texto crítico. Statement As the crisis of the humanities persists, it is crucial for the MLA to continue to provide a space for dialogue and support to all of us across the profession. My interest in serving as a regional representative springs from my desire to advocate for colleagues in our profession on crucial topics including declining enrollments, insufficient faculty governance, and the increasingly vocational nature of higher education. At a time when we are faced with shrinking budgets and increasing labor demands, the MLA can equip us with tools to better confront professional challenges and to better meet the needs of our students. With regard to teaching, the MLA can give force to the importance of language arts in the contemporary period of globalization and changing demographics of United States society. My research on mass media and its technologies would be valuable to a consideration of the ways in which the MLA can continue to provide up- to-date venues for dialogue on the challenges of work in the contemporary humanities. I would be honored to be elected to this post, and my administrative experience as director of a Latin American studies program and my experience as cochair of the mass media and popular culture section of LASA will help me to serve as a regional representative in the Delegate Assembly.

121. Rachel Price. Assoc. prof. Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton Univ. PhD, Duke Univ. Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, 2002–06; Mellon summer doctoral seminar participant, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2006; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Brown Univ., 2008–10; Jonathan Dickinson Bicentennial Preceptorship, Princeton Univ., 2013–16. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Cuban and Cuban Diasporic, 2015–Jan. 2020. Publications include The Object of the Atlantic: Concrete Aesthetics in Cuba, Brazil, and Spain, 1868–1968 (2014), Planet/Cuba: Art, Culture, and the Future of the Island (2015); contrib., Crítica de la acumulación (2010), Sobre Sousândrade (2015), Poesía y poéticas digitales/electrónicas/tecnos/New-Media en América Latina: Definiciones y exploraciones (2016); articles in Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture, Habana elegante, Luso- Brazilian Review, Grey Room, Hispanic Review, New Literary History. 44 – Candidate Information

Statement As a scholar who is at a fairly early stage in her career, I approach the possible work as a delegate with the awareness of how the association often appears to be more a gatekeeper of potential and scarce employment than a source of meaningful support for emerging scholars and adjuncts. I look forward to thinking together about how the association can help the bulk of its constituency on issues such as scarce and precarious employment, student debt, and the closure of departments. Needed improvements might begin, for instance, with revisiting the proposal—adopted by other professional associations—to abolish the prohibitively costly MLA conference interview. My own recent work on environmental crisis has also led me to value greatly the role that aesthetics and speculative thought can play in generating alternatives to some of these same contemporary problems, so I hope also to advance the importance of the humanities in generating new models for planetary crises. ☼ 122. Emily C. Francomano. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Georgetown Univ. PhD, Columbia Univ. Research grant, Prog. for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Univs., 1999; Fulbright fellowship (Spain), 1999–2000; ACLS fellowship, spring 2008. John K. Walsh Award (for outstanding article in La corónica), 2002; Best Translation Award (for Three Spanish Querelle Texts), Soc. for the Study of Early Modern Women, 2014. Panelist, NEH, 2013. Exec. board (2014– ) and first vice pres. (2015–17), Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas (pre-1800). MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Medieval Hispanic Langs., Lits., and Cultures, 2008–Jan. 2013. Assoc. ed., La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 2009– . Ed. boards: Medieval Review, 2010–12; Revista de estudios hispánicos, 2015– . Publications include Wisdom and Her Lovers in Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature (2008); ed. and trans., Three Spanish Querelle Texts: Grisel and Mirabella, The Slander against Women, and The Defense of Ladies against Slanderers by Pere Torrellas and Juan de Flores. A Bilingual Edition and Study (2013); contrib., St Katherine of Alexandria: Texts and Contexts in Western Medieval Europe (2003), Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (2006), Medieval Conduct Literature: An Anthology of Vernacular Guides to Behaviour for Youths, with English Translations (2009), The Inner Life of Women in Medieval Romance Literature: Grief, Guilt, and Hypocrisy (2011), The Practice of the Bible in the Western Middle Ages: Production, Reception, and Performance in Western Christianity (2011), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Carmen Martín Gaite (2013); articles in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, La corónica, eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies, Fifteenth-Century Studies, Hispanic Review, Letras femeninas, Mediterranean Studies, Renaissance Quarterly, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Titivillus. Statement I have been a member of the MLA since 1998 and served from 2008 to 2013 on the executive committee for what is now the forum called LLC Medieval Iberian. In my fifteen years at Georgetown University, I have served as director of undergraduate studies and director of graduate studies (literature) for the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and also as director of the Program for Comparative Literature. More recently, I have participated in ongoing work on rethinking the PhD in my home department and more broadly in Georgetown’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, motivated by my desire to maintain intellectual rigor in the face of the prioritizing of market-driven curricular design. While I applaud efforts to improve conditions for adjuncts due to dwindling prospects for secure and fairly compensated teaching positions, I believe we also need to fight for restoring the levels of support for public higher education necessary for opening tenure lines and for keeping humanities study accessible. I am also interested in promoting greater communication between MLA constituencies working in English and those working in foreign languages, particularly Spanish. I would welcome the opportunity to represent colleagues from the many different types of institutions in our region and to work actively as a delegate furthering the MLA’s continuing mission to promote the humanities, the teaching and study of languages and literatures, and the academic freedom that protects the integrity of our work. Candidate Information – 45

123. Effie Rentzou. Assoc. prof. French, Princeton Univ. PhD, Université Paris-Sorbonne (Paris 4). Exec. board and ch., Grad. Studies Comm., Modern Greek Studies Assn., 2011–15; selection comm., Prix Recherche au présent, 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies Intl. Colloquium, 2014–17. Advisory board, Journal of Greek Media and Culture, 2013– . Publications include Littérature malgré elle: Le surréalisme et la transformation du littéraire (2010); contrib., Surréalisme et politique—Politique du surréalisme (2007), Plurilinguisme et avant-gardes (2011), Poésie et politique au XXe siècle (2011), A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism (2016); articles in Symposium, L’Esprit Créateur, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. Statement I am honored by the nomination to represent the Middle Atlantic region in the Delegate Assembly. In an academic climate in which there is a generalized lament on the decline and the demise of the humanities, I am interested in addressing this discourse with dynamic responses that would stay away from the temptation of instrumentalizing the humanities—modeling them on hard sciences or social sciences in terms of results, productivity, and usefulness. This is especially true for foreign languages and cultures, as their place in the university is increasingly circumscribed by utilitarian criteria that define a foreign language as a tool of efficiency in an increasingly globalized world and very often dissociate the language from its culture and history. As a delegate my main goal would be to work toward reversing this trend that affects all aspects of our professional life, from our undergraduate teaching and curricula to institutional politics to our scholarship. ☼ 124. Robert Lawrence Caserio. Prof. English, comparative lit., and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Yale Univ. Cowinner, Barbara Perkins and George Perkins Prize (for The Novel in England, 1900–1950), Intl. Soc. for the Study of Narrative (ISSN), 2001. Dir., Western Humanities Conference, 1988– 89; codir., Univ. of Utah Humanities Center, 1988–90. Pres., ISSN, 1998–99; trustee, Joseph Conrad Soc. of America, 2016– . MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Late-19th- and Early-20th-Century English Lit., 1992–96; Comm. on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 1994–96; Delegate Assembly, 1994–96, 1997–99, 2010–Jan. 2013; PMLA Advisory Comm., 1995–98; exec. comm., Div. on 20th-Century English Lit., 1998–2002; exec. comm., Div. on Gay Studies in Lang. and Lit., 2004–08; PMLA Ed. Board, 2009–11. Coed., Journal of Modern Literature, 2004– ; nonfiction ed., Western Humanities Review, 1992–2002. Advisory comms.: Narrative, 1996– ; Powys Journal, 2007– ; Soundings, 2014– ; Modern Language Quarterly, 2014– . Publications include Plot, Story, and the Novel: From Dickens and Poe to the Modern Period (1979), The Novel in England, 1900–1950: History and Theory (1999); ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Twentieth-Century English Novel (2009); ed. (for lit. entries), Twentieth-Century Britain: An Encyclopedia (1995); coed., The Cambridge History of the English Novel (2012); contrib., Outside Modernism: In Pursuit of the English Novel, 1900–30 (2000), Modernism and the Individual Talent: Re- Canonizing Ford Madox Ford (2002), Ford Madox Ford’s Modernity (2003), The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature (2004), The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (2nd ed., 2005), A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction (2006), Fiction’s Present: Situating Contemporary Narrative Innovation (2008), The Oxford Handbook of Modernisms (2010), The Encyclopedia of the Novel (2011), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (2013), A Handbook of Modernism Studies (2013), Modernism and Autobiography (2014), Facing Melville, Facing Italy: Democracy, Politics, Translation (2014), Porn Archives (2014), The American Isherwood (2015); articles in Antaeus, Grand Street, Raritan, American Literary History, Symplokē, Modern Fiction Studies, Modern Language Quarterly, South Atlantic Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, Soundings, Journal of Narrative Literature, Henry James Review, D. H. Lawrence Review, Powys Review. 46 – Candidate Information

Statement The MLA must increase the attractiveness of English and other modern language studies to undergraduates, who are the source of all our resources for teaching and scholarship. I would urge the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee to propose and invite suggestions about how we can most comprehensively capture the interest of our youngest constituents. The attraction must not depend on “fast reading” and “fast writing,” phenomena that already twenty years ago Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art denominated as modes of “thoughtless thought.” Those modes environ us and tempt us to sign on. They can be withstood by the association’s and the Delegate Assembly’s ability to stimulate a mindfully meditated comprehension of the world’s natural languages and its artificial ones. Slow reading and slow writing harbor powerful virtues! Our turn to world literature and the association’s revisions of its divisional structure impress me as essential signs of a will to speak to students, and to engage them, on the best contemporary grounds, without intellectual compromise. The enlargement of thought remains our job, the one we can most control despite the sad vagaries of the job market. To continue to do our work in the face of the corporate university’s (and the corporate college’s) ever-increasing profit-motivated variants of thoughtlessness, the association needs to exemplify freedom of inquiry for undergraduate and graduate students as well as for faculty members, whether tenured or untenured. I hope to contribute to the Delegate Assembly’s share of responsibility in the modeling and maintenance of such autonomy.

125. E. Jane Hedley. K. Laurence Stapleton Prof. of English, Bryn Mawr Coll. PhD, Bryn Mawr Coll. Assoc. provost, Bryn Mawr Coll., 1999–2002. Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1966–67; AAUW fellowship, 1980–81. Sears Roebuck Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, Bryn Mawr Coll., 1990; Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching, Bryn Mawr Coll., 2012. Exec. comm., Spenser Soc., 1989–93. Publications include Power in Verse: Metaphor and Metonymy in the Renaissance Lyric (1988), I Made You to Find Me: The Coming of Age of the Woman Poet and the Politics of Poetic Address (2009); coed., In the Frame: Women’s Ekphrastic Poetry from Marianne Moore to Susan Wheeler (2009); contrib., The Spenser Encyclopedia (1991), Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry (2000), Reading, Writing, and Research: Undergraduates as Scholars in Literary Studies (2009), The Literary Encyclopedia (online, 2011), Critical Insights: Coming of Age (2012); articles in English Literary Renaissance, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Style, Genre, Narrative, Hypatia, Raritan, Literature Compass, ADE Bulletin, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching. Statement I have been a member of the MLA for forty years, while teaching English Renaissance literature and poetry of all periods at Bryn Mawr College. The value and viability of the liberal arts are particular interests of mine, and so is the teaching of writing. I rely on the MLA to keep me abreast of new developments and ongoing conversations, both in the fields where I do scholarship and, more broadly, as concerns the future of literary studies and the changing landscape of American higher education. Collectively we have a powerful voice, which we have used effectively to weigh in on matters of urgent professional concern. Of particular urgency right now are the future of graduate study in the humanities, the rising cost of higher education, and the growing adjunctification of the professoriat. More specific to the MLA is the question of whether to continue to host departmental search interviews at the convention, now that more and more departments are choosing instead to interview at a distance through videoconferencing. I think we need to get out ahead of this trend, either by discontinuing convention interviews or by subsidizing convention attendance for job candidates. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I will be excited to contribute to these and other conversations about the priorities and the future of the MLA. ☼ 126. Leslie Zarker Morgan. Prof. Italian and French, Loyola Univ., MD. PhD, Yale Univ. NEMLA summer fellowship, 1990; ACLS travel grant, 1994; Fulbright research scholarship (France), Sept.–Dec. 2004; NEH translation grant, 2014–16. Visiting appointment: Università Candidate Information – 47 degli Studi di Padova, May–June 2013. Sec.-treasurer (1998–2001), vice pres. (2010–13), and pres. (2013– 16), North Amer. Branch, Intl. Courtly Lit. Soc.; vice pres. (2001–03) and pres. (2003–06), Amer.-Canadian Branch, Société Rencesvals; vice pres. (2006–09) and pres. (2009–12), Bureau International, Société Rencesvals; founding member (2011– ) and meeting organizer (2011, 2014), Cenacolo Filologico of Baltimore. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Medieval and Renaissance Italian Lit., 2003–07. Publications include ed., La geste grancor: Edition of the Chansons de geste of MS. Marc. Fr. XIII (=256) (2009); trans., Ludovico Ariosto, Five Cantos (1992); coed., Dante: Summa Medievalis (1995), The Foreign Language Classroom: Bridging Theory and Practice (1995), Approaches to Teaching the Song of Roland (2006), “Si sai encore moult bon estoire, chançon moult bone et anciene”: Studies in the Text and Context of Old French Narrative in Honour of Joseph J. Duggan (2015), The Epic Imagination in Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Alice Colby-Hall (2016); guest coed., Olifant (1996, 2006); contrib., Aspects de l’épopée romane: Mentalité, idéologies, intertextualités (1995), La cultura dell’Italia padana e la presenza francese nei secoli XIII–XV (2001), The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature across the Disciplines (2003), Les chansons de geste (2005), Teaching French Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation (2011), In Limine Romaniae: Chanson de geste et épopée européenne (2012), Chanter de geste: L’art épique et son rayonnement (2013), Epic Connections / Rencontres épiques (2015), Boccaccio veneto: Settecento anni di incroci mediterranei a Venezia (2016), Carlo Magno in Italia e la fortuna dei libri di cavalleria (2016); articles in Italian Poetry Review, Francigena, Italica, Forum Italicum, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes / Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, Medioevo romanzo, Olifant, Reinardus, Humor, Neophilologus, Italian Culture, CALICO Journal, Computer Assisted Language Learning, Canadian Modern Language Review, Literary and Linguistic Computing, Canadian Journal of Italian Studies, Foreign Language Annals, Canadian Journal of Linguistics. Statement It would be an honor to represent the mid-Atlantic region in the Delegate Assembly. I bring my experience of collaborating locally with different universities as well as my career in a comprehensive university and serving actively in professional organizations. The MLA needs to address all types of institutions, from research universities to community colleges, including those whose primary function is teaching and whose instructors are often torn between the need or desire for research and the day-to-day teaching and administrative life. The current crisis in the humanities must be addressed in an inclusive manner, allowing for different solutions appropriate to varied institutional missions. In recent years the MLA has priced itself out of the market for many professionals, between the membership fee and conference costs, as witnessed by Vancouver protests. These costs and structures need to be reconsidered, as does the function of the organization in professional life. Part of that reconsideration is to seek humane, realistic solutions— beyond rhetoric—to the current employment crisis in conjunction with our sister professional organizations, such as the American Historical Association, American Philosophical Association, and other groups. Collaboration and standing together eloquently in our diversity before the public offer both the best example and strongest answer to widespread skepticism toward the humanities.

127. Mary L. Poteau-Tralie. Prof. French, Rider Univ. PhD, Princeton Univ. Founder’s Day Faculty Appreciation Award, Rider Coll., 2005; Mazzotti Award in Women’s Leadership, Rider Coll., 2010; Frank N. Elliot Award for Distinguished Service, Rider Coll., 2015. Codir., Central Jersey–Penn Foreign Lang. Academic Alliance, 1994– . Board of referees, L’érudit franco-espagnol, 2011– . Publications include Voices of Authority: Criminal Obsession in Guy de Maupassant’s Short Works (1994); contrib., Land and Landscape in Francographic Literature (2007); articles and reviews in French Review, Dalhousie French Studies, Nineteenth Century French Studies, South Atlantic Review, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, L’érudit franco-espagnol. 48 – Candidate Information

Statement As we witness the closing of liberal arts programs nationwide in favor of narrowly focused vocational-technical training programs, it is clear that the arguments for such closures are not entirely economic but rather based on a politically motivated philosophical shift away from the humanities and the arts. Students in small private colleges and universities, as well as some public institutions, are deeply affected by this shift. The MLA has a moral obligation to work with our colleagues in institutions facing these draconian program cuts, for their students are traditionally those who were shut out of higher education in the past and who now face limited academic horizons that their peers in top-tier universities do not. We are all in this together as colleagues and scholars and must seek ways to use our resources to provide every student the opportunity for a transformational education based on a solid grounding in the liberal arts. If the trend toward vocational higher education goes unchecked, students who are funneled into these narrow programs cannot hope to be the leaders, innovators, and creators in their fields. I would work with my colleagues in the MLA to find ways to identify programs in danger and provide them with resources and a clear statement of value from the MLA to use to defend themselves, and I would encourage the MLA to pool resources and discuss ideas with colleagues in other academic organizations—AATF, AATG, AATSP, American Philosophical Association, and College Art Association, to name a few. ☼ 128. Erica Saldivar Garcia. Grad. student reading, writing, and literacy, Grad. School of Educ., Univ. of Pennsylvania. MSEd, Grad. School of Educ., Univ. of Pennsylvania. Institutional service (Univ. of Pennsylvania): ch., Student Community in Reading/Writing/Literacy, 2015– ; communications ch., Latin Amer. Grad. and Professional Student Assembly, 2015– . Gates Millennium Scholarship, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, 2008; field research grant, Latin Amer. and Latino Studies Program, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2014. Jorge Guillén Prize in Spanish Studies, Wellesley Coll., 2012. Conference presentations: EduCon 2.6 (Science Leadership Acad., Philadelphia), 2014; ACTFL, 2015. Statement It is an honor to be nominated to represent the Middle Atlantic region. During a time when STEM programs continue to be endorsed at every stage of education, it is crucial for the MLA to stress the importance of quality humanities programs in languages and literacy. As an early-career Spanish-language and literacy scholar, one of the foci of my work has been the need for culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogies and curricula for students typically referred to as heritage language learners. It is evident, however, that national education policies and emphases limit the funding and resources allocated to the development of such programs. Grounding my work with the MLA in its goal to strengthen the study and teaching of language and literature, it is my intention to enlist my colleagues in promoting the value of such programs, which necessarily requires that we move away from thinking of language and literature courses, departments, and faculty members as dispensable. This raises a series of interconnected topics that I hope to consider, discuss, and intervene in as a member of the Delegate Assembly.

129. Michael A. Smith. Grad. student English, Duquesne Univ. MA, Boston Coll. Institutional service: colloquia planning comm., Boston Coll., 2007–10; conference planning comm., Duquesne Univ., 2011–12. Conference presentations: Amer. Lit. Assn., 2013; Modernist Studies Assn., 2014; MLA, 2015, 2016. Statement I believe that influencing public policy on the humanities will be the most important work of the MLA in the years to come. I am passionate about advocating for the humanities in this way to expand their space and defend their relevancy within the public sphere. My career in government and foundation relations —cultivated alongside my graduate studies—has given me the ability to offer expertise to the MLA in its vital project of championing the humanities. Candidate Information – 49

As a scholar of geocriticism, I recognize the geographic nuances within such a diverse region as our own, and I believe it is important to keep these distinctions in mind when representing the Middle Atlantic in the Delegate Assembly. For the past five years, I have undertaken graduate studies in Pittsburgh, where I have both witnessed and participated in the economic and cultural upswing of the region and have glimpsed the future possibilities herein. As someone who has progressed through graduate degrees by working full- time in institutional development and part-time as an adjunct instructor, I know firsthand the experience of stitching together a teaching career across many campuses, and I can empathize with those heading down the alt-ac path. As your representative in the Delegate Assembly, I will use this background of inquiry and expertise to inform discussion on the MLA’s agenda, particularly concerning public advocacy and job growth.

IV. Great Lakes (6 contests) Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin

130. Jonathan David Burgoyne. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Ohio State Univ., Columbus. PhD, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. Ed., La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 2012– . Publications include Reading the Exemplum Right: Fixing the Meaning of El Conde Lucanor (2007); ed., El libro binario (2012); articles in Hispanic Review, La corónica, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies. Statement Over the last ten years we have all seen the decrease in support (at the state and federal levels) for the arts and humanities and a shift toward STEM education as a national priority. The role of language education has been reduced to skill-based training, and departments of so-called foreign languages have been cut or folded into new programs with a focus on professional training. The MLA must continue to define the value of an education grounded in the humanities and language arts and advocate for their continued support at all levels, from K–12 to our institutions of higher learning.

131. Juan Armando Rojas Joo. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Ohio Wesleyan Univ. PhD, Univ. of Arizona. Ch., Dept. of Modern Foreign Langs., Ohio Wesleyan Univ. (OWU), 2011– 16; Assoc. Dean for Diversity and Inclusion, OWU, 2016– . Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Amherst Coll., 2002–04; poet in residence, Universidade de Coimbra, 2011. Literary prize (for short story), Concurso Binacional de Cuentos, Fundación México, 2000; poetry prize, Concurso Literario de Poesía, Universidad de Monterrey (Mexico), 2003; Bishop Francis Emner Kearns Award (for outstanding scholarship, leadership, and service), OWU, 2009. Ed. boards: VozOtra: Revista hispanoamericana de poesía y crítica, 2005–06; Letras hispanas: Revista de literatura y cultura (Texas State Univ., San Marcos), 2011– . Publications include Lluvia de lunas (poems, 1999), Ceremonial de viento / Ceremonial of Wind (poems, 2006), Río vertebral / Vertebral River (poems, 2009), Luz/Light (poems, 2013), Santuarios desierto mar / Sanctuaries Desert Sea (poems, 2015); coed., Canto a una ciudad en el desierto: Encuentro de poetas en Ciudad Juárez (1998–2002): Antología (2004); coed. and cotrans., Sangre mía: Poesía de la frontera: Violencia, género e identidad en Ciudad Juárez / Blood of Mine: Poetry of Border: Violence, Gender, and Identity in Ciudad Juarez (2013); contrib. (of essays), Jorge Cuesta: La exasperada lucidez (2003), La obra poética de Minerva Margarita Villarreal: Estudios de la literatura del Noreste (2013); contrib. (of poems), Antología de la poesía latinoamericana del siglo XXI: El turno y la transición (1997), Eco de voces: Generación poética de los sesentas (2004), La mujer rota: Homenaje antológico a las mujeres del mundo en el centenario del natalicio de Simone de Beauvoir (2008), Tan lejos de Dios: Poesía mexicana en la frontera norte (2010), Multilingual Anthology: The Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2015 (2015), Plurivozes americanas: American Plural Voices / Plurivoces americanas (2015); articles in Frontera Norte II, Revista de literatura mexicana contemporánea, Puentes, Voz Otra: Hispanic American Review of Poetry and 50 – Candidate Information

Criticism, Revista de las fronteras, Fronteras: Revista de diálogo cultural, Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica, Journal of Latin American Literature, Arteletra. Statement At a time when higher education is advocating and continuously searching for more defined and comprehensive educational maps, the MLA can definitely play an important role in and benefit from the process. Due to its characteristics and advocacy work, the MLA can take the lead and innovate sustainable conditions of communication with other fields of study and offer higher education the resources and essential elements for academic diversity and inclusion. With its organizational experience and its increasing experience in research and teaching, the MLA can offer its members information on how to work with faculty members from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds. The MLA can also lead the way in creating more inclusive academic environments for faculty members and students from underrepresented groups, support equity, and even help review existing policies and procedures to minimize possible bias in higher education. Due to the nature of our discipline, networking with other fields of study will provide the ability to encourage the development of assorted curriculums and pedagogies. During the current academic branching- out trend, our discipline can engage increasingly diverse student and faculty populations and introduce students in all fields to a variety of global perspectives and languages. By doing so the MLA will continue supporting the intellectual and professional lives of its current and future members, and it will definitely advance in the many areas of the humanities as stated in its mission. I will support MLA members by advocating for these goals. ☼ 132. Todd Herzog. Prof. German studies, Univ. of Cincinnati. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Fulbright fellowship, 1997–98; DAAD fellowship, 2002; NEH fellowship, 2003; Ohio Humanities Council grant, 2004; fellow, Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, Univ. of Cincinnati, 2011–12. Univ. Honors Excellence in Teaching Award, Univ. of Cincinnati, 2005; member, Acad. of Fellows for Teaching and Learning, Univ. of Cincinnati, inducted 2012. Grant reviewer: SSHRC, Austrian Science Fund. Exec. comm. (ex officio), Austrian Studies Assn., 2012– ; German Studies Assn. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2014–Jan. 2017. Coed., Journal of Austrian Studies, 2012– . Publications include Crime Stories: Criminalistic Fantasy and the Culture of Crisis in Weimar Germany (2009); coed., A New Germany in a New Europe (2001), Rebirth of a Culture: Jewish Identity and Jewish Writing in German and Austria Today (2008), Tatort Germany: The Curious Case of German- Language Crime Fiction (2014), East West and Centre: Reframing Post-1989 European Cinema (2014); contrib., Gesichter der Weimarer Republik: Eine physiognomische Kulturgeschichte (2000), German Studies in the Post-Holocaust Age: The Politics of Memory, Identity, and Ethnicity (2000), Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der neunziger Jahre: Die Generation nach der Shoah (2002), Literature in Vienna at the Turn of the Centuries: Continuities and Discontinuities around 1900 and 2000 (2003), Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution (2007), Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era (2009), Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds: A Manipulation of Metacinema (2012), World Film Locations: Berlin (2012), World Film Locations: Vienna (2012), The Directory of World Cinema: Germany (2013), Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern Germany (2014), Recht und Moral (2015); articles in Text + Kritik, Modern Austrian Literature, Representations, German Quarterly. Statement I am honored to be nominated to represent the Great Lakes region in the Delegate Assembly. The MLA is a large and diverse organization that unites scholars and educators across areas of study. I have cherished this association since I began my graduate studies two decades ago for the ways in which it has bridged media, disciplines, languages, and methodologies. I also value the MLA in its role as the most important advocate for teaching and scholarship in modern languages. As we all know, these days we need a powerful advocate in order to continue to do what we got into this profession to do: produce and disseminate knowledge. Over the course of my career—in which I have spent more time preparing budgets and reports than I had anticipated when I began—I have learned not only that effective administration and service are Candidate Information – 51 important but that they can be a creative, scholarly act if done conscientiously and imaginatively. The Delegate Assembly continues and supports the valuable work that is shared in the scholarly panels across the MLA annual convention. If elected, I will advocate for effective ways to bridge divides between fields of study; between faculty members, students, and administration; and between the scholarly careers we imagined as graduate students and the realities of operating in today’s world of higher education.

133. Theodore Franks Rippey. Assoc. prof. German, Bowling Green State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Assoc. dean, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Bowling Green State Univ., 2013– . DAAD research fellowship, 1997–98. Ed., Brecht Yearbook, 2013– . Publications include guest coed., Colloquia Germanica (2011); contrib., The Many Faces of Weimar Cinema: Rediscovering Germany’s Filmic Legacy (2010), Publishing Culture and the “Reading Nation”: German Book History in the Long Nineteenth Century (2010), Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer (2012), The Total Work of Art: Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations (2016); articles in Brecht Yearbook, Cinema Journal, Colloquia Germanica, German Studies Review, Journal of Film and Video, Monatshefte. Statement The humanities have a dual charge in these times: develop new, more resonant and impactful practices in teaching and research and make a more persuasive public case for why those practices are most successful when they connect organically to the best traditions of what we do. My work as a teacher-scholar and as an administrator has provided me with a multifaceted understanding of the challenges and opportunities at hand. These include fostering among our students a more conscious, reflective appreciation of the value of humanities-based knowledge and skills and fostering among administrators and external constituencies a more concrete sense of how our intellectual enterprise is essential, not as training for a specific job but as preparation for a meaningful, productive life as a citizen and professional. As a member of the assembly I would promote professional development efforts by the association aimed at advancing collaborative, public humanities research and an applied humanities approach to teaching. I would also engage myself in assembly and association efforts to support and improve public advocacy for language, literary, and cultural studies. ☼ 134. Maggie Broner. Assoc. prof. Spanish, St. Olaf Coll. PhD, Univ. of Minnesota. Ch., Dept. of Romance Langs., St. Olaf Coll. Teacher of the Year, Minnesota chapter, AATSP, 2011. Certified oral proficiency tester, 2006–10; intl. conference organizing comm., Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), 2007; research project consultant, CARLA, 2010. Pres. elect (2003), pres. (2004–05), and past pres. (2006), Minnesota chapter, AATSP. Publications include contrib., Immersion Education: Practices, Policies, Possibilities (2011), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (2012); articles in Modern Language Journal, Foreign Language Annals. Statement I am honored to have been nominated to serve in the assembly. Throughout my professional life I have been deeply invested in building bridges to close the gap between language courses and major-level courses, between disciplines, between K–12 and tertiary education, and between literature and linguistics. I see assembly service as another opportunity to build bridges in our profession and to find common areas of interest and concern. I am particularly concerned with the attack on the humanities in general and the modern languages in particular and would like to work toward the articulation of a vision that puts literatures, languages, and the humanities at the center of a liberal education. It is essential to make a case for the importance of the development of critical thinking and empathy through the close analysis of multimodal and multilingual texts. For me, teaching is about empowering students to be informed citizens who develop empathy for diverse populations, their contexts, and their language(s)—and I think departments of literature 52 – Candidate Information and language must play a central role in this aspiration. I am also deeply concerned about the tension between the call for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work and the hyperespecialization that prevents our fields from talking to one another (e.g., linguistics, applied linguistics, English literature, foreign languages and literatures) and keeps us isolated in silos real and symbolic. I’d like to help see where the cracks are; like Leonard Cohen’s song says, “There is a crack . . . in everything / That’s how the light gets in.”

135. Cynthia Kauffeld. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Macalester Coll. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Publications include Andalusian Spanish: A Linguistic Study of 14th- and 15th-Century Texts from Sevilla and Córdoba (2011); articles in Bulletin of Spanish Studies, La corónica, Romance Philology. Statement I would welcome the opportunity to serve in the Delegate Assembly as a representative of the Great Lakes region and am honored by this nomination. The humanities in general and language departments in particular continue to find themselves on the defensive, called on to prove their worth against the tide of emphasis on the STEM fields and amid rising tuition costs, dwindling resources, and increased reliance on adjunct positions. In these circumstances, it is more important than ever that our professional organization, the MLA, reflect the voices of all its members, those from all corners of our region and from all positions within the professoriat, as it weighs in on the debate. I would appreciate the chance to work collaboratively with peers from across the region to address these challenges and to determine the best strategies to advocate for our place within the academy. My service as a representative of the humanities division on my institution’s campus-wide curriculum and governance committee has provided me with valuable experience working with colleagues from various disciplines; I believe this background would serve me well in the capacity of regional delegate. If elected, I would strive for greater accessibility to the MLA for all to share their opinions, and I would make every effort to pursue collective action seeking reasonable conditions of employment and compensation for all members of our profession. ☼ 136. Christine M. Cano. Assoc. prof. French, Case Western Reserve Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. Exec. comm., Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Case Western Reserve Univ., 2011–14. Marguerite A. Peyre Prize (for doctoral dissertation), Dept. of French, Yale Univ., 1997. External reviewer, ACLS New Faculty Fellows Program, 2011–12. Senator (representing east central district), Phi Beta Kappa Soc., 2015– . Publications include Proust’s Deadline (2006); contrib., Proust in Perspective: Visions and Revisions (2002), Le temps retrouvé Eighty Years After / 80 ans après: Critical Essays / Essais critiques (2009), Marcel Proust in Context (2013); articles in Bulletin des Amis d’André Gide, Bulletin Marcel Proust, Contemporary French Civilization, Romance Quarterly, Textual Practice. Statement My service commitments to my home institution and the profession are anchored in the Faculty Senate and other representative bodies whose concerns overlap with those of the MLA. Serving in the senate of Phi Beta Kappa has brought me into debates on matters that go to the heart of our current teaching environments: namely, freedom of inquiry and expression, academic integrity, and the value and purpose of liberal education. On a practical note, I have become skilled in the types of procedures that make the Delegate Assembly function, such as writing clear resolutions and communicating members’ viewpoints effectively within the constraints of parliamentary debate. As an elected regional delegate, I would do my best to dedicate these skills to the informed representation of the region’s varied interests.

137. Roser Coll-Gallo. Prof. Spanish, Cuyahoga Community Coll., Metropolitan Campus, OH. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. Student Support Services Award, Cuyahoga Community Coll. (CCC), 1997–2003, 2005; Metropolitan Campus President’s Citation for Excellence, CCC, 2000, 2001; Candidate Information – 53

Hispanic of the Year Award, CCC, 2004. Proposal reviewer, FIPSE, US Dept. of Educ., 1997; colead, Spanish Transfer Assurance Guide panel, Ohio Dept. of Higher Educ., 2014– .Latino/Hispanic Advisory Comm., Young Audiences of Greater Cleveland, 1999–2001. Board member, Northern Ohio chapter, AATSP, 1994–2005. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2002–04. Publications include coauthor, ¡Comunícate conmigo!, part one (2013; 3rd ed., 2015), ¡Comunícate conmigo!, part two (2014). Statement I appreciate the opportunity to serve the association if elected. We are concerned about higher education being constantly challenged by new demands from the private and public sectors, continuous financial cuts, social and technological changes, and political and institutional trends. Modern languages, literatures, cultures, the teaching profession, and the humanities in general are at the core of those challenges, and I strongly believe that it is through active service that we can positively and constructively overcome them. My service at Cuyahoga Community College—as College-Wide Foreign Languages Counterparts chair, as Metropolitan Campus Senate chair, and, currently, as Metropolitan Campus Foreign Languages Coordinator—has given me the opportunity to advocate for students and faculty members and to emphasize the advantages of acquiring a holistic education that above all includes the development of individuals who can adapt to change without losing perspective on the virtues and effects of a solid education. I offer the same commitment and passionate dedication to represent our region and to address the issues that currently concern our varied fields of interest. ☼ 138. John Dillon. Postdoctoral research fellow, Univ. of Notre Dame. PhD, Univ. of Notre Dame (ND). Asst. dir., Univ. Writing Center, ND. Notebaert Premier Fellowship, ND, 2009–15; USAID research fellowship (India), May–Aug. 2015; IBM research internship/fellowship (India), May–Aug. 2015. Codir., Hybrid Irelands conference, ND, 2012; codir., Conversations on Stories symposium, Keough-Naughton Notre Dame Center (Dublin), 2013. Cofounder and dir., Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, 2013– ; ed. asst., Notre Dame Review, 2009–11. Conference presentations: Digital Research in the Humanities and Arts, 2014; Intl. Writing Centers Assn., 2014; Amer. Folklore Soc., 2014; Amer. Conference for Irish Studies, 2015; MLA, 2015; Soc. for Learning Analytics Research, 2016; Intl. Educational Data Mining Soc., 2016. Publications include contrib., Folklore and Modern Irish Writing (2014); contrib. (of trans.), Seán Ó Ríordáin, Selected Poems / Rogha Dánta (2014). Statement There are significant ways in which our research, teaching, and publishing are evolving in relation to new digital methods. These methods complement traditional and valuable skills in literary studies. I have worked on digital publishing projects such as Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, data-mining projects such as the IBM-Notre Dame Smarter Education Collaboration, and many different text-mining projects. These skills can be used in tandem with traditional literary skills to produce new and creative research. These skills also give students and members of the MLA broader job appeal in areas such as publishing and data analytics both inside and outside an educational context. As a regional delegate, I would work to increase knowledge and access to these new research methods and showcase the potential of computational analysis in research, teaching, and publishing. Two major developments in literary studies are new literary, computational, and text-analysis methods and data-driven educational assessment. For the past two years, I have worked with IBM Research, India, to describe and predict student emotion in a MOOC context in order to make online learning more personalized. Similarly, although text-mining methods have been introduced to literary studies by a handful of digital humanities scholars, we are only at the tip of the iceberg regarding their impact. These skills provide a quantitative lens based in natural language processing, machine learning, and statistics, which can address traditional literary research questions such as authorship attribution or trend tracking. 54 – Candidate Information

139. Yuhan Huang. Grad. student comparative lit., Purdue Univ., West Lafayette. MA, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette (Purdue). Institutional service (Purdue): grad. asst., Sixth Sino- Amer. Symposium, Jan.–May 2013; recruitment comm., School of Langs. and Cultures, 2013–14; treasurer (2013–14) and pres. (2014–15), Asian Pacific Amer. Caucus; steering comm. sec. (2012–13), steering comm. ch. (2013–14), and advisory board (2014– ), Asian Amer. and Asian Resource and Cultural Center. First- Class Scholarship for Merit Students, Beijing Foreign Studies Univ., 2009; Lynn Fellowship, Purdue, 2010– 14. Outstanding Volunteer for Beijing Olympic Games, 2008; honorable mention, Asian Studies Award, 2014 Literary Awards, Dept. of English, Purdue; Five Students Who Move the World Forward, Purdue, 2014; Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research, Office of Interdisciplinary Grad. Programs, Purdue, 2014; Teaching Academy Grad. Teaching Award, School of Langs. and Cultures, Purdue, 2015. Conference presentations: ACLA, 2012, 2014; Midwest Popular Culture Assn., 2012; Purdue Philosophy and Lit. Conference (grad. conference), Oct. 2012; Sino-Amer. Comparative Lit. Symposium, Purdue, May 2013; Southeast Conference, Assn. for Asian Studies, 2014; Grad. Student Symposium, School of Langs. and Cultures, Purdue, Mar. 2014; Chinese Lang. Teachers Assn., 2014; ACTFL, 2014; MLA, 2015. Publications include coed., Mo Yan in Context: Nobel Laureate and Global Storyteller (2014). Statement I would be honored to serve as a member of the MLA Delegate Assembly. My interest is rooted in the commitment to promote cross-region, intercultural, and interdisciplinary collaborations as well as to increase the visibility of less represented languages and fields in the MLA. Coming from a comparative literature program, I’ve benefited tremendously from interdisciplinary studies. My own research topic includes aspects of literature, cinema, visuality, memory, history, and politics, and being able to work with professors and colleagues from these various areas provides me fresh perspective on issues related to narration and representation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China—how traumatic memories are twisted, modified, partially effaced, and retold through artistic expression. In addition to being an academic, I have also worked to bridge the divide between Asians and Asian Americans as a student activist, helping to found an Asian American and Asian Resource and Cultural Center at Purdue University. The experience has deepened my understanding of and belief in the power of vigorous collaboration among people from different disciplines, professional ranks, regions, and cultural backgrounds. As an international graduate student pursuing a doctoral degree in the Midwest and at an institution that takes most pride in science and engineering, I understand too well the feeling of trying to have my voice heard—but I will keep on trying. In a time of decreasing institutional support for the humanities, what we do really matters. ☼ 140. Sara Mattavelli. Grad. student Italian, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. MA, Univ. of Virginia. Institutional service (Univ. of Wisconsin [UW], Madison): Symposium Comm., Grad. Assn. of French and Italian Students (GAFIS), 2011–14; copres., GAFIS, 2013–14; TA Review Comm., GAFIS, 2013–15; symposium coch., GAFIS, 2014–15; Outreach Comm. and professional development coordinator, GAFIS, 2015–16. Amer. Assn. of Italian Studies (AAIS) travel grant, 2015; AATI dissertation award, 2015; ACTFL conference scholarship, 2015; Future Faculty Partner, Teaching Acad., UW, Madison, 2016. Various academic/teaching excellence or leadership/service awards, Dept. of French and Italian, UW, Madison, 2010–11, 2011–12, 2012–13, 2013–14, 2014–15; Exceptional Service Award, Grad. School, UW, Madison, 2015. Conference presentations: Kentucky Foreign Lang. Conference, 2010; NEMLA, 2013, 2015; Wisconsin Assn. of Foreign Lang. Teachers, 2013; New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian Cinema (Indiana Univ., Bloomington), Apr. 2014; AAIS, 2015; AATI/ACTFL, 2015; Amer. Assn. of Univ. Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Lang. Programs session at 2016 MLA convention; Hazardous Materials (GAFIS Symposium, UW, Madison), Apr. 2016. Publications include articles in Luci e ombra, La Fusta: Journal of Italian Literature and Culture; reviews in Italica, Annali d’italianistica. Candidate Information – 55

Statement I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the Delegate Assembly. I have been involved in institutional and professional service throughout my graduate student career, and I would be happy to participate in discussions about the humanities in higher education and MLA policies. I am particularly interested in promoting professional development opportunities for graduate students. In the past year I have been working with administrators within the graduate school at my institution to create professional development workshops for students. In this role I learned a lot about existing needs among students and mentors and how professional development is essential for students to be competitive on the job market, both in academia and outside. Alt-ac careers are a hot topic and will likely gain even more importance in the years to come. For this reason, it is important that graduate students’ advisers and mentors work with their institutions and the MLA to better understand the reality of the current job market and be prepared to help their advisees. Another issue that I care about concerns the role of teaching assistants in the development of language curricula and how this work influences their approach to shaping the future of foreign language programs. The opportunity to discuss ideas and concerns with faculty members is important for the professional development of TAs and for language programs themselves. Since TAs are often the first contact for students, ensuring they have all the resources they need to mentor students is paramount.

141. Lindsey Smith. Grad. student French, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. MA, Univ. of Wisconsin (UW), Madison. Institutional service (UW, Madison): copres., Grad. Assn. of French and Italian Students (GAFIS), 2013–14; symposium coch., GAFIS, 2015–16. Honored Instructor, Univ. Housing, UW, Madison, 2009–10; various academic/teaching excellence or leadership awards, Dept. of French and Italian, UW, Madison, 2009–10, 2010–11, 2013–14, 2015–16. Conference presentations: SCMLA, 2013; MLA, 2016. Statement It would be my pleasure to represent the Great Lakes region as a graduate student delegate. Over the course of my doctoral studies, I have had the opportunity to teach at large public institutions in the United States and France as well as at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. Besides allowing me to experience a variety of academic contexts, these opportunities have also served as a reminder that financial pressures affect institutions of all sizes, particularly with regard to support for the humanities. While budgetary issues are especially pertinent for graduate students and contingent faculty members, my interest in serving as a member of the Delegate Assembly stems from a desire to strengthen relations across ranks as well as across disciplines. Interdisciplinary collaboration has been an integral part of my own work, which is focused on Caribbean literature in French. My current project brings together musical influences from France, a number of African nations, and the Americas. Of course, interdisciplinarity offers benefits that extend beyond the realm of research. In the humanities, our work offers an important complement to advances in other areas. With this in mind, I am dedicated to encouraging conversations in the classroom and beyond through the use of digital media. Communication technology is an indispensible tool for cultivating relationships in our increasingly interconnected world. Additionally, such resources can help us emphasize the value of the humanities by facilitating exchanges among students, faculty members, and administrators.

V. South (6 contests) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virgin Islands, Virginia

142. Rachel Bowser. Assoc. prof. English, Georgia Gwinnett Coll. PhD, Emory Univ. Pres., Faculty Senate, Georgia Gwinnett Coll., 2015–17. Wye Summer Seminar fellow, Aspen Inst., 2016. Managing ed., Notes on Teaching English (Georgia Carolinas CEA), 2014– . Publications include coed., Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2016); articles in South Atlantic Review, Neo-Victorian Studies, Studies in the Novel, Genre. 56 – Candidate Information

Statement As a teacher and faculty leader at an access-mission four-year college, I am invested in conversations and initiatives that focus us on the shifting demographics of undergraduate education and the challenges and opportunities facing faculty members in teaching-intensive positions. For most of us, this involves a broad look at teaching and student engagement issues from the first-year English classes through undergraduate English research. I am convinced that the MLA can take deliberate steps to more effectively represent these undergraduates and faculty members, and as a delegate, I would advocate that it do so. Some opportunities include more deliberate and intentional focus on promoting innovative pedagogy; more public and inclusive discussions about access and affordability; intentional encouragement of the recruiting and retention of diverse faculty members who reflect the diversity of student bodies; adding organizational support to efforts that expand access and retention, like the lobby to simplify the FAFSA; and advocacy for smart metrics for measuring retention, progression, and graduation.

143. Anna Maria Jones. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Central Florida. PhD, Univ. of Notre Dame. Fellow, Summer Inst. in Literary Studies, Natl. Humanities Center, 2010; fellow, Freeman Foundation Summer Inst. in Japan Studies, 2011. Teaching Incentive Program Award (for excellence in teaching), Univ. of Central Florida, 2006, 2011, 2016. NEH summer seminar leader, 2015. Publications include Problem Novels: Victorian Fiction Theorizes the Sensational Self (2007); contrib., The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (2010), A Companion to Sensation Fiction (2011), The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (2015); articles in Novel, Victorian Literature and Culture, Criticism, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History, Neo-Victorian Studies, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, European Romantic Review. Statement We are inundated with messages about the crisis in the humanities, and indeed there are substantial problems that warrant alarm: the exploitation of contingent and graduate student labor, the decline of shared governance and the tenure system and the concomitant rise of corporate models of administration, the erosion of academic freedom, and the massive funding cuts to higher education. Yet, despite these desperate times, I continue to believe in the value of the work we do as educators and researchers and, just as important, in our collective ability to effect positive change in the world. I believe that we can collaborate to meet challenges, both locally and globally. In my roles as faculty member and administrator at UCF, I have found ways to work with colleagues to support humanities research and teaching, whether by writing grants with librarians to secure funding for digital collections or by facilitating interdisciplinary writing workshops for faculty members seeking publications for promotion and tenure or by working with English graduate students to launch a departmental symposium. These are some small-scale efforts to leverage limited resources to benefit my local academic community, but collectively we have the ability to bring about much more substantive and wide-ranging structural reforms to improve working conditions in our profession even as we sustain our commitments to our students, our intellectual labors, and our communities. I welcome the opportunity to serve our profession in this broader capacity in the Delegate Assembly. For more information on my work, visit my faculty page. ☼ 144. David Arbesu. Asst. prof. Spanish, Univ. of South Florida. PhD, Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. Juror, La corónica Book Award, 2016. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2013–Jan. 2016. Ed. or advisory boards: Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2011– ; Boletín de la Asociación Hispánica de Literatura Medieval, 2012– . Publications include ed., Crónica de Flores y Blancaflor (2011); ed. and trans., José Zorrilla, Don Juan Tenorio: A Religious-Fantasy Drama in Two Parts (2012), Gonzalo Solís de Merás, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida: A New Manuscript (2016); articles in La corónica, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Cervantes, La perinola: Revista de investigación quevediana, Hispanófila, Hispamérica, eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies, Miríada hispánica. Candidate Information – 57

145. Jose Cardenas Bunsen. Asst. prof. Spanish, Vanderbilt Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. Raúl Porras Barrenechea Research Award, Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Lima, Perú, 1998; Lenie Morales Prize, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, Yale Univ., 2003. Publications include Escritura y derecho canónico en la obra de fray Bartolomé de las Casas (2011); contrib., Signs of Power in Habsburg Spain and the New World (2013); articles in Lexis, Colonial Latin American Review, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Historica. Statement My interest in serving the MLA stems from my conviction that the scholarly community has an ethical obligation to be permanently searching for new ways to address the current trends that affect work conditions, the humanistic teaching of languages and cultures, and the constant evolution of our field. I will take this opportunity to advocate strongly to (1) address the pressing issue of the decrease in tenure and tenure-track faculty positions and reduce the reliance on the adjunct workforce, (2) help those colleagues currently in contingent positions reduce the level of insecurity, (3) foster programs and workshops to assist advanced graduate students enter the workforce, (4) protect the nature of the humanistic teaching of languages and cultures by strengthening programs that sustain the study of different languages and their respective cultural traditions, and (5) favor the funding of more research in subjects freely chosen by humanities scholars while meeting the need to investigate the impact of new media on the way we think and see our field. These matters of crucial interest need to be permanently discussed and voiced at the MLA. If elected to the assembly, I will also remain open to other matters that will arise in the exercise of my duties as representative. ☼ 146. Andy Doolen. Prof. English, Univ. of Kentucky. PhD, Univ. of Arizona. Dir. of grad. studies, Dept. of English, Univ. of Kentucky, 2013–16; Faculty Senate, Univ. of Kentucky, 2013–16. Advisory board, Charles Brockden Brown Soc., 2006–13. Ed. board, South Carolina Review, 2001–03; contributing ed., American Literary History; advisory board, Arizona Quarterly. Publications include Fugitive Empire: Locating Early American Imperialism (2005), Territories of Empire: U.S. Writing from the Louisiana Purchase to Mexican Independence (2014); contrib., The Cambridge History of American Women’s Literature (2012), Mapping Region in Early American Writing (2015); articles in American Literature, American Literary History, Studies in American Fiction. Statement I would be honored to represent the South in the Delegate Assembly. Like many of you, I am deeply concerned by the erosion of higher education, which, not coincidentally, has been marked by the steady marginalization of the humanities on STEM-fixated campuses. I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with my colleagues in addressing this crisis. While I have always been actively engaged in campus and professional issues, my recent tenure as a director of graduate studies provided invaluable training in how to achieve educational reforms within a large institution. I believe this experience would make me an effective MLA delegate. Thank you for your consideration.

147. Peter Swanson. Assoc. prof. world langs. and cultures, Georgia State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wyoming. Research scholar award, Center for Teaching and Learning, Georgia State Univ., 2010–11. Leadership award, Southeast Assn. for Employment in Educ., 2010; Postsecondary Leadership Award, Foreign Lang. Assn. of Georgia (FLAG), 2010; Univ. Prof. of the Year Award, Georgia chapter, AATSP, 2013. Board of directors, FLAG, 2009–11; board of directors, Georgia chapter, AATSP, 2010–14; board of directors and journal ed., Southern Conference on Lang. Teaching, 2010–15; pres. (2016) and board of directors (2014–17), ACTFL. Publications include Identifying and Recruiting Language Teachers: A Research-Based Approach (2013); coauthor, Understanding the World Language edTPA: Research-Based Policy and Practice (2016); 58 – Candidate Information ed., Cuentos preferidos: An Anthology of 19th-Century Spanish Very Short Stories (2011); coed., Engaging Language Learners through Technology Integration: Theory, Applications, and Outcomes (2014); contrib., Free and Open Source Software for E-Learning: Issues, Successes, and Challenges (2011), Progress in Education, vol. 22 (2010), Social Identity (2011), Readings in Language Studies, vol. 3 (2012), Open-Source Technologies for Maximizing the Creation, Deployment, and Use of Digital Resources and Information (2013), Handbook of Research on Education and Technology in a Changing Society (2014); articles in Canadian Modern Language Review, Foreign Language Annals, Hispania, IALLT Journal, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Language Teaching Research, NECTFL Review. Statement Language teaching in the United States is again at the forefront of discussion as Congress recently commissioned a study about language teaching and learning. Spearheaded by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, this study comes at a time when our society is more multilingual and multicultural than ever before. Leading experts in the field are currently examining the current state of language education in the United States. Their mission is to predict the nation’s future education needs and to offer recommendations of how to meet those needs. At a time when globalization is the term du jour, we must advocate strongly that all languages be an integral part of internationalization efforts. Language is at the heart of the human experience, and each of us needs to become an advocate, beginning and sustaining conversations concerning language learning’s influences on economic growth, cultural diplomacy, and future generations’ productivity. Despite dwindling interest in language learning, as shown by decreasing enrollments in many languages, we must be proactive in our communities, states, and nation and advocate in favor of language teaching and learning. Advocacy is not something that only the MLA or ACTFL should do on our behalf. We must start and continue conversations about language teaching and learning and insist on placing languages at the center of all levels of study instead of relegating language study to elective status. ☼ 148. Sharon Patricia Johnson. Assoc. prof. French studies, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Dir., Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), 2016–19. Univ. Exemplary Dept. Award (for collaboration with business school), Virginia Tech, fall 2003; Diggs Teaching Scholar Award, Virginia Tech, spring 2004; William E. Wine Teaching Award, Virginia Tech, spring 2011. Exec. board, Virginia chapter, AATF, 2000– 05; comité scientifique, Groupe de Linguistique Appliquée des Télécommunications, 2001–02. Publications include Boundaries of Acceptability: Flaubert, Maupassant, Cézanne, and Cassatt (2000); contrib., Gender/Genre (2010); articles in French Cultural Studies, Cahiers de l’APLIUT, Romance Quarterly, Le français dans le monde, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, French Review, Excavatio. Statement I taught at Colorado College for one year and have been at Virginia Tech since 1998. I have been highly involved in service that enhances both the undergraduate and graduate (MA program) student experience. On my campus and nationally, I have also been committed to cross-cultural pedagogy and articulating a vision for French studies in the twenty-first century. One of my concerns is quality education for undergraduates and graduates. For three years (2007– 09), I led a workshop for all graduate students at Virginia Tech on how to be a more successful GTA. In this interactive workshop of 500 students, the goal was to make graduate students more thoughtful teachers, which in turn can make their undergraduate classrooms fairer and more engaged environments. Another concern is addressing all aspects of the teaching of modern foreign languages, cultures, and literatures—the canon, our disciplinary norms (e.g., class size), and experimenting with distance learning and Web-based cross-cultural student projects. We need to articulate the importance of the humanities to students, professors, and administrators. I have been our department’s career adviser for the last eighteen years and have found effective ways to frame the importance of literary studies for undergraduates and their parents. We also need to address the multifaceted problems of the job market for recent graduate students and those who have been hired as Candidate Information – 59 contingent faculty members. Poor wages and unknown, and thus stressful, work conditions are inherent in being hired in as an adjunct professor.

149. Mary A. Watt. Assoc. prof. Italian, Univ. of Florida. PhD, Univ. of Toronto. Assoc. dean, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Florida (UF). Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowship in the Humanities, Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, UF, 2011. Anderson Scholars Faculty Honoree, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UF, 2007. 2014. Sec., Canadian Soc. for Italian Studies, 2016– ; planning comm., 2017 Diversity, Learning, and Student Success conference, Assn. of Amer. Colls. and Univs. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Medieval and Renaissance Italian Lit., 2011–Jan. 2016. Advisory board, Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature. Publications include The Cross that Dante Bears: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and the Cruciform Church in the Divine Comedy (2005); contrib., The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (2001), Theatre and the Visual Arts (2001), Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia (2003), The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena (2004); articles in Dante Füzetek / Quaderni danteschi (Hungary), Spunti e ricerche, NEMLA Italian Studies, MLN, Quaderni d’italianistica. Statement One of the greatest challenges facing the academy right now is the need for greater diversity and inclusion across university and college campuses. Throughout the country and beyond, institutions of higher learning are struggling to determine, articulate, and implement best practices for the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority faculty members. At the same time, we are rethinking how we can effectively respond to students’ concerns about their learning environment and opportunities for success. Increasingly, these conversations involve questions of course offerings and pedagogy that are connected with the research that informs and often drives our teaching and curriculum design. My own experience as an associate dean tasked with overseeing my college’s efforts to become more diverse and inclusive has led me to rethink much of what I do on a daily basis. It has particularly sparked my imagination as an educator and scholar, causing me to reimagine my research as well as the classroom experience that I create and through which I engage my students. In that same vein, I see this as an auspicious time for the MLA and a tremendous opportunity for all of us. The MLA has historically been extraordinarily conscious of the crucial role that education plays in social and academic transformation. Now, perhaps more than ever, we must continue to be an eloquent voice and effective force in shaping the academy’s response to the urgent call for change. I welcome the opportunity to be part of both. ☼ 150. Jeanne L. Gillespie. Prof. Spanish, Univ. of Southern Mississippi. PhD, Arizona State Univ. Professional development workshop participant, Stone Center for Latin Amer. Studies and Vanderbilt Univ. Center for Latin Amer. Studies, June 2011; William Winter Scholar, Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, 2012; project dir., NEH digitization and preservation grant, Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, Univ. of Southern Mississippi, 2015–16. Board of directors (2008– ) and board sec. (2014– ), Mississippi Humanities Council. Exec. board (2014– ), vice pres. (2014), and pres. (2015), SCMLA. Publications include Saints and Warriors: Tlaxcalan Perspectives in the Conquest of Tenochtitlan (2004); coed., Women’s Voices and the Politics of the Spanish Empire: From Convent Cell to Imperial Court (2008); guest ed., Southern Quarterly (2014, 2015); contrib., The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers: Critical Essays (2007), Celibacy and Religious Traditions (2008), Teaching World Literature (2009), Laura Esquivel’s Mexican Fictions (2010); articles in Southern Quarterly, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Hipertexto, Cuaderno internacional de estudios hispánicos y lingüistica.; blog posts, Smithsonian Folkways. 60 – Candidate Information

Statement I have several areas of interest that I would pursue as a delegate for the southern region. First, I would advocate cultivating closer relations among the regional associations and between regional organizations and the MLA. In my work with the South Central Modern Language Association, I see that regional groups have much to contribute to the overall conversations about scholarly and professional matters and that we also could benefit from a more engaged conversation with our colleagues at the MLA offices. I am deeply committed to the practice of public and engaged humanities, and I would like to further explore the potential of sharing our work beyond academic settings. I have worked on several preservation and access projects and on developing archives of materials for further study in an open-access setting. I am also an active practitioner of engaged, community-based projects for the study of the humanities. My interest in the public humanities also includes advocacy for our colleagues who practice the humanities in nontraditional settings. I am impressed with the MLA’s work in this area and would like to help engage more with this aspect of the public humanities at the regional levels. Finally, I am fascinated by anthropological approaches to the study of languages and literatures and of the roles of visual culture and the performing arts in literary studies. I would be an advocate for these areas of interest as well. I look forward to serving the southern region as a delegate.

151. Rosa Perelmuter. Prof. Spanish, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. PhD, Univ. of Michigan. Dir., Moore Undergrad. Research Apprentice Program, Univ. of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, 2006– . Class of 1996 Excellence in Advising Award, UNC, Chapel Hill, 2002; Faculty Mentoring Award, Dept. of Romance Langs., UNC, Chapel Hill, 2009; Univ. Diversity Award, UNC, 2016. Board of directors (2000–05) and program comm. ch. (2004), Latin Amer. Jewish Studies Assn.; board of directors, Soc. for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry, 2006–09, 2015– ; board of directors, North Carolina Hillel, 2007– . MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Latin Amer. Lit. from Independence to 1900, 1987–91; Delegate Assembly, 1992–94. Ed. boards: Romance Notes, Hispanófila. Publications include Noche intelectual: La oscuridad idiomática en el Primero sueño (1982), Los límites de la femineidad en Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Estrategias retóricas y recepción literaria (2004); guest coed., Hispanófila (2014); contrib., Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y las vicisitudes de la crítica (1998), Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y sus contemporáneos (1998), Approaches to Teaching Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (2007), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (2007); articles in Hispanic Review, Nueva revista de filología hispánica, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Revista iberoamericana, Calíope, Hispanófila, Bulletin hispanique, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Hispania. Statement As universities continue to yield more and more to economic pressures and demand more and more accountability from their academic departments, placing the emphasis on the numbers (of majors, of students in courses, of graduates) and the commercial (vocational courses, courses that prepare students for a job), we must be ever vigilant and, together with the MLA, work to defend the value of learning and of the liberal arts and to promote them persuasively and effectively. Let’s also be proactive and find ways to undermine the move toward the elimination of tenure, a valuable tool that protects professors’ independence and makes our profession desirable in spite of its relatively modest remuneration. ☼ 152. David Martinez. Grad. student Spanish, Univ. of Georgia. MA, Univ. of Tennessee. Institutional service (Univ. of Georgia [UGA]): UGA en España program asst., 2013, 2015; grad. representative, Dept. of Romance Langs., 2014; UGA en España program coord., 2016. Dolores Artau Scholarship, Dept. of Romance Langs., 2015. Outstanding Teaching Asst. Award, Office of the Vice Pres. for Instruction, UGA, 2014. Conference presentations: New Voices (Grad. English Assn., Georgia State Univ.), 2014; Southeast Coastal Conference on Langs. and Lits., 2014; Carolina Candidate Information – 61

Conference on Romance Lits., 2014; Kentucky Foreign Lang. Conference, 2014, 2016; SAMLA, 2014; Crossroads Interdisciplinary Grad. Conference (Dept. of Romance Langs., UGA), 2015; Transatlantic Studies: Intersections of Memory and Violence in the Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian World (Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia), Mar. 2015. Statement There are three pressing matters of professional concern that I would like to address. First, we need to further develop an interdisciplinary approach to our field and do a better job of reaching out to other departments. Second, our field can at times seem a bit isolated from the real world in terms of preparing students for careers and a life outside academia. I would like to address how our field can be pertinent and interesting to those who wish to live outside the confines of academia. Third, in our field, we often discuss issues of income inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor, and, of course, marginalized people who do not have a voice. At the same time, however, we actively participate in and accept such practices within established structures of power that seem reticent to change. Adjunct professors, instructors, administrative assistants, lecturers, and graduate students could be better served and appreciated; at the very least, there should be a consideration of the potentially destabilizing effects of such income inequality within our own field (heads of department often make six or seven times more than adjuncts and instructors), especially during a time of economic crisis that has led to cuts in the funding of our programs.

153. Francesco Masala. Grad. student Hispanic studies, Univ. of Kentucky. MA, Univ. of Kentucky. Institutional service (Univ. of Kentucky): translator and medical interpreter, 2015– . Research grant, Sigma Delta Pi, 2016. Provost’s Outstanding Teaching Award, Univ. of Kentucky, 2016. Conference presentations: Crossing Over Intl. Symposium (Cleveland State Univ.), Oct. 2013; Convergences II: Literary, Linguistic, Cultural, and Film Studies (grad. colloquium, Univ. of California, Davis), Oct. 2013; Cincinnati Conference on Romance Langs. and Lits., 2014, 2015; Southeast Conference on Foreign Langs., Lits., and Films, 2016; Southeast Coastal Conference on Langs. and Lits., 2016; Kentucky Foreign Lang. Conference, 2016. Statement Serving in the Delegate Assembly would be an honor and an academic duty. My role as a representative would focus on the importance of studying the humanities, particularly languages, literature, and linguistics, in the South. As an international graduate student, I see firsthand the struggles many of my colleagues are experiencing due to the damaging lack of institutional support for the humanities, not only in the South but all over the United States. Currently, graduate students play an essential role in academia, and their professional and intellectual lives need to be fully supported. My goals will include but will not be limited to disseminating the importance of the MLA, especially to undergraduate and graduate students; enhancing communications between the Delegate Assembly and the MLA membership to allow wide discussion of concerns, problems, opinions, and solutions; analyzing more deeply the current trend of budget cutting in our fields, with particular attention to southern states; sharing my passion for teaching and studying languages; and advancing areas of the humanities strictly correlated to MLA members, such as literatures, linguistics, and pedagogy. I am determined to represent my community with professionalism, passion, and integrity.

VI. Central and Rocky Mountain (4 contests) Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming

154. Ryan Hackenbracht. Asst. prof. English, Texas Tech Univ. PhD, Penn State Univ. Assoc. dir. of grad. studies, Dept. of English, Texas Tech Univ., 2016– . Seminar grant, Folger Shakespeare Library, 2011; grad. research fellowship, Inst. for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State Univ., 2011; Williams A. Ringler Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2014. Best Conference Paper of the Year Award, Comm. on Early Modern Studies, Penn State Univ., 2012; Albert C. 62 – Candidate Information

Labriola Award (for distinguished article on Milton by a grad. student), Milton Soc. of America, 2011; Natalie Zemon Davis Award (for best article), Renaissance and Reformation, 2012. Publications include contrib., Identities in Early Modern English Writing: Religion, Gender, Nation (2014); articles in Milton Studies, Philological Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation, Studies in Philology; review in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. Statement As a Renaissance scholar who takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying Shakespeare, Milton, and their afterlives in twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture, I would be honored to represent the diverse interests of my region in the Delegate Assembly. The MLA has a long history of celebrating diversity, and my research on a variety of topics is both a product of that diversity and an attempt to bridge gaps between different disciplines and media as well as between academic and popular cultures. Moreover, as someone recently on the job hunt, I represent a younger generation of scholars facing a job market crisis unlike any seen before. These scholars are struggling in a profession with increasingly fewer tenure-track and non-tenure-track positions. As the associate director of graduate studies at my institution, I run weekly seminars for our Professional Development Curriculum, which equips students with the tools they need to thrive in these conditions. I am committed to helping young professionals succeed in their scholarly aspirations and in pursuing academic and alt-ac careers; my actions in the Delegate Assembly would mirror that devotion. It is my firm conviction that training junior scholars in professionalism goes hand in hand with the MLA’s campaign of enlarging the place of the humanities in our society. I wish to serve in the Delegate Assembly so that I, too, might contribute to that important endeavor and—in a university environment gravitating toward the STEM fields—lend my voice on behalf of what the humanities have to offer.

155. Gregory E. Rutledge. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; JD, Univ. of Florida. Fulbright senior research grant (South Korea), 2013–14. Certificate of Recognition for Contribution to Students, Parents Assn., Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2008; service award (2009) and honorary member (2010), Harambee Afrikan Cultural Organization. Honorary cultural envoy, Scholars Group for Public Diplomacy, Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2014. Publications include Escapades on Third Street (novel, 2000), The Epic Trickster in American Literature: From Sunjata to S(o)ul (2013); guest coed., African American Review (2006); contrib., Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture (2008), Charles Chesnutt Reappraised: Essays on the First Major African American Fiction Writer (2009), The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought, vol. 2 (2010), A Galaxy Here and Now: Historical and Cultural Readings of Star Wars (2016); contrib. (of poem), Black Gold: An Anthology of Black Poetry (2014); articles in Journal of African American Studies, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews, 인문학연구원 [Inmunkwahak: The Journal of the Humanities, South Korea], Foundation, Callaloo, Extrapolation, Journal of College and University Law, Yonsei Law Journal; creative work in Black Magnolias: A Literary Journal, Wasafiri: International Contemporary Writing. Statement Given the global and geopolitical changes afoot, our current era is a time when we urgently need to understand the importance and power of human storytelling. Specifically, we need to reevaluate the governing paradigms of the canon in place since the nineteenth century—since the 1890s for American literature, when it first entered the academy as a formal subject of study. Now, in 2016, the fault lines of the governing paradigms have reached a point of crisis and opportunity: crisis in the humanities, a common subject for lamentation and yet an opportunity for reconstituting how we understand storytelling as the fissures open up new vistas and alternative ways of storytelling as ancient as the art form itself. As I write this (from Gimpo, South Korea), I lay claim to the unique combination of perspective, training, and experience I would bring to the MLA as a delegate for this region—an honor, most certainly, for all the fine candidates so nominated. A Southerner born and bred, an African-American male from a working-class mother-led family, an activist Atlanta lawyer who (re)turned to literature and cultural studies, Candidate Information – 63 and now a member of an Afro-Korean familial intersection, I can personally attest to the need for the broadest reconfiguration of the paradigm. My research, spanning African-American literature and culture and, most recently, Afro-Korean connections, is governed by the imperative calling for the expansive methodology that needs championing. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, such would be my charge and privilege. ☼ 156. Melissa L. Gjellstad. Assoc. prof. Norwegian, Univ. of North Dakota. PhD, Univ. of Washington, Seattle. Vice ch. (2013–14), ch. (2014–15), and past ch. (2015–16), Univ. Senate, Univ. of North Dakota (UND). FLAS fellowship (Norway), 2000; Fulbright fellowship (Norway), 2002–03; Amer. Scandinavian Foundation fellowship, Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, Univ. of Oslo, 2006. Excellence in Undergrad. Teaching Award, UND Foundation, 2011; Meritorious Service Award in Women’s and Gender Studies, UND, 2014. Board of directors (2012–18), exec. council (2013–17), vice pres. (2014–15), and pres. (2015–16, 2016–17), North Dakota Humanities Council. Exec. Council, Ibsen Soc. of America, 2006–13; advisory board, Soc. for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study, 2010–14; sec. and exec. comm. member (2011–14) and pres. and exec. comm. member (2014–17), Norwegian Researchers and Teachers Assn. of North America. Publications include trans., Frida Forsgren, San Francisco Beat Art in Norway (2008); cotrans., Karl Jakob Skarstein, The War with the Sioux: Norwegians against Indians 1862–1863 (2015); contrib., New Dimension of Diversity in Nordic Culture and Society (2016); articles in Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, Scandinavian Studies, Edda, Kraftsentrum. Statement The MLA has a powerful voice in collegiate humanities education and research, and members must continue to drive the strategic visioning of the organization and our impacted fields. My interests span several conversations: advocacy for language learning and humanities study on and beyond campus; access to digital resources for scholars and students; and participation by faculty members in collaborative governance. I see ways for the MLA to address a range of issues facing individual faculty members, from bolstering the health of language and literature departments to facilitating the depth of research in our many disciplines to expanding the public humanities conversation that transposes our work into the vernacular of the communities in which we live. Informed by leadership experience in faculty governance and disciplinary and regional humanities boards, my work in less commonly taught languages at a state research university has prepared me well to represent you in the assembly. The role of higher education in civic life is fiercely contested, with external stakeholders’ demands pushing modifications that run counter to the core elements of the academy. Tensions within the academy feel no less hazardous, with pressures on faculty and staff members, administrators, and boards to deliver a quality education to today’s students and to increase research productivity with decreasing access to research funding. It is clearly a fascinating time to engage in the governance processes within higher education, and I am pleased to stand for election to the Delegate Assembly as a candidate for Region 6.

157. J. Edward Mallot. Assoc. prof. English, Arizona State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Iowa. Zebulon Pearce Award for Distinguished Teaching in the Humanities, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State Univ., 2014. Exec. comm., South Asian Literary Assn., 2015–17. Publications include Memory, Nationalism, and Narrative in Contemporary South Asia (2012); contrib., British Asian Fiction: Framing the Contemporary (2008); articles in New Hibernia Review, South Asian Review, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies, Ariel: A Review of International English Literature, Contemporary Literature, Journal of Modern Literature. Statement My concerns about the future of the study of languages and literatures—and the humanities in general—are extensive, not surprisingly so given the state of affairs in higher education in recent years. My 64 – Candidate Information strongest concerns center on the difficulties graduates face in gaining living-wage, secure employment; the imbalance of rights, responsibilities, and remuneration for non-tenure-track faculty members; threats to the tradition of tenure; and, finally, threats to departmental budgets within the humanities. Further, I am consistently intrigued and often worried about how we “market” ourselves as the humanities in an age where such invaluable work is all too frequently deemed unvaluable by politicians and publics alike. I hope to be involved in these discussions as an MLA delegate. ☼ 158. Feroza Framji Jussawalla. Prof. English, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque. PhD, Univ. of Utah. NEH summer seminar fellowship, 1985, 1988; NEH summer inst. participant, 1986; NEH fellowship, 1998–99; Bellagio Center residency, Rockefeller Foundation, 1999; visiting fellow, Hans Christian Andersen Center, Univ. of Southern Denmark, Odense, summer 2000. Alumni Teaching Award, Univ. of New Mexico, 2014. Codir., NEH summer seminar, 1996; codir., NEH summer inst., 1998; People to People ambassador (China), Dec. 2008. Panelist, NEH, 2001, 2008. Program comm. ch., South Asian Literary Assn., 2000. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Postcolonial Studies in Lit. and Culture, 1997; exec. comm., Discussion Group on South Asian Langs. and Lits., 1997; Delegate Assembly, 1999–2001. Ed. boards: Transnational Literatures, South Asian Review. Publications include Family Quarrels: Towards a Criticism of Indian Writing in English (1985), Chiffon Saris (poems, 2003); ed., Excellent Teaching in a Changing Academy: Essays in Honor of Kenneth Eble (1990), Conversations with V. S. Naipaul (1997; French ed., 2002); guest ed., Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature (2012); coed., Interviews with Writers of the Post-colonial World (1992), Emerging South Asian Women Writers: Essays and Interviews (2015); guest coed., South Asian Review (2008); contrib., The Holt Guide to Documentation and Writing in the Disciplines (1989), A Companion to the British and Irish Novel 1945–2000 (2005), Focus India: Postcolonial Narratives of the Nation (2007), British Asian Fiction: Framing the Contemporary (2008), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2nd ed., 2010), Literature for Our Times: Postcolonial Studies in the Twenty-First Century (2012), The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016), D. H. Lawrence: New Critical Perspectives and Cultural Translation (2016); articles in Revista alicantina de estudios ingleses, South Asian Review, Moving Worlds, South Atlantic Quarterly, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Links and Letters, Diacritics, Third Text. Statement I have been at the forefront of postcolonial studies from its inception in 1984 and have been active in the transition from commonwealth to postcolonial literary studies. I am concerned with bringing into academia and into our profession the issues of equity and cross-cultural understanding that we espouse in our teaching of literary theory. We have to look not just at how the other is represented, across race, class, and gender, but at how we are treated as others in the profession and in our departments. How do we make our profession more inclusive and hospitable and break through the cliques that prevent publication and promotion? My interest is to address issues that particularly affect women and minorities, while at the same time considering how we can include all races, cultures, and critical interests harmoniously. Administratively, there are many protections we need to put into place for faculty members, whether tenured, untenured, or probationary, as tenure is losing its value and posttenure reviews are being unjustly used. We need an MLA statement to universities on this important issue. In an age where print publications are getting to be harder to come by, departments need to be encouraged to create fair evaluation policies for tenure, posttenure, and adjunct appointments. We need to guard against separations and programmatic reductions. I have worked in literature, composition, and creative writing and believe I am uniquely qualified to represent the concerns of faculty members in our profession, both in our region and nationally. Candidate Information – 65

159. Nil Santiáñez. Prof. Spanish, St. Louis Univ. PhD, Univ. of Illinois, Urbana. Publications include Angel Ganivet, escritor modernista: Teoría y novela en el fin de siglo español (1994), Angel Ganivet: Una bibliografía anotada, 1892–1995 (1996), Investigaciones literarias: Modernidad, historia de la literatura y modernismos (2002), Goya/Clausewitz: Paradigmas de la guerra absoluta (2009), Topographies of Fascism: Habitus, Space, and Writing in Twentieth-Century Spain (2013); ed., De la luna a mecanópolis: Antología de la ciencia ficción española (1832–1913) (1994), Ramón J. Sender, Imán (2006); coed., Lope de Vega, La traición bien acertada [in Comedias de Lope de Vega, part 1, vol. 2] (1996), Lope de Vega, La escolástica celosa [in Comedias de Lope de Vega, part 1, vol. 3] (1996); contrib., La Generación del 98 frente al nuevo fin de siglo (2000), Madrid: De Fortunata a la M-40: Un siglo de cultura urbana (2003), The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature (2004), Miradas sobre España (2011); articles in Cuadernos de filosofía latinoamericana, Hallali: Revista de estudios culturales sobre la Gran Guerra y el mundo hispánico, Romanistisches Jahrbuch, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Hispanic Review, Literatures, Dieciocho, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Tabla redonda: Anuario de estudios torrentinos, Olivar, Res Publica, Quimera: Revista de literatura, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Hispanófila, Insula, Letras peninsulares, Siglo diecinueve, MLN, Lateral, Bulletin hispanique, Boletín de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, Romanische Forschungen, Hispanic Journal, Castilla: Estudios de literatura, Revista hispánica moderna, Romance Quarterly, España contemporánea, Revista de estudios hispánicos. ☼ 160. Kerry Manzo. Grad. student English, Texas Tech Univ. MA (linguistics), Univ. of Texas, El Paso. Institutional service (Texas Tech Univ.): founder and organizer, Queer Theory Reading Group, Dept. of English, spring 2014– ; ambassador to Grad. Studies Comm., Dept. of English, 2015– ; sec. (2015–16) and pres. (2016–17) Grad. English Soc. Scholarship, Futures of Amer. Studies Inst., Dartmouth Coll., 2014; dissertation research fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, Univ. of Texas, Austin, 2016–17. William Bryan Gates Grad. Award in English, Texas Tech Univ., 2016–17. African Lit. Assn. Asst. to book review ed., Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada, 2014– . Conference presentations: Texas Tech Univ. Comparative Lit. Symposium, 2014, 2015, 2016; ACLA, 2014; UNC Asheville Queer Studies Conference, Apr. 2015; African Lit. Assn., 2016. Publications include forthcoming article in South Asian Review.

161. Julio Cesar Perez-Mendez. Grad. student Spanish, Texas Tech Univ. MFA (creative writing), Univ. of Texas, El Paso. Institutional service (Texas Tech Univ.): Humanities Reading Group, 2015–16; Spanish Club, 2016; grad. student mentor, Dept. of Classical and Modern Langs. and Lits., 2016. Scholarship, COLFUTURO, 2014; dissertation completion fellowship, Texas Tech Univ., 2016–17. First place, Concurso Internacional de Microficción “Garzón Céspedes,” 2008; honorable mention, Primer Concurso Regional de Minicuento “Antonio Mora Vélez,” 2008; honorable mention (for Hombre cero; category: Best First Book–Fiction–Spanish or bilingual), Latino Book Awards, Latino Literacy Now, 2014. Conference presentations: Texas Tech Univ. Comparative Lit. Symposium, 2014; Intl. Symposium of Hispanic Lit. (Dept. of Modern Langs., California State Univ., Dominguez Hills), 2015; Don Quixote and the Mediterranean World (Univ. of Texas, Austin), Oct. 2015; Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference, 2016. Publications include Hombre cero: O la imposibilidad física de la muerte en la mente de alguien vivo (novel, 2013), Cenotafios (novel, 2015); coed., Doble E 1: Nuevos escritores del Caribe colombiano (2015); contrib. (of creative work), Antología del cuento corto del Caribe colombiano (2008), Cuentos con la palabra mar (2010), 20-40 colección: 20 autores latinoamericanos menores de 40 años, vol. 3 (2014), Casa de locos: Narradores latinoamericanos que estudian un doctorado en Estados Unidos (2015), Microrelatos: Antología III concurso latinoamericano (2015); articles in El tiempo (Colombia); creative work in Revista de literatura mexicana contemporánea, Río Grande Review. 66 – Candidate Information

Statement As a candidate to represent Region 6, Central and Rocky Mountain, I will focus on promoting the importance of the integration of cultures and languages. The MLA should include languages other than English in postgraduate training, publications, and specific panels on culture and languages.

VII. Western United States and Western Canada (5 contests) Alaska, California, Guam, Hawai‘i, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington; Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan

162. Robert Richmond Ellis. Norman Bridge Distinguished Prof. of Spanish, Occidental Coll. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. NEH fellowship, 1997–98. Graham L. Sterling Memorial Award (for distinguished teaching, service, and professional achievement), Occidental Coll. 1998. MLA activities: PMLA Advisory Comm., 2008–11. Publications include The Tragic Pursuit of Being: Unamuno and Sartre (1988), San Juan de la Cruz: Mysticism and Sartrean Existentialism (1992), The Hispanic Homograph: Gay Self-Representation in Contemporary Spanish Autobiography (1997), They Dream Not of Angels but of Men: Homoeroticism, Gender, and Race in Latin American Autobiography (2002), They Need Nothing: Hispanic-Asian Encounters of the Colonial Period (2012); contrib., Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture (2000), Venus venerada II: Literatura erotica y modernidad en España (2007), Western Visions of the Far East in a Transpacific Age, 1552–1657 (2012); articles in PMLA, Hispanic Review, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Hispanic Research Journal, Letras peninsulares, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Siglo XX / 20th Century: Critique and Cultural Discourse, España contemporánea: Revista de literatura y cultura, MLN, Romance Quarterly, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Memoria: Revista de estudios biográficos, Anales cervantinos, Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, Dalhousie French Studies, Romance Notes. Statement I am honored to be nominated to represent the western United States and western Canada in the Delegate Assembly. I have forged my vision of the humanities in higher education over a thirty-two-year career in a small liberal arts college in California, teaching modern Spanish literature, culture, film, and language. I have also regularly taught courses in translation on existentialist literature and in the area of gender and sexuality studies. I passionately believe that the role of languages and the study of literatures and cultures in languages other than English must be reaffirmed as central to the liberal arts mission. Given the growing presence of Spanish in American society, I further believe that Spanish should be integrated into our larger academic programs. Humanistic study, however, should be available to students not only in the primary languages of the United States but in a wide range of world languages, representing a diversity of cultural traditions and historical periods. It should also, when appropriate, be situated in postnational contexts, such as the global Hispanophone, and in the various languages of Iberia. As educators, we must pay greater attention to how we prepare students of the humanities for careers outside academia. We must also work diligently to ensure that our non-tenure-track colleagues are fully supported, given that they carry an ever increasing share of our departmental responsibilities. If elected to the Delegate Assembly I will keep these concerns in mind while striving to advance the overall goals of the MLA.

163. Ana Maria Gómez-Bravo. Prof. Spanish, Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Previous appointments: Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, 1993– 2012; Univ. of Scranton, 1991–93. Grant, Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Candidate Information – 67

Culture and United States Univs., 1990, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1999; Amer. Philosophical Soc. research grant, 1994–95; NEH summer stipend, 2003; Digital Strategy Faculty Fellowship, Univ. of Washington, 2013. John K. Walsh Award (for outstanding article in La corónica), 2013. Advisory board, Centro de Documentación Juan Alfonso de Baena (Córdoba, Spain), 2002– ; team member, intl. project on Spanish poetry, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares, 2010– ; advisory board, Third Intl. Conference on the Cancionero de Baena, 2015. Ed. board, Rhythmica: Spanish Journal of Comparative Metrics, 2002– . Publications include Repertorio métrico de la poesía cancioneril castellana del siglo XV (1998), Textual Agency: Writing Culture and Social Networks in Fifteenth-Century Spain (2013); coed., Vir bonus dicendi peritus: Essays in Honor of Charles Faulhaber (2014); contrib., Medieval Lyric: Genres in Historical Context (2000), Iberia cantat: Estudios sobre poesía hispánica medieval (2002), Women Medievalists in the Academy (2003), Seis siglos de poesía española escrita por mujeres: Pautas poéticas y revisiones críticas (2007); articles in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, La corónica, Romance Quarterly, Hispanic Review, Cancionero general, Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Romance Philology, Hispania, Evphrosyne: Revista de filología clássica. ☼ 164. Janis Breckenridge. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Whitman Coll. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Feministas Unidas Essay Prize, 2007; Adam Dublin Award for the Study of Global Multiculturalism (for scholarly or creative work), Whitman Coll., 2012–13. LASA. Publications include coed., Pushing the Boundaries of Latin American Testimony: Meta-morphoses and Migrations (2012); contrib., Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression (2003), Photography and Writing in Latin America: Double Exposures (2006), Latin American Jewish Cultural Production (2009), Representing History, Class, and Gender in Spain and Latin America: Children and Adolescents in Film (2012), Alicia Kozameh: Ética, estética y las acrobacias de la palabra escrita (2013), Latin American Icons: Fame across Borders (2014); interviews in Ciberletras, Chasqui, Revista Ciudad Gótica; articles in Letras femeninas, Mongraphic Review / Revista monográfica, Romance Languages Annual, Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Confluencia, Chasqui, Ciberletras, Hispanic Issues, International Journal of Comic Art, Feministas unidas. Statement Fifteen years of visiting and tenure-track teaching at three different campuses across the country in addition to my current role as chair of Whitman College’s Spanish department have allowed me to experience firsthand many of the challenges facing our profession. I strongly advocate for committed participation in faculty governance as a necessary response to budget shortages, declining numbers of undergraduates enrolled in language and literature programs across the country, the ongoing crisis in humanities publication, and perhaps most importantly, increasing opposition to academic freedom and autonomy. With a research focus in social justice and human rights, I am particularly sensitive to the vulnerabilities and rights of women, minorities, LGBTQ communities and contingent faculty members as well as graduate students. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I will actively respond to the MLA’s call to advocacy. We must use our collective voice to exert pressure on state and federal legislators; defend the value of the humanities, particularly languages and literatures; protest funding cuts for student grants while simultaneously working to decrease the burden of student debt; protect the right for collective bargaining; and speak out strongly against anti-immigration policies.

165. Leila Neti. Assoc. prof. English, Occidental Coll. PhD, Univ. of California, Irvine. Ch., Dept. of English, Occidental Coll., 2014– . Fellowship, Summer Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory, Univ. of California Humanities Research Inst., 2005. Publications include contrib., Violence and the Body: Race, Gender, and the State (2003), British Asian Fiction: Framing the Contemporary (2008), Interdisciplinarity and Social Justice: Revisioning Academic Accountability (2010), The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016); articles in Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies. 68 – Candidate Information

Statement I am excited to serve as a delegate because of the expansive influence the MLA has over the professional and disciplinary aspects of humanities study. My scholarly interests are in the literature, culture, and law of nineteenth-century British colonialism, with particular emphasis on race and sexuality. While I teach at a liberal arts college, I was educated at large public universities (BA, UCLA, and PhD, UC Irvine). My experiences of public and private institutions convince me that there are shared and urgent concerns in humanities education that need attention. In my view, the most vital challenges we face concern how we validate the study of race and minoritism within the academy, the allocation of resources for the humanities, and our support of contingent faculty members. While most institutions affirm the need for inclusive interdisciplinary departments, a diverse curriculum and student body, and nonexploitative work conditions, these ideals are far from realized. Further, questions of inclusiveness and equity are related, I believe, to the increasing corporatization of the academy and a movement toward thinking of the humanities as service fields. If elected to the assembly, I will be interested in shaping the MLA’s agenda for building more robustly inclusive programs, advocating for more equitable labor practices in the profession, and increasing the profile of humanities scholarship. ☼ 166. Laura J. Beard. Prof. Spanish, Univ. of Alberta. PhD, Johns Hopkins Univ. Ch., Dept. of Modern Langs. and Cultural Studies, Univ. of Alberta. Fulbright-Hays summer seminar fellowship, 1991; AAUW fellowship, 1992–93; NEH summer seminar fellowship, 1995; Fulbright senior scholar (Mexico), 1999–2000; participant, NEH summer inst., 2001; participant, Newberry Library summer inst., 2002; Fulbright Research Ch. in Native Studies, Univ. of Alberta, 2008. Spencer A. Wells Award for Creativity in Teaching, Texas Tech Univ. (TTU), 2008; President’s Academic Achievement Award (for excellence in research, teaching, and service), TTU, 2008; President’s Book Award (for Acts of Narrative Resistance), TTU, 2011. Advisory board (1997–2000), ed. (2000–09), and assoc. ed. (2009– ), Intertexts; consulting ed., A/B: Auto/Biography Studies, 2015– . Publications include Acts of Narrative Resistance: Women’s Autobiographical Writings in the Americas (2009); guest coed., Intertexts: A Journal of Comparative and Theoretical Reflection (1997, 2006, 2010); contrib., El río de los sueños: Aproximaciones críticas a la obra de Ana María Shua (2001), Narrativa femenina en América Latina: Práticas y perspectivas teóricas (2003), Mulheres no mundo: Etnia, marginalidade e diáspora (2004), Luisa Futoransky y su palabra itinerante (2005), Femmes et écriture de la transgression (2006), Cultura e tradução: Interfaces entre teoria e prática (2010), Academic Motherhood in a Post-Second Wave Context: Challenges, Strategies, and Possibilities (2012); articles in American Indian Quarterly, Ilha do desterro, Pedagogy, Storytelling, Hispanófila, Wicazo Sa Review, Monographic Review / Revista monográfica, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Studies in American Indian Literatures, Brasil/Brazil, Revista iberoamericana, Intertexts, College Literature, Aleph. Statement As a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Carleton College, I bring to my work the experience of, and a passionate commitment to, excellence in a liberal arts undergraduate education. Since completing my PhD at Johns Hopkins University, I have spent my teaching career in large, publicly-funded research institutions with both graduate and undergraduate programs. My experiences as a faculty member and administrator in both the United States and Canada, my other international teaching and research experiences, and my commitments to diversity, equity, international, and intercultural work give me a broad basis to represent the region. I have been a member of the MLA for twenty-seven years, have participated in two ADFL summer seminars for chairs, and have participated in many MLA conventions. I would be honored to serve the MLA as a regional delegate.

167. Ken Seigneurie. Prof. world lit., Simon Fraser Univ. PhD, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Conference comm. ch., ACLA, 2011. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Arabic Lit. and Culture, 2009–Jan. 2014; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2015–18. Ed. or advisory Candidate Information – 69 boards: Beyt el Kottab (Intl. Writers’ House, Beirut), 2014– ; Journal of World Literature, 2014– ; Inquire: Journal of Comparative Literature. Publications include Standing by the Ruins: Elegiac Humanism in Wartime and Postwar Lebanon (2011); ed., Crisis and Memory: The Representation of Space in Modern Levantine Narrative (2003); trans., Rashid al-Daif, What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin (2015); articles in Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, College Literature, Public Culture, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Statement Proceeding from the assumption that understanding culture outside one’s own time and place is difficult but essential to human prosperity, I am keen to see the MLA do the hard work of fulfilling its mission to “facilitate scholarly inquiry in and across periods, geographic sites, genres, languages, and disciplines in higher education” (see ). I am therefore interested in seeing the MLA promote cross-cultural contacts among scholars, especially with those located in Asia, Oceania, Africa, and Latin America. Concretely, this means not only endorsing scholar exchange programs but also encouraging translation into English of literary works in less-taught languages and actively lobbying for expanded language study. As an institution devoted to understanding culture in the diverse senses of this term, the MLA also has a duty to support the cultures it studies by standing in solidarity with, and advocating the defense of, those that suffer persecution. ☼ 168. Mark Andrew Eaton. Prof. English, Azusa Pacific Univ. PhD, Boston Univ. Junior research fellowship, Rothermere Amer. Inst., Univ. of Oxford, 2006; Beverly Hardcastle Stanford Fellowship, Azusa Pacific Univ. (APU), 2014–15; Templeton Religion Trust grant, Oxford Interdisciplinary Seminars in Science and Religion, 2015–16. Visiting appointment: Univ. of Oklahoma, fall 2005. Semifinalist, Nicholl Fellowship, Acad. of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2001; Alice V. Watkins Ethos and Diversity Award, APU, 2005; finalist, Arlin G. Meyer Prize in Nonfiction, Lilly Fellows Program, 2007; Distinguished Service Award, Honors Coll., APU, 2009. Board of advisers, Oklahoma Humanities Council, 2000. Sec., Conference on Christianity and Lit., 2011–15. Ed., Christianity and Literature, 2015– . Publications include coed., The Gift of Story: Narrating Hope in a Postmodern World (2006); contrib., Henry James on Stage and Screen (2000), Approaches to Teaching Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” and “The Secret Sharer” (2003), “There She Is, Miss America”: The Politics of Sex, Beauty, and Race in America’s Most Famous Pageant (2004), Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (2005), Approaches to Teaching DeLillo’s White Noise (2006), Critical Companion to Henry James (2009), A Companion to the Modern American Novel 1900–1950 (2009), A Companion to Film Comedy (2012), Screenwriting (2014), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion (2016), 9/11: Topics in Contemporary North American Literature (2016), Teaching 21st Century Genres (2016); articles in American Literary History, Christianity and Literature, College Literature, Edith Wharton Review, Journal of Narrative Technique, Literature/Film Quarterly, Modern Fiction Studies, Pedagogy, Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, Studies in American Fiction. Statement The Delegate Assembly should advocate for and support the core mission of the MLA, which is to promote research and teaching in literature and language and to defend the professional interests of all instructors. We should articulate the importance of the study of literature and language for all students, including second language acquisition as well as composition and rhetoric, in the face of skepticism from state legislatures and the public about the value of the humanities. We should articulate the reasons why language and literature are important at a time of significant changes in higher education. We should draw attention to the erosion of employment status and working conditions for many instructors in these fields due to the increased reliance on part-time faculty members and the erosion of tenure. The Delegate Assembly should abet the MLA’s efforts to combat these developments and advocate for better working conditions throughout higher education, which currently faces economic pressures from diminishing state spending on 70 – Candidate Information public universities, declining enrollments at some institutions, more diverse student populations, increasing levels of student debt, rapidly rising tuition, and so on. The Delegate Assembly should therefore avoid sectarian disputes over domestic and foreign policy issues. Instead, we should work together in the interests of all teachers of literature and language by helping to develop viable solutions to the mounting economic challenges facing higher education.

169. Khadija Khalife. Adjunct asst. prof. French, Univ. of Portland. PhD, Université Saint-Joseph (Beirut). Previous appointments: Portland State Univ., 2005–07; Université Saint-Joseph, 1995–2000. Consultant, Hispanic Scholarship Fund. AATF. Publications include Les autobiographies de Julien Green et de Michel Leiris: Approches thématique et générique (2015). Statement As an adjunct professor of French, I convey the message that learning a language is not merely a matter of linguistic fluency: it erases the borders. Whether in the classroom or outside it, I dedicate myself to human progress and approach issues through a humanist lens. As an MLA delegate, I will consider the following matters during discussions and meetings: the appreciation of cultural diversity around the world; the defense of humanities and liberal arts education in general, with an emphasis on a universal and humanist approach in the higher education curriculum; a focus on the quality of teaching, learning, and training; and a broad and open approach of tolerance and justice that can question the status quo of social and political issues. My cultural and educational backgrounds in languages and literatures (French and Spanish) as well as in management and organizational leadership allow me to adopt a system’s thinking approach. I will continue to play the devil’s advocate to challenge the mainstreams and use emotional intelligence especially when addressing those who are voiceless and most vulnerable. Some of the posts that I wrote a while ago are available on my blog. ☼ 170. Brian Bernards. Asst. prof. East Asian langs. and cultures, Univ. of Southern California. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Pacific Rim Research Program grant, Univ. of California, 2008–09; Fulbright-Hays dissertation research fellowship, 2008–09; Sawyer Seminar grant, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2013–14; research grant, Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences Program, Office of the Provost, Univ. of Southern California (USC), 2014–15; Transregional Research Junior Scholar Fellowship, InterAsia Program, SSRC, 2016–17. Collegium of Univ. Teaching Fellows, Office of Instructional Development, UCLA, 2010–11; General Educ. Teaching Award, Dornsife Coll. of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, USC, 2013–14. Publications include Writing the South Seas: Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature (2015); coed., Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (2013); contrib., The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature (2016), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (2016); articles in Postcolonial Studies, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Sun Yat-sen Journal of Humanities, Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs. Statement I support the ongoing restructuring of the MLA’s forums to provide a more inclusive organizational structure that recognizes evolving demographics as well as shifting and emergent trends in the humanities. I support an MLA convention structure that promotes novel thematic and critical paradigms that cut across humanities disciplines and allow for maximum dialogue among them. I see my own work as playing a contributive role in propelling postcolonial studies beyond the analysis of literature and other cultural production in Western and European languages, acknowledging that a multiplicity of intercultural relations and exchanges, outside a West and the rest model, have shaped our modern world and inspired global imaginaries. While area studies frameworks are vital to deepening our understanding of local epistemology, the MLA should encourage scholars to take advantage of opportunities to initiate conversations under Candidate Information – 71 countless thematic rubrics such as creolizaton, ecocriticism and environmental humanities, comparative archipelagoes, gender studies, postsocialism, and travel literature, which acknowledge but are not bound or isolated by language and area divisions. I wholeheartedly support the MLA’s commitment to redress the class, gender, and racial inequities and disparities exacerbated by the corporatization of higher education, which has greatly diminished the faculty and student voice in the university structure.

171. Michael C. Cohen. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. PhD, New York Univ. Previous appointments: Louisiana State Univ., 2009–11; Macalester Coll., 2007–09. Joyce Tracy Fellow, Amer. Antiquarian Soc., 2005–06; Gest Fellowship, Haverford Coll. Special Collections Library, 2013; Hellman Fellowship, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (funded by Hellman Family Foundation), 2014–15. Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Essay Prize (for excellence in interdisciplinary scholarship), 2010. Essay prize comm. (2012, 2016) and exec. comm. (2016–19), Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Assn. Ed. advisory board, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth- Century Americanists, 2015–18. Publications include The Social Lives of Poems in Nineteenth-Century America (2015); contrib., Meter Matters: Verse Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century (2011), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th ed., 2012), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, vol. C (7th ed., 2014), The Cambridge History of American Poetry (2014); articles in American Literary History, Emily Dickinson Journal, ELH, American Literature, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Arizona Quarterly, African American Review, Victorian Poetry. Statement Thank you for considering me as a candidate for the Delegate Assembly. Since receiving my PhD in English nearly ten years ago, I have had the opportunity to teach in several regions of the country and at a small liberal arts college and two large public universities. My experiences at these places have made me sensitive to the differing needs of different types of institutions as well as to their shared commitment to creating vibrant academic communities through teaching, research, and faculty governance. I have been a member of the MLA since 2001. As a representative to the Delegate Assembly I would support the MLA’s ongoing advocacy on behalf of the humanities, its promotion of innovative new fields and programs of study, and its commitment to faculty-driven initiatives in teaching and pedagogy. I would also advocate for embattled disciplines and departments during a difficult period of retrenchment in higher education. I believe that at its best the MLA can be an effective institution for supporting our shared goals and needs as teachers and scholars, and as a member of the Delegate Assembly I will continue that mission.