CANDIDATE INFORMATION 2017 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 2018 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 8

Voting for Professional-Issues Delegates 16

Voting for Regional Delegates 35

Region 1: New England and Eastern Canada 35

Region 2: New York State 38

Region 3: Middle Atlantic 42

Region 4: Great Lakes 45

Region 5: South 47

Region 6: Central and Rocky Mountain 50

Region 7: Western United States and Western Canada 53

Voting for Forum Delegates 56

CANDIDATE INFORMATION 2017 MLA Elections ______

Note: To be counted, online ballots must be submitted by midnight EST on 10 December 2017 and paper ballots must be received at the MLA office no later than 10 December 2017.

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 just over 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 for the second vice president and Executive Council elections have been made by the Nominating Committee, whose members are elected by the Delegate Assembly. Nominations for professional-issues and regional seats in the Delegate Assembly have been made by the Elections Committee, whose members are also elected by the Delegate Assembly. Nominations for forum seats in the assembly have been made by the membership and the executive committees of the forums that are holding elections this year. ! Nominees to these 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 2017 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 voting members of the association have been invited to use to cast their votes in the 2017 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. 2 – Candidate Information

! Eligibility to vote in these elections is determined by voters’ primary forum affiliations, as recorded in their membership profiles. Changes to primary forum affiliations are not allowed while voting is under way. ! Voters using the online system will be asked to vote in the executive committee contests for the forums with which they have primary affiliations. Voters using the paper ballot will need to follow the instructions for voting that appear on the paper ballot sheet.

Making Suggestions for the 2018 Executive Committee Elections ! At the bottom of the paper ballot is a space that members can use to suggest nominees for the 2018 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 Candidate Information – 3

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 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 8 January 2018 through the close of the January 2019 convention and will automatically become first vice president in 2019, serving in that office through the close of the January 2020 convention, and president of the MLA in 2020, serving in that office through the close of the January 2021 convention. This year all nominees are from the field of 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 8 Jan. 2018 through 6 Jan. 2019, the first vice president will be Simon E. Gikandi, African, Princeton Univ., and the president will be Anne Ruggles Gere, English, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor.) 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.

4 – Candidate Information

Michael F. Bernard-Donals. Nancy Hoefs Prof. of English and affiliate member, Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. PhD, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York. Vice Provost for Faculty and Staff Programs, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Previous appointments: Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, 1993–98; Mississippi State Univ., 1991–93. Resident fellow, Inst. for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 2001, 2009. Charles Kneupper Award (for outstanding article published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly), Rhetoric Soc. of America (RSA), 1994; Univ. of Missouri Research Council Award, 1996; James L. Kinneavy Award (for outstanding article published in JAC), Assn. of Teachers of Advanced Composition, 2000; Kellett Mid-Career Award, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 2010–15. Codir., NEH summer seminar, 2001; dir., RSA Summer Inst., 2013–15. Pres., MMLA, 2004–05; vice pres., Klal Rhetorica, 2011–16; RSA; NCTE; CCCC. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2007–09; exec. comm., Div. on the History and Theory of Rhetoric and Composition, 2010–Jan. 2015. Series coed., Transdisciplinary Rhetoric, Penn State Univ. Press/RSA, 2013– . Ed. or advisory boards: College Composition and Communication, 2006–11; Philosophy and Rhetoric, 2012– ; JAC, 2014– . Publications include Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism (1994), The Practice of Theory: Rhetoric, Knowledge, and Pedagogy in the Academy (1998), An Introduction to Holocaust Studies (2006), Forgetful Memory: Representation and Remembrance in the Wake of the Holocaust (2009), Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2016); coauthor, Between Witness and Testimony: The Holocaust and the Limits of Representation (2001); coed., Rhetoric in an Antifoundational World: Language, Culture, and Pedagogy (1998), Witnessing the Disaster: Essays on Representation and the Holocaust (2003), Jewish Rhetorics: History, Theory, Practice (2014); contrib., The Theory and Practice of Grading Writing: Problems and Possibilities (1998), Bakhtin and the Human Sciences: No Last Words (1998), Medievalism and the Academy (1999), Teaching in the 21st Century: Adapting Writing Pedagogies to the College Curriculum (1999), Cold Fusion: Aspects of the German Cultural Presence in Russia (2000), Teaching Writing in High School and College: Conversations and Collaborations (2002), Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise (2004), Don’t Call It That: The Composition Practicum (2005), Approaches to Teaching Wiesel’s Night (2007), Judaic Perspectives in Rhetoric and Composition (2008), The Responsibilities of Rhetoric (2010), After Representation?: The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture (2010), The Bloomsbury Companion to Holocaust Literature (2014), The Cambridge Companion to Autobiography (2014), Abducting Writing Studies (2017); articles in PMLA, Profession, Philosophy and Rhetoric, College English, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, JAC, College Composition and Communication, Letras femeninas, Russian Journal of Communication, Comparative Literature Studies, Mosaic, Diacritics, New Centennial Review, Minnesota Review, Clio, Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, College Literature, Symplokē, Centennial Review, South Central Review, Journal of Popular Culture, Cultural Critique, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, Works and Days, Studies in the Literary Imagination. Statement Our profession and higher education are changing drastically. That change has resulted in fewer tenure-track jobs and more contingent workers and a shift of attention away from the liberal arts and toward “workforce development.” But we have an opportunity, in the midst of fewer resources and a shift in the public’s understanding of the value of the humanities, to build a better case for the relation among language, literature, and public responsibility and for our role in the transformation of the material circumstances in which we live and work. I am a longtime and engaged member of the MLA who as a faculty member at my university has served as program director, department chair, and vice provost. These roles have given me a clear idea of the current landscape for our profession and a better sense of how to respond. Responding will involve building partnerships with other national organizations, listening in order to forge solidarities with members of the field who are sometimes rarely heard, fearlessly speaking out on controversial matters facing the organization and its members, and actively seeking change to transform the profession and our part of it to create something better. Candidate Information – 5

I intend to help open the MLA to new voices, ensure its convention provides opportunity to all members and to nonmembers who share the organization’s aims, and ensure that the MLA and the fields it represents have an active and expansive role in reshaping the profession as critical to intellectual diversity, participatory democracy, and academic freedom.

Peter Brooks. Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar, Univ. Center for Human Values and Dept. of Comparative Lit., Princeton Univ. PhD, Harvard Univ. Previous appointments: Yale Univ., 2006–09, 1967–2004; Univ. of Virginia, 2004–06. Guggenheim fellowship, 1973–74; NEH summer stipend, 1980; ACLS fellowship, 1980; NEH research fellowship, 1988–89; member, School of Historical Studies, Inst. for Advanced Study, fall 2011. Visiting appointments: Summer Inst. in the Humanities, Univ. of Texas, Austin, 1978, 1979; Georgetown Univ. Law Center, spring 1988, spring 2015; Univ. of Copenhagen, May 1988; Univ. of Bologna, May 1990; Harvard Univ., fall 1990; Stanford Law School, fall 1994; Eastman Prof., Oxford Univ., 2001–02; Mellon Visiting Prof., Princeton Univ., 2008–09; John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, spring 2016. Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, 1986; elected member, Amer. Acad. of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), 1991– ; Doctor Honoris Causa, École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1997; MA, Oxon, 2001; elected member, Amer. Philosophical Soc. (APS), 2003– ; Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, 2008; Christian Gauss Award (for Henry James Goes to Paris), Phi Beta Kappa, 2008; corresponding fellow, British Acad., 2010– ; William C. DeVane Prize for Scholarship and Teaching, Yale Univ. chapter, Phi Beta Kappa, 2012. Founding dir. (1980–91) and dir. (1997–2001), Whitney Humanities Center, Yale Univ.; dir., Program in Law and Humanities, Univ. of Virginia, 2005–06. Dir., NEH summer seminar, 1976; codir., New York Humanities Seminar, 1992–95. Ch., Middle Atlantic region, Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, 1983–84; selection comm., Natl. Humanities Center, 1988–89; fellowship selection comm., ACLS, spring 1990; panelist, NEH, 1994, 1995. Board of academic advisors, Marlboro Coll., 1975–86; board of trustees, Hopkins Grammar School, 1983–89; advisory council, West European Program, Woodrow Wilson Center, Smithsonian Institution, 1985– ; steering comm., Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, 1988–92; advisory board, Stanford Humanities Center, 1996–2001; humanities advisory council, New York Public Library, 1997– ; humanities membership comm., APS, 2003–09. MLA activities: PMLA Advisory Comm., 1976–80; exec. comm., Div. on Prose Fiction, 1979–83; exec. comm., Div. on Comparative Studies in 20th- Century Lit., 1984–88; Advisory Comm. on Foreign Lang. Programs, 1987–89; Exec. Council, 1994–97; exec. comm., Discussion Group on Opera as a Literary and Dramatic Form, 2008–Jan. 2013; Nominating Comm., 2012–13. Contributing ed., Partisan Review, 1972–86. Ed. boards: Opera Quarterly, Comparative Literature, Law, Culture and the Humanities, Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, Yale Journal of Criticism, Yale French Studies. Publications include The Novel of Worldliness (1969), The Melodramatic Imagination (1976; rpt. 1985, 1995), Reading for the Plot (1984; rpt. 1985, 1992), Body Work (1993), Psychoanalysis and Storytelling (1994), World Elsewhere (novel, 1999), History Painting and Narrative: Delacroix’s ‘Moments’ (1999), Troubling Confessions (2000), Realist Vision (2005), Henry James Goes to Paris (2007), The Emperor’s Body (novel, 2011), Enigmas of Identity (2011), Flaubert in the Ruins of Paris: The Story of a Friendship, a Novel, and a Terrible Year (2017); ed., Western Literature, vol. 3 (1971), Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1984), Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot (Norton, 1998), Dominique Vivant Denon, No Tomorrow (2009), Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Tales (2014); guest ed., Yale French Studies (1972); coed., Man and His Fictions (1973), Genet: A Collection of Critical Essays (1979), Law’s Stories (1996), Whose Freud? The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture (2000), Anthologie du mélodrame classique (2011), The Humanities and Public Life (2014); guest coed., Yale French Studies (1986); contrib., Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism (1995), Remapping the Boundaries: A New Perspective in Comparative Studies (1997), The Politics of Research (1997), The Decadent Reader (1998), Approaches to Teaching Stendhal’s The Red and the Black (1999), L’érotique balzacienne (2001), Verdi 2001 (2003), Just Being Difficult? (2003), Law’s Madness (2003), Law, Memory, and Literature (2004), The Blackwell Companion to Narrative (2005), Erotikon (2005), Cultures de la confession (2006), Speech and Silence in American Law (2010), Teaching Law and Literature (2011), Interpreting Clifford 6 – Candidate Information

Geertz: Cultural Investigation in the Social Sciences (2011), Relire Le rouge et le noir (2013), C’è del metodo in questa follia: L’irrazionale nella letteratura romantica (2015); articles in Diversity and Democracy, Narrative, Law and Literature, Chronicle of Higher Education, Romantisme, Boston University Law Review, Daedalus, Frame, Yale Journal of Law and Humanities, New York Review of Books, Profession, South Atlantic Quarterly, Henry James Review, Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Yale French Studies, .PMLA, Representations, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Diacritics, Critical Inquiry, Yale Journal of Criticism, and others. Statement Never have we felt so menaced as we do today, and never has our task been more important. The teaching of languages and literatures, including writing, seem to me the key to an intelligent resistance to a dominant know-nothingism. We not only need to continue doing what we do so well, we must try to gain greater recognition that the study of languages and literatures, reading and writing, are central and crucial to the mission of the university—and to citizenship in society. When participating in various MLA activities— including the PMLA Editorial Board, the Executive Council, and the Nominating Committee—I have appreciated the diversity of the MLA and the reach of what it can do. It is and must remain a big tent, concerned both with the promotion of scholarship and with professional issues, including the alarming numbers of adjunct and part-time faculty members in too many institutions. What we do within our colleges and universities and what we represent outside them are closely related, and the MLA needs to continue to press for recognition of our crucial function in academia—from academic administrators, for instance—as well as our vital contribution to public life. These are issues that have concerned me for over fifty years in the profession, and I would wish to continue to pursue them in the strong context of the MLA.

Judith Butler. Maxine Elliot Prof. of Comparative Lit., Univ. of California, Berkeley. PhD, Yale Univ. Dir., Program in Critical Theory, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2005–12. Previous appointments: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1989–94; George Washington Univ., 1986–89; Wesleyan Univ., 1983– 85. Fulbright-Hayes scholarship (Germany), 1978–79; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Humanities Center, Wesleyan Univ., 1985–86; member, School of Social Science, Inst. for Advanced Study, 1987–88; postdoctoral fellowship, ACLS, spring 1988; fellow, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., fall 1991; fellow, Univ. of California Humanities Research Inst., spring 1992; Guggenheim fellowship, spring 1999; Berlin fellow, Amer. Acad. in Berlin, May 2001; Laurence Rockefeller Fellowship, Center for Human Values, Princeton Univ., 2001–02; ACLS fellowship, 2008–09; Ford Foundation research grant, 2008–09. Visiting appointments: Stanford Univ., spring 1998; Princeton Univ., fall 2001; Andrew W. White Prof. at Large, Cornell Univ., 2003–07; Hannah Arendt Prof. of Philosophy, European Grad. School (Switzerland), 2003– ; Warwick Univ., 2004–10; École Normale Supérieure, Feb.–Mar. 2008, spring 2009; École des Hautes Études, Feb.–Mar. 2008; Centre d’études vivantes, Université de Paris 7, June 2008; New School Univ., spring 2011; Columbia Univ., spring 2012, spring 2013, spring 2014; Université de Paris 7, May 2012; Cornell Univ., fall 2013; Birkbeck Coll. London, 2012–16; Cal Arts, winter 2015; Albertus Magnus Professorship, Univ. of Cologne, spring 2016; New School for Social Research, summer 2016; Diane Middlebrook and Carl Djerassi Ch., Gender Studies, Univ. of Cambridge, fall 2016. Critic’s Choice Award (for Gender Trouble), Amer. Educational Studies Assn., 1990; Crompton-Noll Award (for best essay in lesbian, gay, and queer studies), GL/Q Caucus for the Modern Langs., 1991; Distinguished Kessler Award for Contributions to Lesbian and Gay Studies, Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, City Univ. of New York, Dec. 2001; Brudner Prize (for lifetime achievement in gay and lesbian studies), Yale Univ., 2004; elected member, Amer. Philosophical Soc., 2007– ; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities, 2009–12; Otto Sternbach Award (for important contributions to the field of psychoanalysis), Natl. Psychological Assn. for Psychoanalysis, 2012; Theodor W. Adorno Award (for outstanding achievement in philosophy, theater, music, and film), City of Frankfurt (Germany), 2012; Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 2013; Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse, Coll. Historical Soc., Trinity Coll. Dublin, 2015; corresponding fellow (elected), British Acad., 2015– ; honorary member, Amer. Assn. of Geographers, 2016. Honorary degrees: Grinnell Coll., 2008; Université de Bordeaux 3, 2011; Université de Paris 7, 2011; McGill Univ., 2013; St. Andrews Univ., 2013; Candidate Information – 7

Fribourg Universität, 2014; Universidad de Costa Rica, 2015; Université de Liège, 2015; Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2015. René Wellek Lectures in Literary Theory and Criticism (Univ. of California, Irvine), 1998; Christian Gauss Seminar Lectures (Princeton Univ.), 1998; Messenger Lectures (Cornell Univ.), 1998; Spinoza Lectures (Univ. of Amsterdam), 2002; Adorno Lectures (Frankfurt, Germany), 2002; Tanner Lectures (Yale Univ.), 2016. Board coch., Intl. Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, 1992–96; advisory board, Jewish Voice for Peace, 2010– ; board, Center for Constitutional Rights (New York), 2015– 18. Ch., Board of Governors, Univ. of California Humanities Research Inst., 1997–99; Humanities Advisory Council, Office of the Pres., Univ. of California, 2004–07; board, School of Criticism and Theory, Cornell Univ., 2012– ; codir., Intl. Consortium of Critical Theory Programs, 2013– ; intl. board, Inst. for Social Research (Frankfurt), 2015–18. Supervising Comm., English Inst., 1994–98 (ch., 1996–97); board of directors, Soc. for Critical Exchange, 1995–98; conseil scientifique, Fédération de Recherche sur le Genre (Paris), 2010– ; Soc. for Women in Philosophy; Soc. for Phenomenology and Psychiatry; Amer. Philosophical Assn.; Intl. Assn. for Philosophy and Lit. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Philosophical Approaches to Lit., 1998–2002; Exec. Council, 2001–04; Delegate Assembly, 2001–04; Comm. on Amendments to the Constitution, 2004–07; Comm. on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 2012–15 (ch., 2013–15). Ed. or advisory boards: MLN, 1990–92; Feminist Studies, 1991– 98; Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1991–99; Atropos Press, 2004– ; Flashpoints, Univ. of California Press, 2006–09; Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2009–14; Political Theology, 2015– ; Debate feminista, 2015– ; Razón crítica, 2016– ; Revista estudios hegelianos (Chile); GLQ. Publications include Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France (1987; rpt. 1999), Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (1993), The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (1997), Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (1997), Antigone’s Claim: Kinship between Life and Death (2000), Precarious Life: Powers of Violence and Mourning (2004), Undoing Gender (2004), Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? (2009), Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism (2012), Senses of the Subject (2015), Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (2015); coauthor, Who Sings the Nation- State? Language, Politics, Belonging (2008), Is Critique Secular? (2009), Sois mon corps: Une lecture contemporaine de la domination et de la servitude chez Hegel (2011), Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (2013); coed., Feminists Theorize the Political (1992), Linda Singer, Erotic Welfare: Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age of Epidemic (1992), Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange (1994), Das Undarstellbare der Politik: Zur Hegemonietheorie Ernesto Laclaus (1998), What’s Left of Theory? New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory (2000), The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott’s Critical Feminism (2011), Barbara Johnson, A Life with Mary Shelley (2014), Vulnerability in Resistance (2016); guest coed., The Humanities in Human Rights (PMLA, Oct. 2006); contrib., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-secular World (2006), The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (2011), Sensible Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Activism (2012), The State of Things (2012), Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon (2014), The Barbara Johnson Reader: The Surprise of Otherness (2014), The Humanities and Public Life (2014), The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey (2014), The Subject of Rosi Braidotti: Politics and Concepts (2014), Who’s Afraid of Academic Freedom? (2015), Walter Benjamin and Theology (2016), Foucault and the Making of Subjects (2016), Soulèvements (2016); articles in PMLA, Debates y combates, Differences, London Review of International Law, philoSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism, London Review of Books, Documenta 13, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Comparative Literature Studies, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, Critical Inquiry, British Journal of Sociology. Statement I have been a member of the MLA for many years, served on the Executive Council, and recently chaired the Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities. I have taught in the Department of Comparative Literature at Berkeley for over twenty years. I am most interested in defending the value of the humanities, especially the teaching of literature and languages, during a time when the NEH and NEA are threatened with defunding and universities are too often closing or merging language and literature departments in the name of cost efficiency and financial models of rationality, regardless of the 8 – Candidate Information

educational consequences. I hope to develop a clear public platform to defend the value of our vocation, including research, teaching, and service. I am committed to supporting the study of languages, including lesser-known languages, translation, and comparative and global approaches to the study of literature. I would defend academic freedom, underscoring the public imperative to safeguard critical thought and socially engaged viewpoints within the university and to oppose forms of censorship. I am especially concerned to support the rights of contingent faculty members and to support the improvement of faculty work conditions. I have sought to support the humanities throughout my career. The metrics that fail to grasp the value of the humanities must be understood and countered by a strong debate on the financial models affecting higher education and a renewed discourse within a global frame that clarifies and promotes the public value of the humanities.

Part II: Voting for At-Large Members of the Executive Council Three persons will be elected for four-year terms that will begin 8 January 2018 and run through the close of the January 2022 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 2018, 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 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 seven of the nine at-large members of the council with continuing terms in 2018 are regular members (see the listing below, in which student members are marked with an *), one and only one regular member must be elected. Since none of the continuing council members is a life member and since there are no student-member candidates, the other persons elected this year will be life members. (Note: The names of the nominees who are life members are preceded by a §.) Emily Apter, French, New York Univ. (2015–6 Jan. 2019) *Lenora Hanson, English, New York Univ. (2016–12 Jan. 2020) Eric Hayot, comparative literature and Asian studies, Penn State Univ., University Park (2017– 10 Jan. 2021) 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) Evie Shockley, English, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick (2017–10 Jan. 2021) Vicky Unruh, Spanish, Univ. of Kansas (2015–6 Jan. 2019) Dana A. Williams, English, Howard Univ. (2017–10 Jan. 2021)

Vote for any three nominees.

Candidate Information – 9

Douglas M. Armato. Dir., Univ. of Minnesota Press. BA, Columbia Univ. Previous positions: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988–98 (assoc. dir., 1995–98); Univ. of Georgia Press, 1984–87 (asst. dir., 1986–87); Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981–84; Basic Books, Inc., 1981; Columbia Univ. Press, 1978–80. Co–principal investigator, Quadrant (initiative for interdisciplinary scholarship funded by the Mellon Foundation), Univ. of Minnesota Press and Inst. for Advanced Study, 2007– ; co–principal investigator, Manifold Scholarship (a platform for iterative, networked monographs funded by the Mellon Foundation), Grad. Center, City Univ. of New York, and Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2016– . Faculty member, Howard Univ. Publishing Inst., 1991, 1992, 1993. Advisory board, BiblioVault E-book Consortium, 2005; advisory comm., ITHAKA/JSTOR E-book Program, 2009–10; steering comm., Univ. Press E-book Consortium, 2010. Assn. of Amer. Univ. Presses (AAUP) activities: Marketing Comm., 1986; Professional Development Comm., 1993, 1994 (ch.); Nominating Comm., 1997, 2007 (ch.), 2010; Board of Directors, 1999–2001, 2003–06; Program Comm., 2000; pres., 2005–06; ch., Exec. Dir. Search Comm., 2012. Member, Soc. for Lit., Science, and the Arts. MLA activities: AAUP representative, MLA/AAUP/Assn. of Research Libraries joint meeting on scholarly publishing, Oct. 2002. Advisory board, Speakeasy Magazine, Loft Literary Center (Minneapolis), 2005–06. Publications include articles in Against the Grain, AAUP Exchange, Library Journal. Statement In being considered for election to the MLA Executive Council, I hope to bring to that body the benefit of my forty years’ experience in scholarly publishing, which have been centered throughout in humanities research and advocacy. I have been a leader in the university press community, serving two terms on the board of directors and one term as president of our national association and representing our profession to library groups, learned societies, academic leaders, foundations, and the media. But I have increasingly found that many of the most valuable perspectives on scholarly publishing and communication come from discussions with faculty members and graduate students, and I worry that those voices are often unheard in the negotiations that are restructuring how knowledge will be evaluated, accessed, preserved, and brought to the public. As an Executive Council member, I want to play a strong role in amplifying scholars’ voices in those critical discussions. Though my responsibilities at the University of Minnesota Press are primarily administrative, I also act as editor in digital culture, among other areas, and as such closely monitor and engage both the promise and peril of the emerging environment for scholarship, culture, and public engagement. Thus, much of my attention over the past decade has gone to exploring innovative modes and formats of publication—including the Mellon Foundation–funded Manifold project for networked, media-rich monographs and the Forerunners series of ideas in progress—that nevertheless maintain the values of humanities authorship, free inquiry, and rigorous critique.

§Thadious M. Davis. Geraldine R. Segal Prof. of Amer. Social Thought and prof. English, Univ. of Pennsylvania. PhD, Boston Univ. Previous appointments: Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Prof. of English, Vanderbilt Univ., 1995–2004; Brown Univ., 1990–95; Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1979–90; Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, 1976–79. Ford Foundation fellowship, 1971–72, 1972–73; Southern Fellowship, 1973–74; Amer. Council of Learned Societies grant, 1977, 1982; NEH fellowship, 1977–78; NEH conference grant, 1981–82; Ford Foundation fellowship, Natl. Reasearch Council, 1982–83; Newberry Library fellowship, summer 1985; Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, 1985–86; fellow, Du Bois Inst., Harvard Univ., 1993–94; R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow, Huntington Library, 2000–01; fellow, Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library, 2001–02; Director’s Fellow, Notre Dame Inst. for Advanced Study, 2014–15. Lit. lecturer, English Lang. Seminars (Czechoslovakia), Intl. Communications Agency, summer 1981, summer 1982; visiting poet-scholar, Arts America Program (Taiwan, Korea, and the Philippines), United States Information Agency, fall 1990; Walt Whitman Ch. in Amer. Civilization (Univ. of Leiden), Distinguished Fulbright Chairs Program, 1988–89. Pushcart Prize for Poetry, 1979; Distinguished Scholastic Achievement Award, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston, 1991; Honor Book Award for Nonfiction, Black Caucus, Amer. Library Assn., 1994; Phi Beta Kappa Poet, Brown Univ., 1994–95; 10 – Candidate Information

Anna Julia Cooper Award for Feminist Scholarship, Spelman Coll., 1995; Cecil and Ida Green Honors Prof., Texas Christian Univ., 1996; Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Leadership in African Amer. Lit., MELUS, 2007. Honorary degree: Wesleyan Univ., 1999. Advisory board, Pembroke Center for Research on Women, Brown Univ., 1991–93; exec. comm., Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Brown Univ., 1991–93; Accrediting Commission for Senior Colls. and Univs., Western Assn. of Schools and Colls., 1992; Lit. Comm., Grad. Record Examination, 1996–99. Advisory Council (1987–89, 1999–2001), Foerster Prize selection comm. (ch., 1991), and ch. (2001), Amer. Lit. Section; Intl. Meeting Planning Comm. (1987–89), Nominating Comm. (1988–90), Natl. Program Comm. (ch., 1992–93), Natl. Council (1997–2000), Bode- Pearson Prize Comm., 1998–99), ASA; advisory board, Richard Wright Circle, 1994–2001; Nominations and Elections Comm. (ch., 2002), book prize selection comm. (2012–13), Modernist Studies Assn.; CLA; Toni Morrison Soc.; MELUS; Soc. for the Study of Southern Lit. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Black Amer. Lit. and Culture, 1983–87; Comm. on the Lits. and Langs. of America, 1986–89; Delegate Assembly, 2000–02; Delegate Assembly Ad Hoc Comm. on Staffing, 2001; exec. comm., Div. on 20th- Century Amer. Lit., 2004–08; Scarborough Prize Selection Comm., 2011–13 (ch., 2012). Ed., Langston Hughes Review, 1991–93; coed., Gender and Amer. Culture, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999– ; assoc. ed., Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1985–88; assoc. ed., Southern Literary Journal, 1989– 90; poetry ed., Black American Literature Forum, 1981–93; contributing ed., American Literary History, 1988–2000; advisory ed., Digital Yoknapatawpha, 2012–14. Ed. or advisory boards: Southern Cultures, 1992– ; Canadian Review of American Studies, 1992–99; Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2001– ; American Quarterly, 2002–05; Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, 2001–04, 2011–14; Palimpsest: A Journal of Women, Gender, and the Black International, 2010– ; Callaloo African Diaspora Series, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2012– ; African Amer. Studies, Oxford Bibliographies, 2013– . Publications include Faulkner’s “Negro”: Art and the Southern Context (1982), Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance: A Woman’s Life Unveiled (1994), Games of Property: Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (2003), Southscapes: Geographies of Race, Region, and Literature (2011); ed., Nella Larsen, Passing (1997), Nella Larsen, Quicksand (2002); coed., Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 33 (1984), vol. 38 (1985), vol. 41 (1985), Satire or Evasion? Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn (1992); contrib., The Gender of Modernism (1990), The Columbia History of the American Novel (1991), The Female Tradition in Southern Literature (1993), Langston Hughes: The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence (1995), Faulkner and Ideology (1995), Critical Essays on Carson McCullers (1996), New Essays on Go Down, Moses (1996), The Achievement of William Faulkner: A Centennial Tribute (1997), Plays by Aishah Rahman (1997), The Oxford Companion to African American Literature (1997), Teaching African American Literature: Theory and Practice (1998), Faulkner at 100: Retrospect and Prospect (2000), South to the Future: An American Region in the Twenty-First Century (2002), William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!: A Casebook (2003), Bridging Southern Cultures: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2005), History and Memory in Faulkner’s Novels (2005), What Democracy Looks Like: A New Critical Realism for a Post-Seattle World (2006), Religion in African-American Culture (2006), The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers (2010), Richard Wright: New Readings in the 21st Century (2011), Faulkner and Formalism: Returns of the Text (2012), Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (2015), Faulkner and the Black Literatures of the Americas (2016); articles in Journal of English Language and Literature, Southern Quarterly, Callaloo, Southern Studies, Black American Literature Forum, African American Review, Southern Literary Journal, College Language Association Journal, PMLA, Mississippi Quarterly, Mark Twain Journal, Mark Twain Studies, Black Scholar, Studies in American Fiction, Mississippi College of Law Review, Langston Hughes Review, Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Statement During these times when teachers and the humanities are under attack and when reasonable attitudes toward the importance of education become denigrated, it is harder to imagine how the MLA should keep moving forward with thoughtful, effective ways to communicate and enact the significance of our organization and our profession. It is harder but not impossible. Looking back, I remember being part of the MLA Committee on the Literatures and Languages of America’s efforts to foster diverse panels from Candidate Information – 11

underrepresented fields and working to add new MLA divisions to reflect the diversity within our teaching and scholarship. Today, while the MLA has continued to evolve, it still faces challenges in meeting the needs of our constituents and our profession. I am thinking, for instance, of how drastic changes in hiring practices, including interview procedures, have impacted the annual convention and how with collective effort we might revitalize it into a more vibrant and engaging public face of the MLA. Over the years, the MLA has addressed necessary change, including accessibility platforms for wider segments of the teaching profession and attaining a living wage, pay equity, and benefits for all members of our profession. While these pressing issues require our continued attention and a concerted effort to be relevant, aware, and supportive of our membership, we must also address the larger discourses and policies confronting the teaching of literature and languages. Some forty years after first becoming a member, I look forward to contributing to this ongoing and future work.

§Gail E. Finney. Prof. comparative lit. and German, Univ. of California, Davis. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Previous appointments: Harvard Univ., 1980–88. DAAD dissertation fellowship, 1977–79; NEH fellowship, 1983–84; Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, 1989–90; Davis Humanities Inst. fellowship, fall 1999; Herbert A. Young Soc. Deans’ Fellowship, Univ. of California, Davis, 2013–16. Visiting appointment: Harvard Univ., spring 1997. Distinguished Grad./Professional Teaching Award, Univ. of California, Davis, 2007. Panelist, NEH, 2001; evaluator, Mellon-ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship Prog., 2006–07. Advisory board (1993–97, 2003–07) and Owen Aldridge Prize Comm. (1996–97 [ch.], 2003–05), ACLA; AATG; ICLA; Women in German. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on 19th- and Early-20th-Century German Lit., 1986–90; PMLA Advisory Comm., 1991–95; exec. comm., Div. on 20th-Century German Lit., 1998–2002; Delegate Assembly, 2000– 02; Nominating Comm., 2012–13. Ed. or advisory boards: Studies in Humor and Gender, Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1993– ; Studies in Contemporary German Lit., Stauffenburg Press (Tübingen), 2001– ; German Life and Letters, 2004–13; Humanities, 2015– . Publications include The Counterfeit Idyll: The Garden Ideal and Social Reality in Nineteenth- Century Fiction (1984), Women in Modern Drama: Freud, Feminism, and European Theater at the Turn of the Century (1989, 1991), Christa Wolf (1999); ed., Look Who’s Laughing: Gender and Comedy (1994), Visual Culture in Twentieth-Century Germany: Text as Spectacle (2006), Literature of Fantasy and the Supernatural (2012; rev. ed., 2013); coed., Ain güt geboren edel man. A Festschrift for Winder McConnell on the Occasion of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday (2011); contrib., Rethinking Germanistik: Canon and Culture (1991), Neverending Stories: Toward a Critical Narratology (1992), Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 118 (1992), The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen (1994), Lexikon Literaturtheoretischer Werke (1995), Thalia’s Daughters: German Women Dramatists from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (1996), The Cambridge History of German Literature (1997), Schreiben im heutigen Deutschland: Die literarische Szene nach der Wende (1997), Schwellen: Germanistische Erkundungen einer Metapher (1999), The Camden House History of German Literature, vol. 9 (2005), A Companion to Tragedy (2005), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization: The American Comparative Literature Association 2004 Report on the Discipline (2006), Unfitting Stories: Narrative Approaches to Disease, Disability, and Trauma (2007), Freud und die Antike (2011), Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (2011), From Kafka to Sebald: Modernism and Narrative Form (2012), The 2014–2015 Report on the State of the Discipline of Comparative Literature (2014), Gender and Humor: Interdisciplinary and International Perspectives (2014); articles in German Quarterly, Germanic Review, Comparative Literature, Modern Drama, German Life and Letters, Comparative Literature Studies, Modern Austrian Literature, German Politics and Society, Symplokē, Seminar, New German Critique, Modern Language Studies, Tristania, Unterrichtspraxis, UC Davis Magazine, Brújula: Revista interdisciplinaria sobre estudios latinoamericanos. Statement Because the welfare of the profession will, to a considerable degree, be determined by our current and future graduate students, this segment of the academy warrants our careful attention. Having conducted several searches in both German and comparative literature, I have come to believe that a single-minded dedication to language and literature will perhaps not best serve students on the job market today, though it 12 – Candidate Information

should drive their course of study. As the administrative body of the MLA, the Executive Council is well positioned to serve as a vehicle for consciousness-raising. If elected to the council, I would pursue the dissemination of the awareness that students should be encouraged early in their graduate careers to think along interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lines, to do coursework in or even pursue graduate minors in areas such as critical theory, cinema and media studies, digital humanities, second language acquisition, feminist theory and research, medical humanities, and performance studies. Similarly, they should embrace opportunities to participate in topical, multidisciplinary conferences where their expertise in literature and language might enrich and be enriched by exposure to the work of colleagues in the social or natural sciences. Breaking down the silo mentality can benefit all of us.

§Jean Elizabeth Howard. George Delacorte Prof. in the Humanities, Columbia Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. Previous appointments: Syracuse Univ., 1975–88. NEH summer fellowship, 1984; Folger Library senior fellowship, 1986–87; Folger Library fellow, fall 1996; NEH fellowship, Newberry Library, spring 1997; Guggenheim fellowship, 1999–2000; R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow, Huntington Library, 2003–04; Huntington Library short-term fellow, spring 2012; fellow, Heyman Center for the Humanities, Columbia Univ., 2016–17. Visiting appointments: Amer. Univ. in Cairo, 1997; Brisbane Univ., 2000; Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2001–02; Hood Fellow and Alice Griffin Fellow, Univ. of Auckland, 2008. Wasserstrom Prize for Excellence in Grad. Teaching, Syracuse Univ., 1986; Grad. Student Mentoring Award, Columbia Univ., 2006; Barnard Hewitt Award (for Theatre of a City), Amer. Soc. for Theatre Research, 2008. Honorary degree: Brown Univ., 2016. English Literary Renaissance Annual Lecture, Univ. of Massachusetts, 1992; James Edwin Savage Lecture in the Renaissance, Univ. of Mississippi, 1997; Camden Lecturer, Rice Univ., 1998; Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lecture, Columbia Univ., 2010; Lansdowne Distinguished Lecturer, Univ. of Victoria, 2011; President’s Lecture, Lafayette Coll., 2016. Trustee, Brown Univ., 1974–81. Dir., Inst. for Research on Women and Gender, Columbia Univ., 1996–99; President’s Diversity Advisory Council, Brown Univ., 2003– (ch., 2011–13); ch., Pembroke Center Associates Council, Brown Univ., 2014–16. Program comm. (1985–86), trustee (1985–88), Tokyo World Congress program comm. (1991), pres. (1999–2000), and Long-Range Planning Comm. (ch., 2015–16), Shakespeare Assn. of America; Christian Gauss Award selection comm. (1998–2000), senator-at-large (2009–15, 2015–21), and Visiting Scholars Comm. (ch., 2011– ), Phi Beta Kappa; Renaissance Soc. of America. MLA activities: MLA Prize for a First Book Selection Comm., 1994–95 (ch., 1995); PMLA Advisory Comm., 1994–97; exec. comm., Div. on Shakespeare, 1995–99; Comm. on Honors and Awards, 1997–2000; Comm. on the New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare, 1998–2002; Radio Comm., 2000–07 (ch., 2005–07); Comm. on the Status of Women in the Profession, 2007–10 (coch., 2008–10); PMLA Ed. Board, 2010–12; Comm. on Amendments to the Constitution, 2013–16. Ed. or advisory boards: Shakespeare Quarterly, 1987–2000; Renaissance Drama, 1988– ; Shakespeare Studies, 1997– ; Journal of Early Modern Culture Studies, 2000– . Publications include Shakespeare’s Art of Orchestration: Stage Technique and Audience Response (1984), The Stage and Social Struggle in Early Modern England (1994), Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598–1642 (2007); coauthor, Engendering a Nation: A Feminist Account of Shakespeare’s English Histories (1997), Marx and Freud: Great Shakespeareans (2012); coed., Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology (1987), The Norton Shakespeare (1997; 3rd ed., 2015), Marxist Shakespeares (2001), A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works, 4 vols. (2003), As You Like It: Texts and Contexts (2014); contrib., Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices (2006), The Impact of Feminism in English Renaissance Studies (2007), Teaching Shakespeare: Passing It On (2009), The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill (2009), A Companion to the Global Renaissance: English Literature and the Culture in the Era of Expansion (2009), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of London (2011), Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama (2011), Taking Liberties with the Author: Selected Essays From the English Institute (2013), Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception, and Performance (2014), Forms of Association: Making Publics in Early Modern Europe (2015), The Merry Wives of Windsor: New Critical Essays (2015), Shakespeare in Our Time (2016), The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, and Race (2016); articles in Shakespeare International Candidate Information – 13

Yearbook, PMLA, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Shakespeare Studies, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, Women’s Studies, Shakespeare Quarterly, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, English Literary Renaissance, Renaissance Quarterly, Bucknell Review. Statement Four professional issues especially concern me: declining government support for higher education, the lack of labor protections and fair salaries for many contingent faculty members, the state of graduate education in relation to the job market, and the need for greater inclusiveness in every aspect of higher education. I would welcome the chance to work on these problems as part of the Executive Council. Solutions are not easy, but it is important to continue to join with other learned societies to lobby in support of higher education at the federal and state levels, just as it is important to continue to work to establish norms for the fair treatment of contingent faculty members in regard to wages and working conditions, including long-term contracts, transparent review processes, and a place in faculty governance. In regard to graduate education, the MLA needs to lead the way in exploring ways to adjust the size of graduate cohorts in relation to demand and vigorously to expand preparation for job opportunities beyond full-time tenure- track positions. We should consider whether graduate programs should change the requirements for the PhD to further speed time to completion, encourage broad training over narrow, and encompass internships and apprenticeships in fields like the digital humanities, the public humanities, publishing, and big data. A remaining challenge is not only to further increase diversity in student and faculty bodies but also to change institutional practices to take account of the new strengths, needs, and perspectives such students and faculty bring.

Elizabeth Mathews Losh. Assoc. prof. English, Coll. of William and Mary. PhD, Univ. of California, Irvine. Previous appointments: Univ. of California, San Diego, 2010–15; Univ. of California, Irvine, 1998–2010. Visiting appointment: Univ. of Leiden, Jan.–June 2017. John Lovas Memorial Academic Weblog Award (for Virtualpolitik), Kairos, 2007; Sony Scholar Award, Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Univ. of California, San Diego, 2011; Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Technology Research (for The War on Learning), McGannon Center, Fordham Univ., 2014; Outstanding Book Award (for The War on Learning), CCCC, 2016. Divisional council, California Inst. for Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2010–15; board member, Univ. of California Inst. for Research on the Arts, 2012–15; advisory board, R-SHIEF, 2014– . Steering comm., DH SoCal, 2011– ; steering comm., HASTAC, 2011–17; steering comm. (2013– ) and cofacilitator (2014–15), FemTechNet; ASA; CCCC. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2014–Jan. 2017. Advisory board, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience, 2015– . Publications include Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (2009), The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University (2014); coauthor, Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing (2013; 2nd ed., 2017); ed., MOOCs and Their Afterlives: Experiments in Scale and Access in Higher Education (2017); contrib., Integrating Literature and Writing Instruction: First-Year English, Humanities Core Courses, Seminars (2007), Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012), Media Authorship (2013), Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities (2015), Between Humanities and the Digital (2015), Debates in the Digital Humanities 2016 (2016), Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming (2016), Doing Digital Humanities: Practice, Training, Research (2016), The Routledge Companion to Media Studies and Digital Humanities (2017), The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (2017); articles in Camera Obscura, Comparative American Studies, Computational Culture, Computers and Composition, Digital Humanities Quarterly, First Monday, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Second Language Writing, Literary and Linguistic Computing. Statement These are exciting times for our community. More people on the planet are speaking English (generally as a second language rather than as a first), and more people are reading and writing digital texts. However, these are also obviously challenging times. As a longtime MLA member who is completing her 14 – Candidate Information

term in the Delegate Assembly representing issues of distance and online education and as an author who has published books about higher education, I am uniquely qualified to coordinate efforts to grow our professional association in key areas—such as writing studies, media studies, electronic literature, the digital humanities, and the teaching of language—while also representing members who might feel increasingly contingent and precarious. I am an experienced collaborator and administrator: I have worked in leadership positions with many different kinds of feminist collectives, and I have held appointments in many types of departments (including communication, composition, gender studies, film studies, and art) as an affiliated faculty member. As a rhetorician who specializes in organizational communication, I am interested in better integrating research, teaching, and service as professional responsibilities and connecting theory to practice whenever possible. In addition to being a scholar of literature, I have directed writing programs, experiential learning programs, and programs to enhance digital literacy and interdisciplinary exploration, which requires negotiating conflicts and articulating core values. Given my enthusiasm for continuing to improve how the MLA serves its members, I would bring many relevant skills and experiences to service on the Executive Council.

§Steven Mailloux. Prof. English and President’s Prof. of Rhetoric, Loyola Marymount Univ. PhD, Univ. of Southern California. Previous appointments: Univ. of California, Irvine, 1991–2010 (Chancellor’s Prof. of Rhetoric, 2001–10); Syracuse Univ., 1986–91; Univ. of Miami, 1979–86; Temple Univ., 1977–79. NEH fellowship, 1979–80; fellowship School of Criticism and Theory (Northwestern Univ.), 1982; NEH summer fellowship, 1983; Mellon fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, 1985–86; fellow, Univ. of California Humanities Research Inst., 1996, 2004; Fulbright lectureship (Moscow State Univ.), 2004. Visiting appointments: Univ. of Kansas, June 1989; Univ. of Toledo, June 1990. Invited lectures: Univ. of Michigan, Oct. 2000; Emory Univ., Mar. 2001; Thomas Sheehan Lecture, Univ. of Louisville, Feb. 2002; Cardozo School of Law, Apr. 2002; New York Univ., Feb. 2004; Univ. of Memphis, Oct. 2004; Ian Fletcher Lecture, Arizona State Univ., Oct. 2004; Univ. of Delaware, Sept. 2005; Stanford Humanities Center, Oct. 2005; Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York, Oct. 2007; Stanford Univ., January 2008; Univ. of Houston, Mar. 2009; Ohio State Univ., Apr. 2009; Univ. of California, Irvine, May 2010; Univ. of Minnesota, May 2010; Univ. of California, Los Angeles, May 2011; Annual Nina Mae Kellogg Lecture, Portland State Univ., May 2011; Inaugural Distinguished Guest Lecturer in Jesuit Pedagogy, Fordham Univ., Sept. 2011; St. Louis Univ., Mar. 2012; Loyola Univ., Chicago, Oct. 2012; Northwestern Univ., May 2013; Ghent Univ., May 2013; Yale Univ., Sept. 2013; Indiana Univ., Mar. 2014; William S. Boyd School of Law, Nov. 2016; Univ. of Oslo, December 2016. Panelist: NEH, 1986–88, 1998– 2000; Canada Council for the Arts, 1989; Fulbright fellowship, CIES, 1994–96; Stanford Humanities Center, 1996–2006. NCTE, Rhetoric Soc. of America, Intl. Soc. for the History of Rhetoric, Kenneth Burke Soc., Reception Study Soc. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 1990–92, 1996–98, 1999–2001; PMLA Advisory Comm., 1993–96; Delegate Assembly Organizing Comm., 1999–2001 (ch., 2000); Delegate Assembly Ad Hoc Comm. on Staffing, 2001; Elections Comm., 2004–05; Publications Comm., 2006–09 (ch., 2008–09); exec. comm., Div. on Teaching as a Profession, 2012–Jan. 2014. Ed. boards: Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1986–89, 2000–06, 2008–10; American Literary History, 1988–94; Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1994– ; Works and Days, 1995– ; Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 2000–03; Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 2000–07; Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 2004–09; American Literature, 2007–09; Conversations, 2011–14; Western Journal of Communication, 2012–13; Advances in the History of Rhetoric, 2015– ; Transdisciplinary Rhetorics, Penn State Univ. Press; Rhetoric Culture and Social Critique, Univ. of Alabama Press; Rhetoric and Democratic Deliberation, Penn State Univ. Press. Publications include Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (1982), Rhetorical Power (1989), Reception Histories: Rhetoric, Pragmatism, and American Cultural Politics (1998), Disciplinary Identities: Rhetorical Paths of English, Speech, and Composition (2006), Rhetoric’s Pragmatism: Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics (2017); ed., Rhetoric, Sophistry, Pragmatism (1995); coed., Interpreting Law and Literature: A Hermeneutic Reader (1988); contrib., Devils and Angels: Textual Editing and Literary Theory (1991), Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response (1993), English Studies / Culture Studies: Institutionalizing Dissent (1994), Encyclopedia of Candidate Information – 15

Rhetoric and Composition (1996), Hermeneutics and Rhetoric in Our Time (1997), Post-nationalist American Studies (2000), Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work (2002), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2003), The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition (2005), Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville: Essays in Relation (2008), New Directions in American Reception Study (2008), Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric: Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges (2010), The Cambridge Companion to Allegory (2010), The Political Archive of Paul de Man: Property, Sovereignty, and the Theotropic (2012), Theorizing Histories of Rhetoric (2013), Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies (2016); articles in Critical Inquiry, New Literary History, PMLA, American Literary History, Narrative, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Studies in the Novel, Amerikastudien / American Studies, College English, MLN, Genre, REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Pragmatism Today, College Composition and Communication, Studies in the Literary Imagination, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Cardozo Law Review, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature, Text and Performance Quarterly, Style, Bucknell Review. Statement The MLA remains strongly committed to ongoing advocacy for the humanities, especially for the study of modern languages and literatures. The MLA should continue to build on its past initiatives developing critical, historical, and theoretical conversations across the fields it represents while intensifying its participation in the collective efforts of the National Humanities Alliance and the Coalition for International Education. As our organization works to support the humanities among larger publics, we also need to pay special attention to the material needs of the various constituencies making up our membership, joining other humanities disciplines in projects to restore and protect tenure-track positions and improve benefits and job security for contingent faculty members. In accomplishing these goals, the MLA should practice a democratic rhetoric of cultural engagement and continue its conferences and online presence as sites for free discussion of the wide-ranging challenges we face as scholars and teachers.

§Ramon Saldivar. Prof. English and comparative lit. and Hoagland Family Prof. of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. Milligan Family Univ. Fellow in Undergrad. Educ., Stanford Univ., 2002– ; Burke Family Dir., Bing Overseas Studies Program, Stanford Univ., 2012– . Previous appointments: Univ. of Texas, Austin, 1976–91. Ford Foundation public policy research program grant (for Center for Mexican Amer. Studies, Univ. of Texas), 1985; Guggenheim fellowship, 1985–86; Irvine Curriculum Grant for Multicultural Programming, Stanford Univ., 1992–94. Visiting appointments: Stanford Univ. Bing Overseas Studies Program in Berlin, spring 2001, spring 2015, spring 2016; Brackenridge Distinguished Visiting Prof. in the Humanities, Univ. of Texas, San Antonio, 2001; visiting lecturer (at Kobe Univ., Ritsumeikan Univ., Aichi Prefectural Univ., Tokyo Univ., and Tsuda Coll.), Japanese Assn. of Amer. Studies, 2003. Lillian and Thomas B. Rhodes Award for Excellence in Undergrad. Teaching, Stanford Univ., 1994; Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergrad. Educ., Stanford Univ., 1998; cowinner (for The Borderlands of Culture), MLA Prize in United States Latina and Latino and Chicana and Chicano Literary and Cultural Studies, 2007; Natl. Humanities Medal, NEH, 2011; Distinguished Achievement Award, Western Lit. Assn., 2013. Natl. Council on the Humanities (appointed by Pres. Barack Obama), Jan. 2013–Jan. 2018. Board of governors, Univ. of California Humanities Research Inst., 1994–97. Natl. Council, ASA, 1993–95; Assn. for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP); ACLA; Western Lit. Assn. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on 20th-Century Amer. Lit., 1996–2000; Parker Prize Selection Comm., 2000– 02 (ch., 2002); exec. comm., Div. on Comparative Studies in 20th-Century Lit., 2011–Jan. 2016. Ed. or advisory boards: American Quarterly, 2000–03; Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, 2001–03; Modern Fiction Studies, 2003–07, 2014– ; American Literary History, 2010–13; ASAP/Journal, 2014– . Publications include Figural Language in the Novel: The Flowers of Speech from Cervantes to Joyce (1984), Chicano Narrative: The Dialectics of Difference (1990), The Borderlands of Culture: Américo Paredes and the Transnational Imaginary (2006); coed., Mexico and the United States: Intercultural Relations in the Humanities (1984), The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational 16 – Candidate Information

Turn (2013); guest coed., Modern Fiction Studies (2003); contrib., A Companion to Latina/o Studies (2007), The Cambridge History of the American Novel (2011), A Companion to American Literary Studies (2011), A Binational Conversation on Bridging Cultures (2013), The Oxford History of the American Novel, vol. 6 (2014), The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner (2015), Fifty Years after Faulkner (2016), American Studies as Transnational Practice: Turning toward the Pacific (2016), Junot Díaz and the Decolonial Imagination (2016); articles in Comparative Literary Studies, Narrative, PMLA, American Literary History, Modern Fiction Studies, New Literary History, South Atlantic Quarterly, Stanford Humanities Review, Versión: Estudios de communicación y política (Mexico City), Critical Exchange, Diacritics, Comparative Literature, James Joyce Quarterly, ELH, MELUS, Journal of Narrative Technique, MLN. Statement In the postwar period, the Modern Language Association helped open the academy to new people, ideas, and cultural forms. Through its sponsored publications, meetings, and institutes, the MLA fostered conditions for cross-cultural and transnational exchange by stressing the vitality of the language arts in all their forms. New institutional issues now press for our attention—the nature of undergraduate education, the professional training of graduate students, and even the very viability of the humanities and arts as elements of a project for developing the global public good. While extending its commitment to these matters, the MLA must continue to encourage the comparative inquiries that have been the hallmarks of new developments in modern language and cultural study and promote conversations not only within its domains but also across disciplinary borders and with all segments of contemporary society. I am especially concerned with addressing the role that race and ethnicity play in determining social and political life. Important questions remain about how to further understanding of the roles of race and ethnicity in contemporary life. Posing questions of race and ethnicity in terms of the global public good allows us to consider the larger sociopolitical process of cultural production itself, the makeup of literary culture, and the role of popular culture in its various manifestations in the achievement of the public good. Through its annual meeting, sponsored symposia, and publications, the MLA is the appropriate body to conduct the investigation of issues of this nature.

Part III: Voting for Professional-Issues Delegates Eighteen persons will be elected to professional-issues seats in the assembly. The term of office will be from 8 January 2018 through the close of the January 2021 convention. The numbers preceding the nominees’ names correspond to the numbers assigned to the nominees on the paper ballot sheet. The names of the professional-issues delegates with continuing terms in 2018 appear at the MLA Web site (www.mla.org/del_assembly_members).

Vote for one nominee in any or all of the eighteen professional-issues contests.

I. Graduate Students (2 contests)

10. Andrew Bingham. Grad. student English, Queen’s Univ. MA, Univ. of Toronto. Institutional service (Queen’s Univ.): copres., Grad. English Soc., 2010–12. Award recipient, Canada Grad. Scholarships Master’s Program (SSHRC), 2008–09; Ontario Grad. Scholarship, 2009–10; doctoral scholarship, Canada Grad. Scholarships Program (SSHRC), 2010–13; junior visiting fellow, Chester Ronning Centre, Univ. of Alberta, 2014. Cofounder and coed., Modern Horizons, 2010– . Conference presentations: Art and Social Responsibility (Inst. for Christian Studies, Toronto), Mar. 2009; Canadian Soc. for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2009; The Politics of Knowledge and Schooling in the Global Era (Intl. Educ. Program, Steinhardt School, New York Univ.), Mar. 2011; PAMLA, 2012, 2015; Modernity, Ideology, and the Novel (Simon Fraser Univ.), Oct. 2012; NEMLA, 2013, 2015; 24th Annual Candidate Information – 17

Conference on Virginia Woolf: Writing the World (Northern Illinois Univ.), June 2014; Identity, Intimacy (Univ. of Toronto), Oct. 2015; Nihilism . . . Utopianism (Simon Fraser Univ.), Oct. 2016. Publications include articles in Compara(i)son, Inter/tidal, SFU Institute for the Humanities Journal, Modern Horizons. Statement The inner strength and diversity of the MLA are essential to the health of the humanities in North America, and graduate students are essential to the continuing vitality of the MLA. Both as a graduate student and as copresident of Queen’s Graduate Student Association, I have had good and interesting experiences working through various concerns facing graduate students. These range from one’s relationships with intellectual mentors to one’s sometimes fraught entry into the world of humanities scholarship to the ethical and aesthetic responsibilities involved in one’s academic vocation. With these concerns in mind, if elected to the MLA Delegate Assembly I will work hard to listen to, think about, and address matters at the center of contemporary graduate studies in ways that will help improve the felt usefulness of the MLA annual conference, graduate student interest in and dedication to the matters of the PMLA, and the role of graduate students in the public presence of the humanities in general. The humanities are in rough shape all over the English-speaking world in our time. But we must strive to revitalize our disciplines now and for the future, and that revitalization begins with graduate students and their cultivated ability to read carefully, think at length, and write and converse in a way that makes sense and moves the common reader and interlocutor. The MLA’s (potential) role in this cultivation is immense and something for which it is worth fighting.

11. No candidate ☼ 12. Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang. Grad. student comparative lit., Univ. of Toronto. MPhil (comparative lit.), Université de Paris 4 (Sorbonne); MA (bilingual translation), Univ. of Cape Coast. Institutional service (Univ. of Toronto): research asst., 2015–16. SSHRC doctoral fellowship, 2016. Ed. asst., Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2017– . Conference presentations: African Lit. Assn., 2016; Intl. Soc. for Humor Studies, 2017. Publications include ed., Kwaw Ansah, Love Brewed in the African Pot (graphic novel, 2014), Naana Opoku-Agyemang, Who Told the Most Incredible Story?, 5 vols. (2015). Statement It is a great honor to be nominated to this position. I have spent the past three years in Canada as a PhD student and candidate, but I have also been fortunate enough that my experiences as a student of the humanities have taken place on three continents. I have gained a sense of the difficulties we face but also of the advantages our field presents to us in academia and beyond. These include our unique capacity to meet today’s challenges with critical thinking skills as well as open-mindedness. They are undoubtedly part of the reason so many of us join and remain faithful to the humanities despite any crises. The MLA provides a remarkable opportunity for sharing input with other scholars. Teaching both languages and literature has allowed me a wider and truer perspective of both sides of the learning process. This is vital to me as a graduate student and course instructor who will eventually be on the job market. Though I couldn’t claim the greatest expertise, I look forward to learning all I can in this position, while drawing on my experience and that of my colleagues to fill this role to the best of my abilities.

13. No candidate

18 – Candidate Information

II. Independent Scholars (1 contest)

14. Joseph Paul Fisher. Asst. dir., Disability Support Services, and lecturer, Coll. of Professional Studies, George Washington Univ. PhD, George Washington Univ. (GWU). Ch., Planning Comm., Composing Disability Conference Series, GWU, 2009–16. Pres., Capital Area Assn. on Higher Educ. and Disability, 2016– . Publications include coed., The Politics of Post-9/11 Music: Sound, Trauma, and the Music Industry in the Time of Terror (2011); guest coed., Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (2016); contrib., Encyclopedia of American Disability History (2009), Resounding Pasts: Essays in Music, Literature, and Cultural Memory (2011), Write in Tune: Contemporary Music in Fiction (2014); articles in Hybrid Pedagogy, PopMatters. Statement For sixteen years, I have worked at the intersections of classroom instruction, education administration, and student support. I began these efforts as a public high school teacher, a position in which I primarily taught disabled and immigrant student populations. While pursuing my doctorate, I worked as an adjunct professor at the Alexandria campus of Northern Virginia Community College. During my time there, I grappled with questions about the connections between the humanities and the economic and political realities of American life. Many of my students were not United States citizens, and they had diverse professional histories—aspiring auto mechanics, enlisted Army soldiers, and working parents. Today, I am an administrator in a disability service office at a four-year university where I continue to teach composition to adult students as an adjunct professor. I offer this background to emphasize that even though my primary appointment is an administrative one, I have never left the classroom. Moreover, my professional position is bifurcated—it is tenuously connected to academic culture but is in large part not academic. As a result, my professional existence is one where I attempt to balance publishing expectations with the demands of a full-time job that does value, or support, scholarly research. I believe that these pressures are faced by a sizeable chunk of the MLA membership, and I hope to use my position in the Delegate Assembly to advocate for new conceptualizations of the value of nontraditional academic labor within traditional academic professions.

15. James C. Raymond. Prof. emer., Univ. of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; pres., Intl. Inst. for Legal Writing and Reasoning. PhD, Univ. of Texas. Honorable mention, Distinguished Retiring Ed., Council of Eds. of Learned Journals, 1991; Distinguished Alumnus Award, Univ. of New Orleans, 1992. Ed., College English, 1985–92; board of referees, Revista de retórica y teoría de la comunicación. Publications include Writing (Is an Unnatural Act) (1980), Moves Writers Make (1999), Writing for the Court (2010); coauthor, Clear Understandings: A Guide to Legal Writing (1982); ed., Literacy as a Human Problem (1982), English as a Discipline; or, Is There a Plot in This Play? (1996); coed., James B. McMillan: Essays in Linguistics by His Friends and Colleagues (1977). Statement Stephen Hawking has described the philosophy of language as “a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant” (The Theory of Everything, p 166). With respect for Professor Hawking, to suggest that the philosophy of language is a trivial pursuit is to be blind to an alternate universe, not in some remote corner of space or buried among the interstices of subatomic particles but close at hand, inhabited by signifiers and figments of language that are protean, contradictory, elusive as quarks, plagued with indeterminacy, and so much a part of us that we have trouble seeing their strangeness and recognizing that they are fundamentally different from the material world that science is equipped to investigate. Within this universe we construct every academic discipline, including ethics, esthetics, politics, metaphysics, and jurisprudence—all of which require figments of language and modes of predication and soft logic that are methodologically excluded from science. Science itself is a figment of language. Candidate Information – 19

I would advocate development of courses in critical thinking that would examine the methodology of the major disciplines, the degree of certitude and precision they are capable of achieving, and the role of rhetoric as the art of dealing with issues that cannot be resolved by science or irrefutable formal logic. Courses of this sort could be a foundation for a core curriculum as well as an antidote to what are perhaps the most lethal intellectual diseases of our time: illusions of certitude and fundamentalism in all its forms.

III. Retired Scholars (1 contest)

16. Deanne Bogdan. Prof. emer. social justice educ., Univ. of Toronto. PhD, Univ. of Toronto. SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, 1980–81 (Ontario Inst. for Studies in Educ.), 1982–83 (York Univ.); SSHRC research fellowship, 1985–86; affiliated scholar, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz, Jan.–Mar. 1991; visiting fellow, Univ. of London, May–June 1991, Apr.–June 1998; scholar in residence, Indiana Univ., fall 1998. Fellow, McLaughlin Coll., York Univ., 1979– ; fellow, Philosophy of Educ. Soc., 1992– . Certificate of Recognition of Service, Canadian Council of Teachers of English (CCTE), 1992; lifetime membership, Women in Lit. and Life Assembly (WILLA), NCTE, 1997. George F. Kneller Lecturer, Amer. Educational Studies Assn., 2008. Exec. comm. (1980–89), conference ch. (1981), educational policy ch. (1981–83),Ontario Academic Credit Advisory Comm. (1982–83), president’s liaison to CCTE (1982–83), affiliate representative to CCTE (1983–87), and Comm. on Censorship (ch., 1985–86), Ontario Council of Teachers of English; campus representative, Assn. of Canadian Coll. and Univ. Teachers of English, 1987–90; dir. of publications, CCTE, 1989–90; Nominating Comm. (1990–91, 1996–97, 1999– 2000), Program Comm. (1991–92, 2003–04), Comm. on the Status of Women in the Profession (1991–94; ch., 1992–94), Comm. on Professional Affairs (1993–98), and Elections Comm. (2000–01, 2004–05), Philosophy of Educ. Soc.; assoc. ch. (1991–92), ch. (1992–93), and Rewey Belle Inglis Award Selection Comm. (1995), WILLA, NCTE; campus representative, Canadian Federation for the Humanities, 1995–96; Critics’ Choice Comm., Amer. Educational Studies Assn., 2000–01; Steering Comm. (2000–03), program comm. (2003, 2005), and exec. sec. (2005–07), Intl. Soc. for Philosophy of Music Educ. Ed. or advisory boards: Indirections: Journal of the Ontario Council of Teachers of English, 1981–85; English Quarterly (CCTE), 1985–90; English Education, 1988–90; Reader: Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy, 1991– ; Philosophy of Music Education Review, 1995– ; Changing English: Studies in Reading and Culture, 1995–2007; Educational Theory, 1996–2000. Publications include Re-educating the Imagination: Toward a Poetics, Politics, and Pedagogy of Literary Engagement (1992); coed., Beyond Communication: Reading Comprehension and Criticism (1990), Constructive Reading: Teaching beyond Communication (1993); guest ed., Indirections: Journal of the Ontario Council of Teachers of English (1981); guest coed., Journal of Educational Thought (1990); contrib., The Right to Literacy (1990), Reading and Response (1990), Young Readers: New Readings (1992), Reassessing Language and Literacy (1992), The Education Feminism Reader (1994), The Legacy of Northrop Frye (1994), Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia (1996), Education Feminism: Classic and Contemporary Readings (2013); articles in Paideusis: Journal of the Canadian Philosophy of Education Society, Philosophy of Music Education Review, Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, MediaTropes, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Diskussion Musikpädagogik, Reader: Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy, New Literary History, Changing English: Studies in Reading and Culture, WILLA: The Women in Literature and Life Assembly, Textual Studies in Canada, ADE Bulletin, Journal of Educational Thought, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Journal of Education, Resources for Feminist Research / Documentation sur la recherche féministe, Studies in Canadian Literature, English Quarterly, Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly, Journal of Moral Education, Cuadernos de filología inglesa, English Education, Educational Theory, Interchange: A Journal of Educational Studies, English Studies in Canada, English Journal, Indirections: Journal of the Ontario Council of Teachers of English. Statement My interdisciplinary background (BA in music, MA in English, and PhD in educational theory) and teaching and scholarship in the philosophy of literature and literature education, aesthetics, and women’s 20 – Candidate Information

studies would lend a broad perspective to the crisis of the humanities in our increasingly diverse and technocratic milieu. Ever since my doctoral dissertation addressed Northrop Frye’s exploration of the social value of a literary education, I have given courses and published on the poetics, politics, and pedagogy of literary and aesthetic engagement. As professor emerita in a school of education, I have witnessed literature and literary theory morph from their central place in a department once defined by its cognate disciplines in the humanities to that of social justice education. Living in one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, I would welcome participation in the MLA’s mandate to meet the twin goals of literature to “instruct and delight” for the common good without literature becoming either a decorative art or sociological document. Personally and professionally, I have had the ongoing privilege of shared office space in a thriving, vibrant community of retired colleagues from across the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Arts and Science as a fellow of our Senior College, members of which enjoy their own dedicated space on campus, governing structure, and weekly lecture series throughout the academic year on a wide array of topics. If elected, I would look forward to sharing my retired colleagues’ concerns and interests with other assembly members.

17. Clark Hulse. Prof. emer. English and art history, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago. PhD, Claremont Grad. Univ. NEH–Newberry Library senior research fellowship, 1978–79; British Acad.–Newberry Library Exchange Fellow, 1983; Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, 1987–88; Millard Meiss Publication Fund Award, Coll. Art Assn., 1989. Board of directors, Illinois Humanities Council, 2000–09; exec. dir., Creative Santa Fe, 2011–12; exec. dir. (2013) and board of directors (ch., 2013– ), Chicago Humanities Festival; advisory comm., Newberry Library Renaissance Center, 2014– . Exec. comm. (1987–91), vice pres. (1989), MacCaffrey Prize Comm. (ch., 1989), and pres. (1990), Spenser Soc. of America; Carl S. Meyer Prize Comm. (ch., 1987–88) and Roland Bainton Prize in Lit. Selection Comm. (2013–14; ch., 2014), Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference; ch., Newberry Library Awards Comm., 1988– 94; Comm. on Governmental and Public Affairs (2006–09), Task Force on Responsible Conduct of Research (2008), and Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities Selection Comm. (2006–08; ch., 2008), Council of Grad. Schools. Ed. board, Explorations in Renaissance Culture, 1995–2000; ed. board, Univ. of Illinois Press, 1999–2002, 2007–10; ed. consultant, Massachusetts Studies in Early Modern Culture, 1991–94. Publications include Metamorphic Verse: The Elizabethan Minor Epic (1981), The Rule of Art: Literature and Painting in the Renaissance (1990), Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend (2003); coed., Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England (2000); contrib., Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (1986), The Historical Renaissance: New Essays on Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture (1988), The Spenser Encyclopedia (1990), Is Poetry a Visual Art? (1993), Perspective as a Problem in the Art, History, and Literature of Early Modern England (1993), Approaches to Teaching Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1994), The Production of English Renaissance Culture (1994), Major Tudor Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (1997), The Cambridge Companion to English Literature 1500–1600 (2000), Approaches to Teaching Shorter Elizabethan Poetry (2000), Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Suiting the Action to the Word (2013); articles in PMLA, J. Paul Getty Museum Journal, Studies in Philology, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, Shakespeare Survey, English Literary Renaissance, Criticism, John Donne Journal, and others. Statement What does retired mean anyway these days? We’ve moved on from our primary academic position and made way, hopefully, for a younger scholar. But we continue to teach and write on academic subjects or have turned to related interests that did not fit into the daily grind of the profession. I have found in retirement the freedom to be involved deeply in the public humanities and to write in new and different ways for nonacademic audiences as well as continue academic scholarship. Since retiring, I have headed up cultural nonprofits, raised funds for the humanities, blogged for a nationally prominent theater company, and started work on a book completely outside my area of expertise. As a member of the MLA Delegate Assembly, I will make common cause with independent scholars and those pursuing alternative careers as well as with non-tenure-track faculty members on issues of library Candidate Information – 21

access for research, representation within institutions, and professional opportunities outside of higher education. Above all, I will look for ways in which our years of wisdom and experience can contribute to an understanding of the critical importance of the humanities to our world.

IV. Careers outside the Classroom (1 contest)

18. Arthur Calvano. Court interpreter, Massachusetts Trial Court. MA (Spanish), Middlebury Coll.; Master of Liberal Arts (general management), Harvard Univ. Concurrent position: immigration court interpreter, SOS International LLC, 2015– . Participant, Agnese Haury Inst. for Court Interpreters, Kentucky Court of Justice /Natl. Center for Interpretation, Jan.–Feb. 2015. Amer. Translators Assn., Natl. Assn. of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators. Statement As a self-made professional interpreter (not translator), I seek to bring a unique voice to the Delegate Assembly that will hopefully demonstrate the potential career satisfaction manifest in a most misunderstood profession—that of the interpreter. Students of language and its beauty and complexity may find the challenges of two different disciplines, interpretation and translation, without equal or tantamount to being in the classroom. As a nonnative speaker of Spanish who interprets in court on a daily basis, moreover, I feel empowered by my broad academic achievement that serves as a foundation for the eclectic sources from which I must draw to perform with success. As we know, language is dynamic, and its breadth is humbling. At the same time, it is awesome!

19. No candidate

V. Full-Time Contingent Faculty Members (1 contest)

20. Liz Hutter. Visiting asst. prof. English, Valparaiso Univ. PhD, Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Previous appointment: Georgia Inst. of Technology. Mellon short-term research fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia, Aug. 2005; short-term fellowship, Huntington Library, June–Aug. 2006; NEH summer inst. fellowship, Munson Inst. of Amer. Maritime Studies, June–July 2014. Publications include articles in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Configurations, Common-Place: The Journal of Early American Life. Statement I have been a contingent faculty member since 2010, teaching technical/professional communication, composition, and literature at four different institutions in three states. I am acutely familiar with the professional, financial, and social precarity associated with non-tenure-track academic positions. I believe that the expertise and experiences of contingent faculty members need to continue to be recognized, listened to, and engaged with by academic administrators as well as by tenure-track faculty members, academic staff members, and students. If elected, I would be committed to expanding collaborative dialogue and enhancing initiatives within the MLA (and with other professional organizations in the humanities) that advocate for the unique professional and quality-of-life challenges that contingent faculty members regularly confront. These challenges include job security, meaningful inclusion in departmental/institutional decision-making, and increasing the availability of and access to professional resources that support traditional and nontraditional academic careers.

21. Elena Valdez. Lecturer Spanish, Christopher Newport Univ. PhD, Rutgers Univ. Fellowship, Corsi Internazionali di Lingua e Cultura Italiana (Univ. of Milan), summer 2002; Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain fellowship (Univ. of Barcelona), fall 2002; NEMLA summer fellowship, 2011, 2017; Columbia Univ. Libraries Research Award, summer 2016. LASA. 22 – Candidate Information

Publications include contrib., Queering Iberia: Iberian Masculinities at the Margins (2012), Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change (2014), The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and the City (2016); articles in Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, OsaMayor, Letras hispanas. Statement As a seven-year member of the MLA and a frequent participant in MLA annual conventions, I support the MLA’s long-standing commitment to and advocacy for the humanities and its ongoing support of people in the profession. I have been educated at a large research-intensive university and have taught in a range of positions at private and four-year institutions that place greater emphasis on teaching. This experience has familiarized me with the shared concerns among permanent and temporary faculty members about the stability of programs and positions, the decrease in enrollments, and the increasing reliance on the adjunct and contingent workforce. If elected to serve in the Delegate Assembly, I will advocate strongly for ensuring appropriate working conditions for contingent faculty members (job security, better salaries, access to benefits, equitable distribution of academic workload and of teaching, research, and service obligations) and for more explicit recognition of their valuable contributions to the university and the broader academic community. These urgent concerns must be continuously discussed at the MLA. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I will work toward promoting the MLA’s support of all the various constituencies of our profession as researchers, teachers, and public intellectuals of languages, literatures, and cultures. The MLA continues to be an important and influential public voice in these debates and policy decisions, and I would welcome the chance to be part of that effort to the full extent of my capabilities.

VI. Scholars Residing outside the United States and Canada (1 contest)

22. Tahia Abdel Nasser. Asst. prof. English and comparative lit., American Univ. in Cairo. PhD, Cairo Univ. Dir. of Grad. Studies, Dept. of English and Comparative Lit., Amer. Univ. in Cairo (AUC), 2015– ; interim dir., Center for Translation Studies, AUC, 2012–13. Erasmus Mundus fellowship, Freie Universität Berlin, summer 2014. Ch., Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Lit., Amer. Univ. in Cairo Press, 2012– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Arabic, 2015–Jan. 2020; Delegate Assembly 2015–Jan. 2018. Publications include Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles (2017); contrib., Mahmoud Darwish, The Adam of Two Edens: Poems (2000), The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (2001), Dictionary of African Biography (2011), Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution (2016); articles in Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature, Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Arabic Literature, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Jusoor. Statement As a comparative literature scholar residing outside the United States and Canada, I am interested in representing the concerns of members of this special-interest group in the MLA Delegate Assembly. Over the past few years, the concerns of these scholars have included education in the humanities, pedagogy, academic freedom, and new modes of comparatism in scholarship. I am committed to promoting cross- cultural dialogue and working with MLA members to address the state of the humanities. Other concerns include collaboration between institutions and among scholars, challenges of access to knowledge, and the study of literature within a global comparative framework. If elected, I would contribute to the growing conversation about the importance and value of the humanities across cultural bordersand the vulnerability and relevance of the humanities in current global contexts and work to promote dialogue and scholarship that continue to renew the study of comparative literature on a global scale.

Candidate Information – 23

23. Cristina Featherston. Prof. English, Universidad Nacional de la Plata. PhD, Univ. Nacional de la Plata. Publications include La cultura inglesa en la generación del 80: Autores, viajes, literatura (2009); coed., Civilización vs. barbarie: Un tópico para tres siglos (2014), Trauma, memoria y relato (2015); contrib., Aspects du récit fantastique rioplatense (1997), Mempo Giardinelli: Recuerdo, espera, rescate, actualidad, memoria (1999), Extraño encuentro: La poesía de Wilfred Owen (2000), Las tensiones de los opuestos: Libros y autores de la literatura argentina del ’80 (2004), Perspectivas de la ficcionalidad (2005), Narratología y mundos de ficción (2006), Narratologías (post) clásicas: Textos literarios, dramáticos y cinematográficos de la cultura contemporánea (2009), “I Came upon It in a Dream”: Ensayos sobre cultura y literatura anglosajonas (2009), Almafuerte, Poesía completa (2011), El resto es silencio: Ensayos sobre literatura comparada (2012), Escritura, cultura y referencialidad (2015); articles in Boletín de la Academia Argentina de Letras, Alba de América, Miranda, Gamma, Estudios e investigaciones, Boletín de literatura comparada, Anuario argentino de germanística. Statement Teaching literature in Argentina has been my profession since the eighties, both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. Also research and research groups. Many years ago I became a member of the MLA. I have learned a lot from its publications, and I have seen a way or many ways of thinking about the humanities at MLA conventions. But even in sessions on Latino-American literature I have always felt that the MLA’s scope is an American academic one. As a scholar residing outside the United States and Canada I would like to strengthen international professional networks and improve the connections between North American professionals and their counterparts residing, teaching, and doing research in other latitudes. New ways of relating would improve the efforts made by the MLA to address current challenges to the humanities all around the world.

VII. Disability in the Profession (1 contest)

24. Jose Alaniz. Assoc. prof. Slavic langs., Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Participant, NEH summer inst. (New York Public Library), 2008; research fellowship, Inst. for Czech Culture (Prague), 2011; Smithsonian Institution Latino Studies Senior Fellow, Natl. Museum of Amer. Art, summer 2012. M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship, Popular Culture Assn. / Amer. Culture Assn., 2005. Exec. comm. ch., Intl. Comic Arts Forum, 2011– ; founding member and governing board, Comics Studies Soc., 2014– ; ACLA. Publications include Komiks: Comic Art in Russia (2010), Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (2014); contrib., Vladimir Sorokin’s Languages (2013), The Ages of the Avengers: Essays on the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in Changing Times (2014), The Ages of the Incredible Hulk: Essays on the Green Goliath in Changing Times (2015), Disability in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives (2016), Cultures of Representation: Disability in World Cinema Contexts (2016), The Secret Origins of Comics Studies (2017); articles in International Journal of Comic Art, Comics Journal, Ulbandus, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Slavic and East European Journal, Comics Forum. Statement As director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of Washington, my interdisciplinary research is motivated by the ongoing struggle of disabled people for full equality in and outside the academy. In particular I examine the representation of people with disabilities in popular culture (especially comics and cinema) in the United States and Eastern/Central Europe. I would bring an overriding concern for international perspectives and traditionally marginalized forms of expression to my work in the Delegate Assembly.

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25. Sari Altschuler. Asst. prof. English, Northeastern Univ. PhD, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York. Assoc. dir., Northeastern Humanities Center, 2017– . William H. Helfand Fellowship, Program in Early Amer. Medicine, Science, and Soc., Library Company of Philadelphia, 2010–11; Lillian Gary Taylor Visiting Fellowship in Amer. Lit., Univ. of Virginia, 2011–12; Legacy Fellowship, Amer. Antiquarian Soc., 2011–12; Barra Dissertation Fellowship, McNeil Center for Early Amer. Studies, 2011–12; John B. Hench Postdissertation Fellow, Amer. Antiquarian Soc., 2013–14; Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Humanistic Inquiry, 2015–17. SHEAR Manuscript Prize (for dissertation), Soc. for the Historians of the Early Amer. Republic, 2013; Fifteenth Annual Essay Prize, Soc. of Early Americanists, 2014. ASA. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2011–Jan. 2014. Advisory board, American Quarterly, 2017– . Publications include guest coed., Early American Literature (2017); articles in Early American Studies, Early American Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Disability Studies Quarterly, American Literature, American Literary History, PMLA, Lancet. Statement Especially in these times, we have a duty to serve the institutions that make our work possible; it is as vital to be well represented as it is to give back. Having served as a regional delegate, I know how important the assembly’s work is; it would be a privilege to serve again. I am honored to have been nominated to represent disability in the profession. If elected, I would look forward to working with the Delegate Assembly on issues of equity and access. As a disability studies scholar, I know that our scholarly pursuits are dependent on the conditions that make that work possible. Michael Bérubé drew the MLA’s attention to this with his 2012 Avenues of Access presidential theme— emphasizing that access is an issue cutting across every aspect of academic life, from scholarship and publications to classrooms and conference design—and it would be a privilege to continue this work. We are better each year at making publications, talks, and professional gatherings accessible, but we are not yet doing well enough. As your delegate, I would work to make disability-related issues more apparent, to make access always a key consideration, to include disabled voices, and to be an advocate for the ever-developing insights of disability studies. I would address access in its many forms while also representing the interests of the ever-expanding field to the profession. Finally, I would work with scholars committed to equity and diversity in race, gender, sexuality, and class to develop intersectional solutions.

VIII. Race and Ethnicity in the Profession (1 contest)

26. Michelle Martin-Baron. Asst. prof. women’s studies, Hobart and William Smith Colls. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Publications include contrib., Queer Necropolitics (2014); article in Quarterly Horse; reviews in Journal of Feminist Politics, E-misférica, Performing Ethos.

27. Cristina Perez Jimenez. Asst. prof. English, Manhattan Coll. PhD, Columbia Univ. Exec. Council, Puerto Rican Studies Assn., 2014–16. Publications include articles in CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Diálogo: An Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, American Quarterly; review in NACLA Report on the Americas. Statement My research explores the construction of Latino/a identities during the first half of the twentieth century through sociopolitical and cultural activism. Anchored in comparative ethnic and critical race methodologies, my work challenges views of latinidad as a relatively recent phenomenon and lends historical depth to diasporic Caribbean and Latino/a cultural expressions. It also underlines the internal diversity constitutive of Latino/a communities as well as their overlaps with other ethnic groups. My commitment to broadening knowledge production by and about racialized groups and marginalized communities is integral not only to my scholarship but also to my teaching and outreach and Candidate Information – 25

would guide my advocacy as an MLA delegate. Specifically, I believe universities need to transform their rhetoric of diversity and inclusion into more robust and concrete institutional support for widened curricula in race and ethnicity studies, the hiring and retention of more faculty members of color, and the establishment and expansion of centers and programs for the study of race and ethnicity. I consider these issues to be central to the MLA’s mission, as, in my view, a frontal engagement with race and ethnic issues is indispensable to the ongoing relevance of the humanities. Indeed, in our current political climate, which has bolstered xenophobia and seen mounting racial tensions on campuses and in society at large, the narratives stemming from race- and ethnicity-centered approaches and the voices of faculty members who engage with these issues are of pressing national relevance, crucial for a more informed and nuanced public discourse.

IX. LGBTQ in the Profession (1 contest)

28. GerShun Avilez. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Dir., Program in Sexuality Studies, Univ. of North Carolina, 2016–19. Postdoctoral teaching fellowship, Frederick Douglass Inst., Univ. of Rochester, 2009–10; curatorial fellowship, Arts@TheCore, Carolina Performing Arts, 2015–16. Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching, Yale Coll., 2011; faculty appreciation award, Kappa Omicron chapter, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, spring 2017. Ed. or advisory boards: Callaloo, 2012–14; Encyclopedia of American Studies, 2013– 16; Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2014– ; American Literature, 2017–20. Publications include Radical Aesthetics and Modern Black Nationalism (2016); contrib., Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (2014), The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature (2014), The Cambridge Companion to American Civil Rights Literature (2015), The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture (2016); articles in African American Review, Obsidian, Callaloo. Statement My research and teaching focus on the art and experiences of African American and Black diasporic LGBTQ people and on how ideas about gender and sexuality inform the cultural and political realms. In recent years, I have dedicated much of my professional time to thinking carefully about how to institutionalize the study of sexuality and create sound zones of safety and intellectual inquiry as the director of my university’s Program in Sexuality Studies. Given my research and administrative roles, I would really be interested in representing the concerns of LGBTQ faculty members, students, and independent scholars in the profession from all over the country. I would also take the opportunity to think through the specific challenges faced by those of us who teach and study in regions and locations that provide less support, less community, and fewer professional and social protections to LGBTQ scholars. The MLA can and should serve as an important resource for these members of our community and should be a model for all sectors of academia in terms of its policies and recommendations about best practices. I will bring these perspectives to the Delegate Assembly.

29. 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 As a postcolonialist and a member of the LGBTQ community, I have held a career-long interest in the issues and challenges facing nonheteronormative individuals in the global South. My new book-length project devotes significant time to this topic, and in the classroom I teach a well-received graduate seminar entitled Postcolonial Sexuality Studies. 26 – Candidate Information

As a candidate for the MLA assembly, I am interested in intersections of race, gender, and sexuality within the climate of contemporary academia—one in which we witness two trajectories occurring simultaneously. On the one hand, student interest and involvement in LGBTQ issues continues to rise, witnessed by both burgeoning enrollment in related courses and in on-campus activism. On the other, we are also unfortunately still in an era in which significant reactionary movements and measures continue to threaten the safety and liberty of these still-underrepresented, underserved populations. As a national organization, the MLA must endeavor to make sure that we publicly continue to support students from all backgrounds and identity positions, that we provide and promote education designed to increase awareness and foster tolerance, that we continue to advance awareness of LGBTQ histories and literatures in our curricula, and that we provide a national voice for students, instructors, administrators, and higher education communities as a whole. Again, my particular concerns reflect specific attention to those marginalized by multiple dominant communities, but I remain committed to representing all groups along gender/sexuality continuums, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. Thank you for your consideration.

X. Distance and Online Education (1 contest)

30. Joseph A. Dimuro. Continuing lecturer Amer. lit. and cultural studies, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Newberry Library / Center for Great Lakes Culture fellowship, 2003–04; Baird Soc. Resident Scholar, Dibner Library, Natl. Museum of Amer. History, summer 2014. Excellence in Teaching Award, Undergrad. English Majors Assn., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2000. Scholarship review comm., Sigma Tau Delta Intl. English Honor Soc., 2012. Publications include ed., Henry Blake Fuller, The Cliff-Dwellers (2010), Henry Blake Fuller, Bertram Cope’s Year (2010); articles in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Gale Researcher, Textual Cultures. Statement I have been an active member of the MLA for over thirty years and have taught English courses at a variety of institutions, including community colleges, private liberal arts colleges (Haverford), private research universities (Univ. of Pennsylvania, Univ. of Chicago), and large state research universities (UCLA). My teaching and research career has always been joined to student advising in a number of administrative capacities, and I have recently become involved in publishing student guides to literary study in collaboration with the Gale Researcher e-Books project. Having taught and advised a vast range of diverse students over the last thirty years, I believe I have developed an astute grasp of learning styles, educational needs, and the economic challenges of completing the undergraduate degree. While I see the enormous potential of online courses and distance learning for educating a large number of nontraditional students, I am committed to solidifying the MLA’s role in establishing and maintaining the highest standards in the development of course content, delivery, and the criteria of evaluation. I believe the astonishing innovations of digital technology can be tapped to improve these kinds of learning programs. My goal as a delegate will be to ensure such experiences meet the highest expectations of the best classroom teaching.

31. Sushil K. Oswal. Assoc. prof. culture, arts, and communication, Univ. of Washington, Tacoma; affiliate assoc. prof., Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Univ. of Cincinnati. Previous appointments: Univ. of Maine, Presque Isle, 2006–08; Univ. of Hartford, 1996–2006; Middle Tennessee State Univ., 1993–96. Research fellowship, Taft Research Center, Univ. of Cincinnati, 1991–92; C. R. Anderson Foundation grant, 1996; Project Compass grant (for Native Amer. student center), 2007. Computers and Composition Digital Press Award (for article in Kairos), 2014; Distinguished Publication Award (for article in Journal of Business and Technical Communication), Assn. for Business Communication, 2015. Comm. on Scientific and Technical Communication (1996–99) and Comm. on Online Writing Instruction (2007–16), CCCC; Disability Comm., WPA, 2013–15; Assn. of Candidate Information – 27

Teachers of Technical Writing; Assn. for Computing Machinery. Ed. board, Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 2012– . Publications include coauthor, The Bedford Bibliography of Research in Online Writing Instruction (2017); contrib., Reading Our Histories, Understanding Our Cultures: A Sequenced Approach to Thinking, Reading, and Writing (1999; 2nd ed., 2002), Writing Environments (2005), Listening to Our Elders: Working and Writing for Change (2011), Rhetorical Accessibility: At the Intersection of Technical Communication and Disability Studies (2013), Eportfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios (2013), Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction (2015), Disability, Avoidance, and the Academy: Challenging Resistance (2016), Writing and Composing in the Age of MOOCs (2016); articles in Communication Design Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Work: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment, and Rehabilitation, Profession, Composition Studies, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Business Communication Quarterly, Tennessee Philological Bulletin, Works and Days, Technical Communication Quarterly, Statement I am honored to have been nominated for the MLA Delegate Assembly. My research and teaching intersect the fields of postcolonial theory, accessible design, and disability studies. My active engagement with online instruction goes back to 2007, when I was appointed to the Online Writing Instruction (OWI) Committee of the CCCC. I served on this committee for nine years; it produced a 35-page document, Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction, which has been widely employed by writing programs with online course offerings. Through this document a national organization of academics for the first time recognized accessibility as a foundational principle. I have been described as the architect of accessibility in this document. In 2015, this CCCC committee published the first collection on OWI that encompasses accessibility in all aspects of online writing instruction work. Besides contributing the primary chapter on accessible course design for students with disabilities, I also served as an accessibility consultant on the other chapters in this collection. As a member of the MLA Delegate Assembly, I would like to lead a comprehensive effort at organizing the work of teaching online instruction in language and literature fields and produce a living policy document that would regularize our online courses, offer much-needed guidance on the use of contingent faculty members in teaching canned online courses, and take up the question of ownership of courses and related intellectual property issues to formulate an MLA position that would guide language and literature programs on these matters.

XI. Composition, Rhetoric, and Writing Programs (1 contest)

32. Eileen Abrahams. Assoc. prof. English, Schenectady County Community Coll., State Univ. of New York. MA, State Univ. of New York, New Paltz; ABD, Univ. of Texas, Austin. Participant, NEH Landmarks of Amer. History and Culture Workshop, 2012. Chancellor’s Award for Faculty Service, State Univ. of New York (SUNY), 2013. Vice pres. (2011–13) and governance comm. ch. (2012–13), Faculty Council of Community Colls., SUNY. Ed board, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2011– . Publications include articles in Libraries and Culture, Raymond Carver Review, Shakespearean Criticism. Statement Many first-year writing students at community colleges come from high schools and homes in which there are no books, let alone computers; they have little common reading experience and even less writing experience. In addition, they have only an attenuated connection to the communities in which they live. As a result, their compositional needs are often significantly different from the needs of their peers at four-year colleges. However, because of the greater influence of four-year colleges and universities in such large, umbrella organizations as the MLA, too often this difference is overlooked. Also overlooked are the needs of

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the contingent faculty members at community colleges who, in increasing proportion, teach first-year writing students. It is imperative that they be included fully in shared governance, entitled to academic freedom, and given opportunities for professional development. To this end, the MLA might work more closely with the AAUP and other professional organizations to ensure equity for contingent faculty members, who are often the majority of instructors in rhetoric and composition programs. As a union and governance leader at my college, I have fought successfully for a robust, inclusive academic freedom statement in our senate bylaws and in our union contract as well as for the promotion and sustainability of shared governance on campus. I have also served on several university-wide governance committees and have presented papers on shared governance and academic freedom. If elected, I will bring expertise and evidenced commitment to shared governance to the Delegate Assembly.

33. Rich Rice. Assoc. prof. English, Texas Tech Univ. PhD, Ball State Univ. Dir., Media Lab, Texas Tech Univ., 2006–14. Program development grant, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), 2011; Fulbright-Nehru Scholar (Delhi Univ.), CIES and Inst. of Intl. Educ., 2014. Visiting appointments: Central Univ. of Kerala, fall 2011; Ashoka Univ., fall 2014; Southeast Univ. (Nanjing, China), May 2017. Grant reviewer, Council for the Humanities, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, 2011; natl. selection comm., Fulbright-Nehru Intl. Educ. Administrators Seminar, 2014. Comm. for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction (2014–16) and Writing Program Certificate of Excellence Selection Comm. (2016–17), CCCC; founding member, Global Soc. for Online Literacy Educators; Assn. for the Advancement of Computers in Educ.; Assn. of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW); CPTSC; NCTE; Rhetoric Soc. of America; Texas CEA; WPA. Coed., Perspectives on Writing, WAC Clearinghouse, 2015– . Ed. boards: Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 2002– ; Computers and Composition Online, 2002– ; ATTW Series in Technical and Professional Communication, Routledge, 2013– ; Connexions: International Professional Communication Journal, 2013– ; Programmatic Perspectives, 2013– ; WAC Clearinghouse, 2013– ; Research in Online Literacy Education, 2016– . Publications include coed., Portfolio Teaching: A Guide for Instructors (2nd ed., 2006), Portfolio Keeping: A Guide for Students (2nd ed., 2006), ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios (2013), Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet (2017); guest ed., Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy (2001), Intercom: The Magazine of the Society for Technical Communication (2011); guest coed., Computers and Composition: An International Journal for Teachers of Writing (2015); contrib., Computer- Mediated Communication: Issues and Approaches in Education (2012), Postcolonial Cinema Studies (2012), Virtual Professional Development and Informal Learning via Social Networks (2012), The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere: Knowledge, Politics, Identity (2013), Handbook of Mobile Learning (2013), Digital Rhetoric and Global Literacies: Communication Modes and Digital Practices in the Networked World (2014), Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction (2015); articles in Health Policy and Technology, Journal of College Literacy and Learning, Journal of Problem Based Learning in Higher Education, Connexions, Basic Writing E-Journal, Kairos. Statement Many areas of scholarship have impacted the field of composition and rhetoric in recent decades, and we must continue to work to include these threads—for instance, diversity, intercultural communication, service learning, study abroad, visual rhetoric and multimodal composing, assessment, adult learning, educational costs, workplace or technical communication, course management systems, academic integrity and intellectual property, contingent faculty rights, promotion and tenure with nontraditional experiences, writing across the curriculum, and online or hybrid writing instruction. The traditional concept of the rhetorical triangle has expanded. In addition to reader, writer, and text, we must examine ways in which location and modality impact writing and the teaching of writing. I work to connect writing, literature, film, and technical communication. This is the work I’ve been doing at Texas Tech University, as a coeditor of the

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Perspectives in Writing series through the WAC Clearinghouse, and with various journals and projects. It’s the work I want to do as your delegate representative, working to bolster bridges between the MLA, the CCCC, the NCTE, the Two-Year College English Association, Computers and Writing, the Rhetoric Society of America, and related organizations.

XII. Language Programs (1 contest)

34. Davinder L. Bhowmik. Assoc. prof. Japanese, Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Univ. of Washington. Japan Foundation research fellowship, 1988; Monbusho research scholarship, Japanese govt., 1988; FLAS fellowship, 1995–97; grant, Institutional Project Support Program, Japan Foundation, 2010–13. Advisory board (2012–15) and treasurer (2015– ), Journal of Japanese Studies. Publications include Writing Okinawa: Narrative Acts of Identity and Resistance (2008); coed., Landscapes Imagined and Remembered (2005), Islands of Protest: Japanese Literature from Okinawa (2016); contrib., Ōe and Beyond: Fiction in Contemporary Japan (1999), Reading Colonial Japan: Text, Context, and Critique (2012), The Cambridge History of Japanese Literature (2016), The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016); articles in International Journal of Okinawan Studies, Journal of Japanese Studies, Journal of Asian Studies, Japan Forum, Japanese Language and Literature. Statement Much has changed since I began teaching at the university level. My state university has been greatly impacted by the local government, which, without revenue from a state income tax, cannot adequately fund higher education. Despite having a long history of teaching Asian languages, the bread and butter for graduate programs in Asian studies, there is precious little to financially support graduate students. Proximity to Asia, the continuing interest in Asian popular culture, and a dramatic increase in international, mostly Asian, students brings students to our classrooms, but the administration is still hard pressed to make graduate student funding a priority. To add insult to injury, under our current national government, Title VI centers, vital for language support, face threatening cuts. As a delegate I plan to advocate for languages and literature in the humanities, particularly Asian languages and literatures. Despite occupying forty percent of the world and including some of the world’s largest populations, Asia figures too little in the humanities in North America. The MLA amply represents the West and must pay more than lip service to the rest. Born and raised in Asia and involved in teaching about Northeast Asia for over twenty years, I take seriously the MLA’s mission to advocate for in-depth language study beyond English. Such study is vital in our increasingly globalized world.

35. Dominique Mary Licops. Assoc. prof. of instruction in French, Northwestern Univ. PhD, Northwestern Univ. Dir., French Lang. Program, Northwestern Univ., 2012– . French govt. fellowship, BELC (Bureau pour l’enseignement de la langue et de la civilisation françaises à l’étranger) summer inst. (Université de Nantes), July 2016. ACTFL; AATF; Amer. Assn. of Univ. Supervisors, Coordinators, and Directors of Lang. Programs; Women in French. Publications include contrib., Reading Communities: A Dialogical Approach to Classical and Contemporary Works (2016); articles in Nouvelles études francophones, Women in French Studies. Statement I have been a member of the non-tenure-eligible (NTE) faculty since 2002, first as an adjunct lecturer, then as a full-time lecturer, and now as an associate professor of instruction in the Department of French and Italian at Northwestern University. I’ve also been directing the French Language Program since 2012 and organize the training of graduate teaching assistants for language instruction. My main interest is in promoting and strengthening foreign language teaching at a time when enrollments are declining and when students increasingly choose shorter study-abroad programs. Yet foreign language learning is essential to our students’ development as global citizens. I am interested in improving working conditions for foreign

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language faculty members, in particular NTE faculty members, who paradoxically have heavy teaching loads and little or no support or time for research and yet are expected to constantly be on the cutting edge of language instruction and innovate in their courses.

XIII. Community Colleges (2 contests)

36. Tim Arnold. Asst. prof. English, Blue Ridge Community Coll., VA. PhD, Univ. of Kentucky. Adjunct Instructor of the Year, Blue Ridge Community Coll., 2015. Publications include contrib., St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (1999); articles in Virginia Quarterly Review, Border States. Statement I wish to serve for two main reasons: first, the preservation of the humanities and critical thinking in a culture where they are often devalued. As an assistant professor at a community college, I am in a position to teach my students (many of whom are in two-year noncurricular, vocational programs and are taking freshman-level composition) the importance of literature and the values it teaches. Second, with community college education becoming an increasingly viable option, it’s important to advocate for what is unique in community colleges—lower cost, quality of instruction, transferability and portability of courses. Community colleges are not merely miniature four-year institutions. Government and business entities that complain about low graduation rates at community colleges are loud and wrong regarding the mission of community colleges.

37. Douglas L. Howard. Prof. English, Suffolk 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 nominated for this position and would, if elected, do my best to represent the interests of two-year colleges in the Delegate Assembly. I certainly would support the MLA’s ongoing efforts to deal with the attack on the humanities and the marginalization of the liberal arts. As colleges increasingly refocus to keep pace with advances in the STEM fields and restructure curricula to offer more specialized training, humanities programs find themselves in a reduced role, mattering less to students and meaning less on our campuses. At the two-year level, this reduction and these changing attitudes may very well be the gateway to increased teaching loads, larger class sizes, fewer course offerings, and a loss of full-time faculty lines, if not the end of some departments altogether. (At a number of community colleges, these things are a reality already.) More important, these changes will prevent our students from developing the creative problem- solving and critical-thinking skills that will help them to be successful, whether they go on for advanced undergraduate study or out into the workforce. While I would, as a member of this assembly, be interested in discussing other proposed responses to this issue, I would like to see us cultivate more intradisciplinary partnerships among faculty members at all Candidate Information – 31

levels, from public school to graduate school, and explore more interdisciplinary initiatives, by working collaboratively with professional organizations and scholarly communities in the STEM areas. ☼ 38. Angeles Donoso Macaya. Assoc. prof. modern langs., Borough of Manhattan Community Coll., City Univ. of New York (CUNY). PhD, Washington Univ. in St. Louis. FONDART research grant, Chilean Natl. Council for Culture and the Arts, July 2012–Jan. 2014; Professional Staff Congress–CUNY research grant, 2014–15, 2016–17, 2017–18; scholar in residence, Faculty Resource Network, New York Univ., summer 2015. Assoc. ed., Revista Kaypunku: Estudios interdisciplinarios de arte y cultura, Dec. 2016– . Publications include coed., Latinas/os on the East Coast: A Critical Reader (2015); contrib., Des/memorias: Culturas y prácticas mnemónicas en América Latina y el Caribe (2016), Technology, Literature, and Digital Culture in Latin America: Mediatized Sensibilities in a Globalized Era (2016); articles in American Quarterly, Aisthesis: Revista chilena de investigaciones estéticas, Chasqui, Revista hispánica moderna. Statement It would be an honor to serve in the MLA Delegate Assembly as a representative for community colleges. The large majority of students who attend community colleges come from economically underprivileged backgrounds or are immigrants and/or racial minorities. Precisely because community colleges are truly inclusive institutions, open to anyone who wants to learn, regardless of their background and academic experiences, we need to make sure that our students receive the best education possible. Community colleges are often described as powerful engines of social mobility. But this powerful engine can’t function properly if it relies on overworked full-timers and overworked and underpaid part-timers. Indeed, the profession has dramatically changed in the past few decades. Besides teaching the same number of courses previous generations have taught, full-time faculty members in tenure-track positions at community colleges are now also expected to do much more scholarly work, including applying for (and hopefully being awarded) highly competitive national grants, without all the necessary support to do so. Meanwhile, and perhaps more worrisome, colleges have seen a dramatic increase in adjunct positions and a correlated decrease in full-time positions. If elected, I would advocate for workload parity between senior colleges and community colleges, pay parity, and overall better working conditions for adjunct instructors.

39. Fleur Prade. Asst. prof. French, Central Oregon Community Coll. PhD, Ecole Supérieure Robert de Sorbon. Previous appointments: Tulane Univ., Penn State Univ. Statement As a long standing member, I have a good sense of the work of the MLA as an influential professional forum for the study of languages and literatures and a vital guardian of the humanities. This has never been more important than in the current academic climate that favors STEM classes. I am keenly aware of the challenges the MLA faces: how to make languages central to our diverse culture, improve working conditions for teachers of languages and literatures, and help lawmakers understand the crucial importance of languages and literatures. The MLA should engage in vigorous debates on the major issues of our time, especially those that deal with our expertise in languages and literatures. To do so the organization must welcome innovations in the field of language learning, expand its areas of focus, and embrace new venues for language and literature. This includes helping raise the reputation of community colleges, which are still seen as less important than four-year institutions. Too often young scholars are told that community colleges are not prestigious enough, that the only option they have is to go to four-year institutions. Sadly, this traditional philosophy is leaving many new PhD recipients without jobs. 32 – Candidate Information

If elected, using my experience of teaching in both four-year institutions and a community college, I would push for an expansion of the role of community colleges in the fields of languages and literatures, listen to the concerns of those whose voices are not always heard, and push for intellectual diversity.

XIV. Academic Freedom (1 contest)

40. Claudio Fogu. Assoc. prof. Italian studies, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. Previous appointments: Univ. of Southern California, 2000– 05; Ohio State Univ., 1995–2000. Ford Foundation teaching fellowship, 1993–94; Wolfsonian Foundation fellowship, summer 1995; Jean Monnet Fellowship, European Univ. Inst. (Florence), 1998–99; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation grant, 2000–01. Vice pres. (2013–14) and board member (2016), Faculty Assn., Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. Exec. comm., California Scholars for Academic Freedom, 2016; Amer. Assn. for Italian Studies; California Consortium for Italian Studies; Società Italiana Storici Contemporaneisti; Amer. Historical Assn. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., CLCS Mediterranean, 2017– Jan. 2022. Ed. board, California Italian Studies, 2008– . Publications include The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy (2003); coed., The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe (2006), Probing the Ethics of Holocaust Culture (2016); guest coed., California Italian Studies (2010), Storia e storiografia (2014); contrib., Making and Unmaking Italy: The Cultivation of National Identity around the Risorgimento (2001), Dizionario del fascismo (2002), Fascism and Neofascism: Critical Writings on the Radical Right in Europe (2004), Donatello among the Black Shirts: History and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy (2005), La storia di Fusignano (2006); articles in Journal of Modern European History, California Italian Studies, Storiografia, History and Theory, Modernism/Modernity, Zapruder, South Central Review, Memoria e ricerca, Spectator: The University of Southern California Journal of Film and Television Criticism, Representations, Journal of Contemporary History. Statement I have not been a member of the MLA for long and come from a background that is more militant in faculty associations and the AAUP than in professional organizations, but the latest debates and votes in the association (i.e., BDS) and the current political situation in this country have reminded me that academic freedom and freedom of speech are as integral to the mission of any organization having to do with language and writing as any discussion about the professional concerns of literature scholars or about the future of literary theory and criticism in our increasingly digitalized culture. I want to fight for cultivating in the association an awareness of the power relations inherent in the acts of speaking and writing and therefore also to take into consideration the many levels of more or less subtle suppression that subaltern languages or people suffer in a world in which 50% of the existing languages are said to be at risk of disappearing over the next one hundred years.

41. Elaine Freedgood. Prof. English, New York Univ. PhD, Columbia Univ. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, 1989; AAUW fellowship, 2000–01; Leverhulme grant, 2009; Radcliffe Inst. fellowship, 2013–14. Consultant: Radcliffe Inst., ACLS. MLA activities: William Riley Parker Prize Selection Comm., 2009–11 (ch., 2011); exec. comm., Div. on the Victorian Period, 2010–Jan. 2015. Ed. board, Victorian Studies. Publications include Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World (2000), The Ideas in Things: Fugitive Meaning in the Victorian Novel (2006); ed., Factory Production in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2003); articles in New Literary History, Representations, Victorian Studies, Journal of Victorian Culture, Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Statement Academic freedom is enjoyed, conditionally and contingently, by a relative handful of intellectuals in the world. From the apartheid experienced by students in Palestine and incarcerated people in the United States, to academics in Turkey who have lost their jobs by the thousands, to tenure cases in which racism, Candidate Information – 33

sexism, and homophobia lead to failure, the mission of the MLA should be to take strong stands on the right of access to education and employment and on the speech it can generate. Our conversations have been limited by elitism and national or “Western” provincialisms, although the scholarship that would help us to reconfigure ourselves as thinkers has long been circulating—widely in some cases, obscurely in others. Scholarship also needs its freedom, whether or not it is published by major presses in major places. Indeed, an inquiry into the gatekeeping performed by large presses—both university and trade—could well be a part of my mission, if I am elected. As the largest organization in the humanities in the world, it is our responsibility as MLA members to guarantee the literal and figurative movement of the freest possible minds.

XV. Academic Labor (1 contest)

42. Christopher John Newfield. Prof. English, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. PhD, Cornell Univ. MLA activities: Profession Editorial Collective, 2014–16; Delegate Assembly, 2014–Jan. 2017; Comm. on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 2014–17 (ch., 2015–17); forum exec. comm., TC Marxism, Lit., and Society, 2016–Jan. 2021. Publications include The Emerson Effect: Individualism and Submission in America (1996), Ivy and Industry: Business and the Making of the American University, 1880–1980 (2003), Unmaking the Public University: The Forty-Year Assault on the Middle Class (2008), The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them (2016); coed., After Political Correctness: The Humanities and Society in the 1990s (1995), Mapping Multiculturalism (1996); contrib., Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University (1998), No More Separate Spheres! A Next Wave American Studies Reader (2002), Cultural Critique and the Global Corporation (2010), The Imaginary and Its Worlds: American Studies after the Transnational Turn (2013); articles in Huffington Post, Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education, Occasion, Profession, Representations, American Literature, Poetics Today, American Quarterly, Social Text, Critical Inquiry, Yale Journal of Criticism, ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, American Literary History, American Transcendental Quarterly, Differences.

43. Robert Samuels. Lecturer writing, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. PhD (psychoanalysis), Université de Paris 8; PhD (English), Kent State Univ. Pres., Univ. Council– Amer. Federation of Teachers, 2005–17; exec. comm., California Federation of Teachers, 2005–17; steering comm., Campaign for Free Coll. Tuition, 2015– . MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Jewish Cultural Studies, 2007–Jan. 2012; forum exec. comm., HEP Teaching as a Profession, 2013–Jan. 2018. Publications include Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan’s Reconstruction of Freud (1993), Hitchcock’s Bi-Textuality: Lacan, Feminisms, and Queer Theory (1998), Writing Prejudices: The Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy of Discrimination from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison (2001), Integrating Hypertextual Subjects: Computers, Composition, and Academic Labor (2006), Teaching the Rhetoric of Resistance: The Popular Holocaust and Social Change in a Post-9/11 World (2007), New Media, Cultural Studies, and Critical Theory after Postmodernity: Automodernity from Zizek to Laclau (2009), Why Public Higher Education Should be Free: How to Decrease Cost and Increase Quality at American Universities (2013), Psychoanalyzing the Left and Right after Donald Trump: Conservatism, Liberalism, and Neoliberal Populisms (2016), The Politics of Writing Studies: Reinventing Our Universities from Below (2017); contrib., Teacher Commentary on Student Papers (2002), Brave New Classrooms: Democratic Education and the Internet (2007), Digital Youth, Innovation, and the Unexpected (2007), Taking South Park Seriously (2009), Common Culture: Reading and Writing about American Popular Culture (6th ed., 2010), Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (7th ed., 2011), Psychoanalyzing Cinema: A Productive Encounter with Lacan, Deleuze, and Žižek (2012), Invasion of the MOOCs: The Promise and Perils of Massive Open Online Courses (2014), Debating Reform: Conflicting Perspectives on How to Fix the American Political System (3rd ed., 2016); articles in Clio’s Psyche, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Academe Online, International Journal of Žižek Studies, Kairos, JAC: Journal of Advanced Composition, 34 – Candidate Information

Language and Learning across the Disciplines, Computers and Composition, JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, Issues in Writing, Pre/Text. Statement For the last twenty years, I have been a leader in promoting the rights of and employment protections for non-tenure-track faculty members. As president of UC-AFT, a union representing over five thousand lecturers in the University of California system, I have helped to negotiate and maintain one of the best contracts in the country for contingent faculty members. I have also been a leader in the free public college movement and have written on academic labor issues for a variety of media outlets. I would like to help the MLA be more proactive in addressing issues regarding academic labor. As a professional organization, we have to defend the profession and promote better working conditions for all faculty members.

XVI. Libraries and Archives (1 contest)

44. Brian Croxall. Asst. research prof. digital humanities, Brigham Young Univ., UT. PhD, Emory Univ. Previous appointments: Brown Univ., 2015–17; Emory Univ., 2010–15; Clemson Univ., 2009–10. Hemingway Soc. travel grant, 2004; Ernest Hemingway Research Grant, John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, 2007; travel award, Soc. for Lit., Science, and the Arts, 2008; postdoctoral fellowship, Council on Library and Information Resources, 2010–12. John Lovas Memorial Weblog Award, Kairos, 2010; Digital Humanities Award (for best use of digital humanities for fun), 2013; Readers’ Choice Award for Best New Mobile App, Charleston Advisor, 2014; cowinner, Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and Amer. Culture (for Like Clockwork), Popular Culture Assn. / Amer. Culture Assn., 2017. Exec. Council, Assn. for Computers and the Humanities, 2013–17; vice ch., Conference Coordinating Comm., Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations, 2016– . MLA activities: Comm. on Information Technology, 2011–14; Exec. Council, 2014–Jan. 2018. Ed. boards: Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Models, Concepts, and Experiments, 2012– ; Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 2013– . Publications include: coed., #Alt-Academy: Alternate Academic Careers for Humanities Scholars (2014), Like Clockwork: Steampunk Pasts, Presents, and Futures (2016); contrib., Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities (2013), The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media (2014), The Process of Discovery: The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Future of the Academy (2015); articles in American Imago, Writing and Pedagogy, Journal of Digital Humanities, Neo-Victorian Studies. Statement During graduate school, I had a fellowship in the Emory Libraries. There, I gained a new perspective on the institution that had enabled my research as well as fed my childhood appetite for reading. Later, I built on this experience with a CLIR postdoctoral fellowship, which placed me in a full-time library position. Academic libraries have been my home for seven years now, and I hope to work closely with them for the rest of my career. For this reason, I am honored to be nominated to represent Libraries and Archives in the Delegate Assembly. Given the foundational importance of these institutions for teaching and scholarship, I believe it is critical for librarians and archivists to be present and to be heard at the MLA. I have amplified those voices for the last four years as a member of the MLA’s Executive Council. In that capacity, I have worked to advocate for net neutrality and for the MLA making more of its data open and available to researchers. As the council created the MLA’s strategic plan, my colleagues and I called for the organization to expand its commitment to career diversity. Such diversity means graduate preparation for non-tenure-track employment—librarians, archivists, K–12 and two-year-college teachers, nonprofit work, corporate work, and more—and the inclusion of those professionals in the governing bodies of the MLA. I look forward to continuing to help the MLA and its members show how the study of languages and literatures prepares one for many careers.

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45. Robert Steele. Cataloging librarian, Jacob Burns Law Library, George Washington Univ. PhD, Michigan State Univ.; MLS, Univ. of Maryland. Rare Book Cataloging Roundtable Comm., Amer. Assn. of Law Libraries, 2014– . Publications include contrib. (of trans.), Critical Essays on Gustave Flaubert (1986); articles in Legal Miscellanea, Excavatio, Annual of Foreign Films and Literatures, Nineteenth-Century French Studies; reviews in SHARP News, Legal Miscellanea, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, L’Esprit Créateur. Statement My alternative career trajectory gives me insight into the issues faced by many in our profession in an era of shrinking budgets and generally diminishing support for the arts and humanities. I am currently a cataloging librarian in an academic law library after a long career teaching French language and literature in a variety of settings, having reinvented myself several times after a tenure-track position at a liberal arts university was eliminated in a departmental reorganization. My current responsibilities as a cataloger include analyzing and providing access to Romance language materials published from the 16th century to the present and allow me to extend my original grounding in language and literary history to interdisciplinary studies in law and literature and the history of the book. Cataloging often involves original research that leads to knowledge organized in a collaboratively maintained network rather than in a traditional critical text, perhaps providing a possible alternative model for the humanist endeavor. Outside the academy, my stint as a freelance journalist writing about LGBTQ culture from a queer theory perspective helped me find a voice as a local public intellectual, perhaps not the worse use of my humanist training. As a delegate, I would hope to provide leadership in advocating for the profession, applying humanist insights to current issues both inside and outside the academy, and in promoting innovative ways to apply expertise in literary and language studies within a rapidly shifting technological, cultural, and political environment.

Part IV: Voting for Regional Delegates Twenty-one persons will be elected to regional seats in the assembly. The term of office will be from 8 January 2018 through the close of the January 2021 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 2018 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 (3 contests) Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont; New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec

100. Taiwo Adetunji Osinubi. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Western Ontario. PhD, Univ. of British Columbia. Previous appointment: Université de Montréal, 2006–12. SSHRC Insight Program grant, 2014–17; SSHRC Connection Program grant, 2016–18. Reviewer, SSHRC, 2008. Collegium for African Amer. Research, African Lit. Assn., Cultural Studies Assn. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on African Lits., 2010–Jan. 2015. 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 College Literature: A Journal of Critical Literary Studies, Research in African Literatures, University of Toronto Quarterly, Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, African Identities: Journal of Economics, 36 – Candidate Information

Culture, and Society, Comparative Studies of South Asian, Africa, and the Middle East, Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. Statement I consider the nomination to stand for election as a regional delegate an opportunity to serve the MLA. I teach postcolonial literatures with an emphasis on the intersections between Africa and the Americas. When I served as a member of the African literatures division executive committee, I realized the service offered an opportunity for face-to-face discussions about the issues affecting the profession, the universities in which we work, and the lives of academics. My objective in my previous division work was to bring to the fore issues overlooked in African literatures. I consider the 2009 panel on African LGBTQ representations a highlight of my service. As an academic in Canada, I will bring professional experience from universities in Quebec and Ontario to discussions at the MLA. I am deeply invested in bringing Canadian perspectives to the pedagogy of postcolonial literatures of the African diaspora and to current debates about transformations in the university system globally. Such cross-border approaches and exchanges are essential to teaching literatures about experiences of marginalized populations, to creating international university cultures, and to fostering graduate student experiences that respond to the interdependence between our respective regionalisms and an increasingly globalized university culture.

101. Stanka Radovic. Assoc. prof. English and drama, Univ. of Toronto, Mississauga. PhD, Cornell Univ. Mellon fellowship, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., 2006–07; Connaught New Researcher Award, Univ. of Toronto, spring 2011. Caribbean Studies Essay Award, NEMLA, 2016. Publications include Locating the Destitute: Space and Identity in Caribbean Fiction (2014); guest coed., Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (2012); contrib., Terrain Vague: Interstices at the Edge of the Pale (2013), The Literary Encyclopedia (2014), Ecocriticism and Geocriticism: Overlapping Territories in Environmental and Spatial Literary Studies (2016), The Routledge Companion to Inter- American Studies (2017); articles in Global South, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, Callaloo. Statement My research engages in an interdisciplinary and multilingual approach to postcolonial literature alongside theories of space and environment. More recently, it has also focused on contemporary dystopian fiction and neoliberal spatial imagination, suggesting that contemporary Anglophone fiction is itself, in one way or another, postcolonial because it bears traces of colonial history and its discursive legacies. My preference for transnational and multilingual approaches to scholarly study reflects, no doubt, my personal experiences and academic training, which involve multiple cultural contexts: a native of Belgrade, Serbia, I have subsequently lived, worked, and studied in a few different countries and am particularly attentive to narratives of displacement and cultural negotiation. My current book project explores the psychological impact of physical space on its users’ imagination and is provisionally titled The Psychogeography of Lost Minds: Literary and Cinematic Representations of Distorted Space. This study will focus on 20th- and 21st-century novels and films that redefine space and environment as tangible expressions of the protagonists’ social and economic marginalization in the contemporary neoliberal world. In this respect, my second project expands the core ideas from my first monograph, Locating the Destitute: Space and Identity in Caribbean Fiction (U of Virginia P, 2014), where I was concerned with the narratives of postcolonial spatial dispossession as a way of interrogating the contemporary legacies of colonial history. ☼ 102. James Martin Lang. Prof. English, Assumption Coll. PhD, Northwestern Univ. Fulbright specialist grant (Colombia), Sept. 2016. Consulting ed., College Teaching, 2009– ; series ed., Teaching and Learning in Higher Educ., Univ. of West Virginia Press, 2015– . Publications include Life on the Tenure Track: Lessons from the First Year (2005), On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (2008), Cheating Lessons: Learning from Candidate Information – 37

Academic Dishonesty (2013), Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (2016); contrib., A Companion to the British and Irish Short Story (2008); articles in Clio, Chronicle of Higher Education. Statement Both the humanities in general and the profession of literary studies in particular remain under continued pressure to demonstrate the value of our work in the public sphere. The most effective venues we have to make our case are the classrooms in which MLA members work every day to help students improve their writing and thinking skills, recognize the power of the word to shape the world, and promote the pleasures and challenges of literature and the arts. The MLA can and should play a more substantive role in supporting that work and acknowledging the centrality of teaching and learning to its membership. Historically the MLA has done an excellent job of maintaining and promoting the enterprise of literary scholarship but has not worked quite so effectively to promote and support excellence in teaching and learning. The vast majority of faculty members in higher education work at teaching-focused institutions and would benefit from a greater emphasis on how we can sustain and improve the work of literary studies through excellence in undergraduate education. The MLA would also benefit from such an emphasis, as it would help draw new members to the convention and new contributors to the MLA’s publishing program, both as authors and readers. My focus as a regional delegate will be on promoting this perspective both within the MLA and more broadly to the profession of higher education as a whole.

103. Jiwei Xiao. Assoc. prof. Chinese, Fairfield Univ. PhD, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. MLA activities: PMLA Advisory Comm., 2015–18; forum exec. comm., LLC Modern and Contemporary Chinese, 2016–Jan. 2020. Publications include articles in New Left Review, Film Quarterly, Senses of Cinema, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Journal of Contemporary China, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Wenyi yanjiu, Dianying wenxue, Los Angeles Review of Books. Statement I am honored to be nominated to represent the region of New England and Eastern Canada. I support the MLA’s public advocacy for the humanities. I am also excited to see that one of the MLA’s strategic priorities is to continue the internationalization initiative. This is the right thing to do. An effort to expand the MLA’s global reach, however, should not be directed merely by practical benefits alone but should be informed by a deeper understanding about the humanities’ place in the world. I firmly believe that humanists who are sensitively and skillfully attuned to multilingualism and regional/local differences have a particularly significant role to play in shaping the future of the world. Let us not be discouraged to think otherwise. If elected, I will advocate for a concrete and reflective assessment about the opportunities as well as the challenges brought by globalization to the humanities. I will also support the endeavor to develop innovative methods to engage the public in diverse perspectives, cultures, and languages by drawing on the rich materials of world humanities. To this important job I bring my teaching experience and my scholarship on Chinese fiction and film, my broad research interests in world literature and cinema, my administrative experience as the chair of a modern languages and literatures department, and my active involvement in the MLA as a panelist, a roundtable organizer, a forum committee member, and a PMLA Advisory Committee member. ☼ 104. Celine Kodia. Grad. student lit., McGill Univ. MA, Columbia Univ. Grad. student scholarship, McGill Univ., 2015–19. Volunteer French teacher, Welcome Centre Immigrant Services (Richmond Hill, ON), Sept.–Dec. 2014. Conference presentations:

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French grad. conference, Columbia Global Center (Paris), Apr. 2013; Ideas of South (grad. conference, Cornell Univ.), Mar. 2016. Statement As the daughter of a retired French high-school English teacher and a worker from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), I have always felt myself in the middle of different worlds. I grew up on the outskirts of France’s third largest city, Lyon, in an ethnically diverse neighborhood. Today I regard the place where I was raised as a striking example of France’s failure to integrate all its citizens. Dreams of social and ethnic harmony and diversity have long since disappeared, and my childhood neighborhood now feels like an urban ghetto, where socially disadvantaged immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa are isolated by the not so egalitarian French system. From a young age, I have asked myself what it takes to make an outcast of the Other. What are the complex processes that simultaneously assert the power of one group and drive others to the margins of society? During the course of my studies, I was drawn to literature that deals with marginalization, self- identification, and racism, themes that resonated with my experiences and those of my family. After my BA in French and English studies, I received a master’s in history and literature from Columbia University. Now a doctoral student at McGill University, I explore how the identities of the jeunes de banlieue (the young residents of French housing projects) are shaped in the francophone contemporary novel. In my view, the MLA should extend initiatives to really connect researchers from the five continents and, as such, become a bridge between different nations.

105. Rachel Ravina. Grad. student English, Boston Univ. MA, Boston Univ. Albert Gilman Shakespeare Prize (for essay), Boston Univ., 2015. Ed. asst., Studies in Romanticism. Conference presentation: Univ. of Virginia Grad. Colloquium, Apr. 2016. Statement Graduate students and contingent faculty members face unprecedented challenges today between, on the one hand, the devaluation of humanities scholarship and, on the other, balancing the demands of traditional graduate study with preparation for alternatives to academia, digital humanities work, and public scholarship. As a graduate student representative, I would aim to further the conversation about how the MLA can best defend the interests of graduate students and contingent faculty members while these evolutions are under way. This could mean developing more resources to help students protect their identities and their intellectual labor as they engage with and create digital resources, helping departments consider best practices, or offering more tools to enhance the viability of currently less represented work, such as teaching literature in prisons or in therapeutic contexts. I believe these are exciting, if transitional, times to be doing literary and cultural work and would consider it an honor to work on behalf of my peers on these pressing issues.

II. New York State (3 contests)

106. Hilda Chacón. Prof. Spanish and Latin Amer. lit., Nazareth Coll. PhD, Ohio State Univ. Rose Marie Beston Scholarly Research Award, Nazareth Coll., 2009–14. Finalist (for short story), Premio Ana María Matute de Relatos de Mujeres, Ediciones Torremozas, 2003. Vice pres. (2014–15) and pres. (2016–18), Feministas Unidas; exec. board (2015–18) and pres. (2017), NEMLA. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on 20th-Century Latin Amer. Lit., 2009–Jan. 2014. Ed. boards: Nóesis: Revista de ciencias sociales y humanidades, 2014– ; Diálogo, 2014– ; Revista laboratorio: Literatura y experimentación, 2015– . Publications include contrib. (essays), One Wound for Another / Una herida por otra (2005), Speaking desde las heridas: Cibertestimonios Transfronterizos/Transborder (2008), Mexico Reading the United States (2009), How the Films of Pedro Almodovar Draw Upon and Influence Spanish Society (2012), Poesía y poéticas digitales/electrónicas/tecnos/new-media en América Latina: Definiciones y exploraciones (2016); contrib. (short stories), Ellas también cuentan (2003), Anthology of Memories of Hispanic Candidate Information – 39

Grandmothers as Remembered by Their Grandchildren (2012); articles in Letras hispanas, Revista de literatura mexicana contemporánea, Explicación de textos literarios, Istmo, Letras femeninas, DataGramaZero (Brazil), CiberLetras; creative writing in Letras femeninas, Ámbitos feministas, Diálogo, Revista Ostara (Mexico). Statement I am a professor of Spanish and Latin American culture and literature who has worked for eighteen years at a liberal arts institution in Rochester, New York. As many of us, I struggle on a daily basis to balance scholarship, teaching, committee duties, service-learning projects, and service to the profession, while making a conscious effort as a world citizen to donate my expertise in ways that advocate for human rights. After receiving my BA in journalism in college, I worked as a journalist for over a decade, writing investigative reports for newspapers, news agencies, radio, and TV. I also served as a media anchorperson in my native Costa Rica. Thus, my scholarship has been permeated by academic discussions of mass media and citizens’ empowerment and, more recently, by the cultural shift posed by cyberspace. If elected, I will be honored to bring the concerns of colleagues in the state of New York to the MLA assembly. I am an active member in different national and regional organizations, which would give me the opportunity to contact colleagues across the state. Personally, I am deeply worried about the current political climate and its impact on higher education; as long as education remains a privilege and not a civil right, we are destroying the future of the nation. As a modern language professor, I also see with great concern the lack of opportunities for many in our society to become informed global citizens who have cultural fluency about the rest of the world.

107. Kathryn Anne Everly. Prof. Spanish, Syracuse Univ. PhD, Univ. of Texas, Austin. Research grant (2009) and event grant (2011), Prog. for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Univs.; speakers’ grants, Central New York Humanities Corridor, 2012– . Florence Howe Award (for outstanding feminist scholarship), WCML, 2009; Award for Excellence in Master’s Level Teaching, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Syracuse Univ., 2013. Ed. board, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literature, 2002– . Publications include Catalan Women Writers and Artists: Revisionist Views from a Feminist Space (2003), History, Violence, and the Hyperreal: Representing Culture in the Contemporary Spanish Novel (2010); coauthor, Intrigas: Advanced Spanish through Literature and Film (textbook, 2012); guest ed., Symposium (2004); contrib., Women in the Spanish Novel Today: Reflections of Self in the Works of Three Generations of Writers (2009), (Re)Collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture (2016), Laberintos del género: Muerte, sacrificio y dolor en la literatura femenina española (2016), Spanish Women Writers and Spain’s Civil War (2017); articles in Hispanófila, Ámbitos feministas, Anales de la literatura española contemporánea, Cuaderno internacional de estudios humanísticos y literatura, Letras hispanas. Statement I consider the Delegate Assembly of the MLA a site of power and influence at regional, national, and international levels. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I will make it a priority to reach out to colleagues at all levels of experience and employment and listen to what they have to say. I will then take the pressing issues to the MLA for discussion. As members of the MLA we are poised to contribute to and influence the national and international conversations about the necessity of cultural exchange, language studies, and humanities studies. We must make our voices strong and encourage these debates. I will bring my experience as an interdisciplinary scholar and as a recent chair of the Humanities Council at Syracuse University to the role of assembly delegate. ☼

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108. Carole Kennedy Harris. Assoc. prof. English, New York City Coll. of Technology, City Univ. of New York (CUNY). PhD, Yale Univ. Previous appointments: Hofstra Univ., 2003–05; Univ. of California, Irvine, 2002– 03; Rutgers Univ., 1998–2002; New School for Social Research, 1997–98; St. Ann’s School (Brooklyn, NY), 1995–97. DAAD grant, 1993–94; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2007; senior fellowship, Flannery O’Connor Collection (Georgia Coll. and State Univ.), 2007; Professional Staff Congress (PSC)–CUNY research grant, 2007–08, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2011–12, 2013–14; course release, Faculty Fellowship Publication Program, CUNY, spring 2008. First-place award for short story, City Tech Literary Arts Festival, 2008; Award for Personal Essay Writing, Perspectives, spring 2010; cowinner, Charles Hirsch Faculty Essay Award, City Tech Literary Arts Festival, 2015. Participant, Next Generation Leadership Training, PSC, 2015–16. Health and Safety Comm., PSC-CUNY, 2007– ; exec. comm. (2010– ) and English dept. representative (2011–12, 2013– ), New York City Coll. of Technology (NYCCT) chapter, PSC; ch., PSC task force for teaching load equity campaign at NYCCT, Dec. 2011–Sept. 2013; vice ch., NYCCT chapter, PSC, May 2013– . Asst. ed., Columbia Journal of American Studies, 2008–09. Publications include articles in Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature, Hunger Mountain: VCFA Journal of the Arts, Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, Flannery O’Connor Review, Clarion; review in Twentieth-Century Literature. Statement I teach writing and literature at New York City College of Technology, part of the City University of New York. With its variety of career-focused associate’s and bachelor’s degree programs, City Tech gives many of its students, often the first in their families to go to college, just the leg up they need to achieve a financially secure future. Giving my students permission to see themselves as part of a large, creative, and intellectual world is at the heart of my teaching. However, while many of our students succeed, many struggle with huge financial deficits. I, meanwhile, like many faculty members, precariously juggle time- intensive competing commitments to both my students and my research. It’s clear that the humanities urgently need better funding. As a union activist with the Professional Staff Congress, I have fought successfully for better investment in CUNY as well as course load equity on my campus. The considerable negotiation skills I’ve learned in my union work will be invaluable in the MLA Delegate Assembly as we work toward a better future for our profession. I received my PhD in 1993; in the thirteen years it took to secure a tenure-track job in a difficult job market, I taught short-term at a variety of campuses, both public and private. My years as a professional itinerant have given me a wide-lens perspective on how different academic institutions operate and on how the MLA can better serve its most vulnerable members, especially adjunct faculty members and graduate students.

109. Vincent Odamtten. Prof. lit., Hamilton Coll. PhD, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York. Valco Fund Literary Award (for poetry), 1976. Deputy vice pres., African Lit. Assn., 2015–16. Publications include The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo: Polylectics and Reading against Neocolonialism (1994); ed., Broadening the Horizon: Critical Introductions to Amma Darko (2007); contrib., Of Dreams Deferred, Dead or Alive: African Perspectives on African-American Writers (1996), Emerging Perspectives on Ama Ata Aidoo (1999), Modern African Drama (Norton, 2002), Encyclopedia of African Literature (2003), Dictionary of African Biography (2011), Illuminations on Chinua Achebe: The Art of Resistance (2017); article in Matatu: Journal for African Culture and Society. Statement I have been teaching in the United States of America for more than thirty years and have focused much of my energy and passion on teaching undergraduates and pursuing my scholarship. My initial introduction to the MLA was as an arena for job hunting, and I honestly did not then fully appreciate its value. Nevertheless, its size ensured that it always remained in my mind. To that end, over the years its function as a champion of the humanities and the diverse activities that its members and nonmembers do in and outside of the academy have become increasingly apparent. More particularly, in this age of economic Candidate Information – 41

privation, a virulent anti-intellectualism, and a xenophobic paranoia born from an unwillingness to critically engage the world of facts and imaginatively seek solutions for the betterment of all, I see the MLA as a forum in which new, well-reasoned ideas may flourish. Should I be fortunate to be elected a member of the Delegate Assembly for New York, I will do all in my power and ability to advance the struggle against the seeming tide of global and local intolerance. ☼ 110. Conall Cash. Grad. student French, Cornell Univ. MA, Monash Univ. Institutional service: colloquium organizer, School of English, Communication, and Performance Studies, Monash Univ., 2010; symposium organizer, Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia, Univ. of New South Wales, 2014. Australian Postgrad. Award Scholarship, Monash Univ., 2010– 11; Sage Fellowship, Cornell Univ., 2014– . Participant, The Current Conjuncture in World Affairs (research project), Cornell Univ. and Univ. of Sussex, 2015– . Coed., Colloquy: Text Theory Critique (grad. student journal, Monash Univ.), 2012–13. Conference presentations: Film and History Assn. of Australia and New Zealand, 2010; Monash Univ. Postgrad. Colloquium, Dec. 2011; Australasian Soc. for French Studies, 2012; Frederic Jameson’s The Antinomies of Realism: A Symposium (Univ. of New South Wales), Aug. 2014; ACLA, 2015; On Seriality (grad. conference, Cornell Univ.), May 2015; Ideas of South (grad. conference, Cornell Univ.), Mar. 2016; Historical Materialism conference (London), Nov. 2016. Publications include contrib., The Goalkeeper: The Nabokov Almanac (2010); articles in Colloquy: Text Theory Critique; reviews in Affirmations: Of the Modern, Colloquy: Text Theory Critique. Statement I am eager to become an active member of the MLA Delegate Assembly as a graduate student representing the New York State region. I wish to use this position to advance the best of what the study of literature, language, and culture entails, namely a commitment to social justice, academic freedom, and the values of empathy and critical understanding.

111. Felipe Hugueno. Grad. student Spanish, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. MA, St. John’s Univ., NY. Institutional service (Univ. at Buffalo): application reviewer, Mark Diamond Research Fund, Grad. Student Assn., 2017. Mark Diamond Research Fund grant, Grad. Student Assn., Univ. at Buffalo, summer 2016. El Premio Gabriela Mistral, St. John’s Univ. chapter, Sigma Delta Pi, 2011. Conference presentations: Cincinnati Conference on Romance Langs. and Lits., 2013; The Biggest Comebacks: Tenacious Resurgence of Cultural Topoi (grad. student conference, Univ. at Buffalo), Mar. 2015; Don Quixote in the Amer. West: A Fourth-Centenary Celebration (1615–2015) (Univ. of Colorado, Denver, and Univ. of Wyoming), Apr. 2015; LASA, 2015; Exchange and Collision (Univ. of Minnesota), Mar. 2016; Situations of Latin Amer. Modernity (Lake Erie Latin Amer. Cultural Studies Consortium), Oct. 2016; NEMLA, 2017. Publications include creative work in Al norte de la cordillera: Antología de voces andinas in los Estados Unidos (2016), Antología de poemas de lujo: Primer certamen de poesía (2016). Statement As a graduate student who is becoming more involved in the humanities, I can attest to the growing concern among colleagues regarding the job market. Especially nowadays, the humanities are a target for reduced or even discontinued funding from the state and federal governments. As a delegate, I would want to speak for those who feel the same and who are worried about the future of our field of study. These matters are significant not only to us, who wish to make a difference in the teaching and research spheres, but also to our students, who invest their time and money for a meaningful learning experience. As a student who is on the path to becoming an educator, I feel the responsibility to make a difference because I still believe education is the best way to transform our society.

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III. Middle Atlantic (3 contests) Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia

112. Sharada Balachandran Orihuela. Asst. prof. English and comparative lit., Univ. of Maryland, College Park. PhD, Univ. of California, Davis. Doctoral fellowship, Univ. of California Inst. for Mexico and the United States / Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2005–10; Tinker Foundation Field Research Award (for research at the Centro de Estudios Martíanos, Havana), Hemispheric Inst. on the Americas, Univ. of California, Davis, 2009; research fellowship, Cuban Heritage Collection, Univ. of Miami, 2010; Profs. for the Future fellowship, Univ. of California, Davis, 2010–11; Marilyn Yarborough Dissertation and Teaching Fellowship, Kenyon Coll., 2011–12; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2014; Amer. Antiquarian Soc. short-term fellowship, 2015. Site comm., Latina/o Studies Assn., 2016–18; Amer. Lit. Assn. Publications include contrib., Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture (2008), The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016); articles in Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture. Statement I joined the English and comparative literature faculty at the University of Maryland (UMD) in fall 2012, soon after completing my dissertation at the University of California, Davis. Since then, I have served as an affiliate faculty member in the Department of American Studies, the U.S. Latina/o Studies Program, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Latin American Studies Center. In the past five years, I have also contributed to my community by serving on advisory boards for a number of programs within my institution, committees looking at salary parity and compression, and committees guiding graduate students through the academic job market. However, as a scholar of American multiethnic literature in an increasingly hostile political climate, felt acutely at UMD with the recent murder of Richard Collins III, my commitment to the university and the profession has been intertwined with my sense of obligation to the wider community. I bring to the Delegate Assembly my dedication not only to addressing issues as diverse as protecting academic freedom and attending to the declining number of undergraduate majors but also to ensuring that colleges and universities continue to serve as sites where better and well-informed citizens are created. In the face of national education and immigration policies that are limiting the funding and resources allocated to students and to colleges and universities, UMD’s location bordering the seat of American government provides me with a unique opportunity to advocate for the protection and expansion of the privileges academics hold dear.

113. Nicholas Gaskill. Asst. prof. English, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. PhD, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Huntington Library fellowship, 2012–13; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship in the humanities, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 2014–15. Norman Foerster Prize (for best essay in American Literature), Amer. Lit. Section, 2009. Publications include coed., The Lure of Whitehead (2014); articles in American Literature, American Literary History, New Literary History, Studies in American Fiction, Cabinet. Statement I would like to join the MLA Delegate Assembly to address the rise of adjunct labor within higher education and to work toward articulating a strong vision for the humanities in the face of shrinking budgets. I see these tasks as related, not only in the straightforward economic way but also in the sense that our account of what we do and why it matters should counteract the bottom-line thinking that has driven the increase in contingent labor. I think the MLA and its members should lead by example in establishing practices of fair treatment for our students and our colleagues. This will involve assessing the state of graduate education and the way it remains out of sync with the job market. As our most important body for collective action and advocacy, I think that the MLA must take a leading role in these efforts. Candidate Information – 43

I have trained and worked in a variety of institutions and hope to use this experience to ensure that the Delegate Assembly draws on and addresses the range of positions and situations represented by its members. ☼ 114. David A. Pettersen. Assoc. prof. French, Univ. of Pittsburgh. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Accueil Pro fellowship, Coopération et Mobilité Internationales Rhône-Alpes, fall 2015. Publications include Americanism, Media, and the Politics of Culture in 1930s France (2016); articles in Studies in French Cinema, Modern and Contemporary France, Cincinnati Romance Review, Cinema Journal, Romance Studies. Statement The MLA Delegate Assembly offers a key forum where we can discuss the issues confronting our profession, foster institutional change at a national and international level, and most crucially develop tool kits of information and strategies for members to use in their advocacy for change at their local institutions. I am concerned by the diminished place of language, literature, and culture departments within academic institutions and by negative public perceptions of our field. The continuing rise in the use of contingent labor, the marginalization of foreign language requirements and study abroad in student curricula, and the inadequate funding of humanities graduate students all signal a shift in the cultural value attributed to our field. Indeed, I am dismayed when colleagues in other departments, parents, and even some students tell me that there’s no need to study languages because one can get by in English everywhere. Through my administrative role as associate director of the Film Studies Program, I have sought to create dialogue between departments that operate in English and those that operate in other languages. I have also developed faculty exchanges, study abroad programs, and scholarly collaborations with academic institutions in France that work in and across different languages. I hope to bring that spirit of cooperation and exchange to the Delegate Assembly. I believe that the MLA can play a crucial role in ongoing efforts to readjust public perceptions of and institutional priorities around our field, and I would be honored to be a part of them.

115. Shuang Shen. Assoc. prof. comparative lit. and Asian studies, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, City Univ. of New York. Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for Intl. Scholarly Exchange grant, June 2015–June 2016; co–principal investigator, collaborative project grant, Henry Luce Foundation, June 2015–June 2018; visiting senior research fellow, Asia Research Inst., Natl. Univ. of Singapore, July–Oct. 2015; U.S. Core Scholar (Hong Kong), Fulbright Scholarship Program, Oct. 2015–Feb. 2016; workshop grant, Henry Luce Foundation / ACLS Program in China Studies, June 2017–Sept. 2018. Publications include Mishi shanghai [Lost in Translation] (2005), Cosmopolitan Publics: Anglophone Print Culture in Semi-colonial Shanghai (2009); ed., Lingdu kan zhang [Eileen Chang: Degree Zero] (2010); guest coed., Literary Review (2004), Social Text (2011, 2012), Verge: Studies in Global Asias (2016); contrib., One Hundred Years of Chinese Cinema: A Generational Dialogue (2005), Liwa hepan lun wenxue [Literary Criticism on the University Campus] (2006), The Jin Yong Phenomenon: Chinese Martial Arts Fiction and Modern Chinese Literary History (2007), Guyuan chunmeng: Zhu Shilin de dianying rensheng [Zhu Shilin: A Filmmaker of His Times] (2008), China Abroad: Travels, Subjects, Spaces (2009), Eileen Chang: Romancing Languages, Cultures, and Genres (2012), Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (2013), DV-Made China: Digital Subjects and Social Transformations after Independent Film (2015), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Literatures (2016), A New Literary History of Modern China (2017); articles in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Modern China, Modern Language Quarterly, Social Text, Modern

44 – Candidate Information

Chinese Literature and Culture, PMLA, Genre, Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, Waiguo wenxue pinglun [Foreign Literature Review]. Statement As an international student who came to the United States from China in pursuit of a graduate education, I have been keenly aware of the rewards and challenges of venturing beyond the boundaries of one’s native language, a national literature, or a familiar disciplinary field. I have done work in multiple fields and areas, including Asian American and Asian diaspora literatures, global anglophone literature, comparative literature, and Chinese and Asian literature, always seeking to find intersections among these fields. The Modern Language Association has always provided me with an accessible and friendly means to find an intellectual cohort with similar multi- and interdisciplinary interests. With this experience in mind, I believe that the MLA should a. Continue to foster collaboration, dialogue, and comparative studies among humanistic fields focused on different geographical areas, not just between the non-West and the West but also within the non- West and the Global South. b. Further expand the study of non-Anglophone literatures and cultures from comparative and global perspectives. c. Consider holding the MLA convention occasionally outside the United States or organizing a different version of the MLA convention for locations outside North America, for instance, in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. d. Make the scholarship by scholars situated outside North America more visible by devoting special issues of PMLA or other MLA publications to a global exchange of ideas. ☼ 116. Tim Bruno. Grad. student English, Univ. of Maryland, College Park. MA, Univ. of Virginia. Institutional service (Univ. of Maryland): proposal reviewer, Washington Early Amer. Seminar, Dept. of History, 2017. Public Humanities Fellowship in South Atlantic Studies, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2013. Up and Coming Scholar Award, Harriet Beecher Stowe Soc., 2017. Advising mentor, Goucher Prison Educ. Partnership, 2015–17. Conference presentations: PAMLA, 2012; Radical Historiographies (grad. student symposium, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick), Mar. 2014; Common Threads in Arts and Humanities: A Collaborative Research Symposium (grad. conference, Univ. of Maryland), Mar. 2016; Amer. Lit. Assn., 2016, 2017; Celebrating African Amer. Lit. and Lang. (Penn State Univ., University Park), Oct. 2016; NEMLA, 2017. Publications include article in Journal of American Studies. Statement I am honored to be nominated to the assembly. If elected, I will work with the MLA to rebuild academic worker power by advocating for improved labor conditions for the most vulnerable members of the profession and for a reinvigorated union culture. My fellow graduate students and adjuncts need living wages, benefits, and a path to better jobs. I also echo the recent AAUP election statement asserting unionization as a last, best defense for academic freedom. As a major professional organization, the MLA must publicly endorse and enable efforts for better conditions and unionization. Forging collective power from the bottom up is a feasible way to check the professional crises we all face—defunding the humanities, institutional austerity measures, adjunctification, curtailed academic freedom, rising racist violence on campuses. We can empower the entire profession by protecting our most vulnerable members and organizing ourselves, cutting across differences of region, rank, and institution. I learned this commitment to the shared good of higher education largely from attending state universities: taking classes alongside other first-generation college students, I witnessed what language and literature bring to the public. Now I am fortunate enough to testify to my own students about our work. But my approach to the profession is influenced by my social justice activism and my commitment to accessible education. Throughout my graduate career, I have engaged in living-wage organizing and prison education work, centering marginalized publics in an effort to make higher education more just for all.

Candidate Information – 45

117. Hao Jun Tam. Grad. student English, Univ. of Pennsylvania. MA, Univ. of Pennsylvania (Penn). Institutional service (Penn): Grad. English Assn. representative, Grad. Student Govt. of the School of Arts and Sciences, 2014–15; coordinator, Latitudes Grad. Working Group, 2014–16; coordinating comm. (2014–17) and sec. (2015–16), Fontaine Soc.; organizer, Grad. Asian Amer. Studies Group, 2015–17; lead grad. student organizer, A2/P2 Symposium (on Asian and Asian Amer. studies at Penn and Penn State Univ.), fall 2016. McNair Achievement Scholar Program, U.S. Dept. of Educ., 2011; Benjamin Gilman Scholarship (Univ. of London), U.S. Dept. of State, 2011–12; Benjamin Franklin / William Fontaine Fellowship, Penn, 2013–18; Grad. Fellowship for Teaching Excellence, Center for Teaching and Learning, Penn, 2107–18; Penfield Dissertation Research Fellowship (Vietnam), Penn, May 2018. Conference presentations: Race across Time and Space (McNeil Center, Penn), Nov. 2014; NEMLA, 2016; Protest (grad. conference, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program, Penn), Apr. 2016; AAAS, 2016, 2017; ASA, 2016; Dis/Location (grad. conference, French and Italian Grad. Soc., Penn), Mar. 2017; Futures of Amer. Studies Inst., Dartmouth Coll., June 2017. Publications include review in Journal of Vietnamese Studies. Statement In addition to representing the interests and needs of scholars in the Middle Atlantic region, as a Delegate Assembly member I will seek to increase support for job-seeking graduate students, especially those who have been on the market multiple times. This stage is the most crucial for each PhD’s career, but too often they receive little support from anyone other than their committee and institution—and this support may not be adequate at all. As the MLA provides the opportunity for these candidates and their prospective employers to meet, the organization can try to ease the difficult process and make each candidate feel truly valued as an MLA member. The MLA should strengthen its commitment to their success. My second goal as a delegate is to make sure that the MLA does not trivialize but confronts two current charges leveled at university members in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, namely that the “cultural elite” is out of touch with the general population and that free speech is being threatened on college campuses. As scholars and writers, I believe we can do more to promote public accountability, democracy in institutions, heterodoxy of thoughts and ideas, and open access to knowledge. Being an important representative body for the arts and humanities, the MLA should step up alongside universities to challenge openly those two charges, not only in words but also in deeds.

IV. Great Lakes (3 contests) Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin

118. Christopher J. Lukasik. Assoc. prof. English, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette. PhD, Johns Hopkins Univ. Mellon Foundation fellowship, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2000; research fellowship, Winterthur Museum and Library, 2001, 2014; Drawn to Art Research Fellowship, Amer. Antiquarian Soc. (AAS), 2003; Andrew Oliver Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Soc., 2004; Boston Univ. Humanities Foundation junior fellowship, 2004; NEH fellowship, AAS, 2004–05; Fulbright senior scholarship (Univ. of the Philippines), 2009–10; Reese Award in Amer. Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas, Virginia Historical Soc., 2013; Helfand Fellowship for Amer. Visual Culture, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2013; Jay and Deborah Last Research Fellowship, AAS, 2013; Lillian Gary Taylor Fellowship, Harrison Inst. for Amer. History, Lit., and Culture, Univ. of Virginia, 2013, 2014; Princeton Univ. Library research grant, 2014; NEH summer stipend, 2016; Fulbright specialist, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State, 2017–20. Kenneth T. Kofmehl Outstanding Undergrad. Teaching Award, Coll. of Liberal Arts, Purdue Univ., 2013–14. Selection comms.: Hench postdissertation fellowships, AAS, 2008–09; Fulbright senior scholarships, CIES, 2011, 2013, 2014; NEH postdoctoral fellowships, Library Company of Philadelphia, 2014; NEH research fellowships, Winterthur Museum and Library, 2015. Advisory board, Center for Historic Amer. Visual Culture, AAS, 2014– . MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2008–Jan. 2011. Assoc. ed., English Literary History, 1998–2000. 46 – Candidate Information

Publications include Discerning Characters: The Culture of Appearance in Early America (2011); contrib., A Companion to American Fiction, 1780–1865 (2004), The Design of Learning Experience: Creating the Future of Educational Technology (2015); articles in Callaloo, Western Humanities Review, Studies in American Fiction, Early American Literature, Amerikastudien / American Studies, Common- place: The Journal of Early American Life, New England Quarterly. Statement I welcome the opportunity to work with my colleagues in the MLA Delegate Assembly to establish priorities, devise policy, and take action on a number of critical issues currently facing the profession. As a delegate, I would encourage the MLA to focus on two issues in particular. The first is the integrity and equity of labor practices within the field. I would encourage the MLA to continue to find ways to promote diversity in the workforce, communicate the value of academic freedom and tenure, monitor hiring and promotion practices, and facilitate the interests and organization of adjunct and graduate labor. The second issue is the relation of our discipline to other disciplines (both within the humanities and across the STEM areas) and to the public at large. The MLA should consider how we might better communicate our organization’s purpose and the value of our work to the public.

119. No candidate ☼ 120. Stephen Matthew Buttes. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Indiana Univ.–Purdue Univ., Fort Wayne. PhD, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago. Enhancement of Learning Award, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Indiana Univ.–Purdue Univ., Fort Wayne (IPFW), 2014; Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching Award, IPFW, 2017. Dir., Univ. Community Conversation (public lecture series), IPFW, 2016– . Board of referees, L’érudit franco-espagnol, 2012– . Publications include coed., Pobreza y precariedad en el imaginario latinoamericano del siglo XXI (2017); contrib., Sergio Chejfec: Trayectorias de la escritura (2012); articles in Revista de estudios hispánicos, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Chasqui, nonsite.org, A contracorriente, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos. Statement I am honored to be nominated to the Delegate Assembly. The many challenges facing the members of our organization are daunting and well known: modern language programs face cuts; graduate programs are closing; English and modern language departments run on contingent labor; non-STEM fields are de- emphasized; the humanities face an uncertain future. This well-worn narrative, however, misses the fact that the same federal budget that recently proposed eliminating the NEH and the NEA also proposed massive cuts for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies funding science research. In this context of reduced resources, fields are often pitted against one another. I believe that the most intransigent problems the members of our organization face cannot be properly addressed without approaching them from the perspective of interconnectivity. Every discipline is facing cuts, and every discipline is facing the external pressures of economic instrumentalization. As a delegate, I will encourage the MLA to pursue coalition building with major professional organizations outside English and the modern languages through the drafting of joint statements on a range of issues: from research funding and objectives for K–12 education to contingent labor and defending small but necessary programs in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. I believe another component of addressing these long-term problems is connecting organization members to one another’s work and that work to the public. I will encourage the MLA to increase and improve its use of MLA Commons to enhance public engagement.

121. No candidate ☼ Candidate Information – 47

122. Andisheh Ghaderi. Grad. student French, Univ. of Kansas (Michigan State Univ. at time of nomination). MA, Michigan State Univ.; MA, Univ. of Tehran. Institutional service (Michigan State Univ.): historian (2015–16) and conference organizer (2016), TROPOS (grad. student org.); steward, Grad. Employee Union. Head of lang. dept., Sarvaye Mehre Koudak (children’s welfare org.), 2010–15. Conference presentations: Nordic Network for Comics Research, 2013; Intl. Conference on Women’s Studies (Colombo, Sri Lanka), July 2013; Intl. Multidisciplinary Academic Conference, Inst. of Strategic and Intl. Studies, Oct. 2013; Responsibility, Morality, and the Costs of War: PTSD, Moral Injury, and Beyond (Dept. of Theatre, Ohio State Univ.), Nov. 2015; TROPOS Grad. Conference (Dept. of Romance and Classical Langs., Michigan State Univ.), Nov. 2016; Film and Media Grad. Symposium (Film and Media Grad. Council, Univ. of Kansas), Jan. 2017. Publications include articles in Plume, Review of Social Studies, Law, and Psychology.

123. Kathryn Mara. Grad. student African cultural studies, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. MA, Michigan State Univ. Institutional service (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison [UW, Madison]): project asst., Lang. Inst., 2016; interview series organizer, Dept. of African Cultural Studies (ACS), 2016– ; professional development series organizer, ACS, 2016–17; sec., ACS Student Assn., 2016–17. FLAS fellowship, 2014, 2016–17, 2017–18; Mellon fellowship, Inst. for Regional and Intl. Studies, UW, Madison, 2015; Ebrahim Hussein Fellowship for Research in African Lit., UW, Madison, 2017. Conference presentations: African Studies Assn., 2014, 2016; Intl. Network of Genocide Scholars, 2014; African Lit. Assn., 2016. Publications include reviews in Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review. Statement I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to serve as a graduate student representative in the Delegate Assembly, particularly in such challenging times as these. Indeed, 2017 has been a difficult, if not frightening, year for the humanities, but we would be hard-pressed to find a time that has not been rough for us, when our value has not been questioned and our budgets have not faced attack. Now, this is not to belittle the very real and visceral threat that the current administration poses but only to say that we have persevered thus far. We craft inspired memes. We organize successful protests. More important, we continue to produce insightful and significant scholarship, perhaps the greatest protest of all. I am most interested in pursuing initiatives focused on area studies as well as outreach and inclusion efforts for those not represented in the university more broadly. With or without a successful bid to be your representative, I will continue to fight for the humanities.

V. South (3 contests) Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virgin Islands, Virginia

124. Raquel Alfaro. Asst. prof. Spanish, Univ. of North Carolina, Pembroke. PhD, Univ. of Pittsburgh. Publications include article in Revista iberoamericana.

125. Dierdra Reber. Asst. prof. Spanish, Univ. of Kentucky. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Previous appointments: Northwestern Univ., Emory Univ. Dissertation fellowship, AAUW, 2004–05. Fellowship selection comm., AAUW, 2017. Publications include Coming to Our Senses: Affect and an Order of Things for Global Culture (2016); contrib., La vigilia cubana: Sobre Antonio José Ponte (2009), El lenguaje de las emociones: Afecto y cultura en América Latina (2012), Teaching the Latin American Boom (2015); articles in Arizona Journal of 48 – Candidate Information

Hispanic Cultural Studies, nonsite.org, Hispanic Issues On Line, Differences, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, MLN, Revista iberoamericana. Statement Precarity has increasingly become naturalized within the fabric of our profession, affecting both individuals coping with the casualization of labor and the decline of the tenure track and institutions facing arts and humanities funding cuts and persistent threats to those same disciplines at the level of institutional structure. I have always viewed professional service as intellectually and ethically inseparable from scholarship and pedagogy; the mounting crisis at hand has only increased the urgency of the call that I have always felt to contribute to our profession’s health and stability. As a graduate student leader, I fought for stipend increases, health care packages, support for graduate parents, and professionalization; as a faculty member, I have fought for transparency of institutional communication and decision-making, increased faculty governance, and the preservation of humanities departments and programs. My service history runs the gamut from undergraduate and graduate curricular redesign to graduate and faculty grant selection to college governance, university senate, and sitting on a committee to select a university president. These experiences have given me a sense of institutional and professional structures and logic and bearings for how to advocate most powerfully within them on behalf of our students, faculty members, departments, and disciplines and our profession itself. Our times call for an energetic fortification and evolution of the humanities. We need safe space to think, teach, imagine, investigate, and create with dynamism and rigor. I am dedicated to opening avenues that grow and safeguard the work and equity of our professional membership. ☼ 126. Jeanne Gillespie. Prof. Spanish and Amer. Indian studies, 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, summer 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; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2017. Southern Mississippi Humanities Network liaison (2015– ) and Humanities Working Group for Community Impact Initiative (2015– ), Natl. Humanities Alliance. Coorganizer, THATCamp New Orleans, May 2013. Vice pres. (2014), pres. (2015), and past pres. (2016–17), 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), The Body, Subject and Subjected (2016), Women’s Negotiations and Textual Agency in Latin America, 1500–1799 (2017); articles in Laberinto, Southern Quarterly, Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Hipertexto, Cuaderno internacional de estudios hispánicos y lingüistica, Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures. Statement I am concerned with the role of the humanities in our national conversation and in our communities and regions. The practice of the humanities, especially the study of languages and literatures, is vital to preserving civil discourse; to promoting diversity, tolerance, and justice; and to training our students to analyze and interpret materials that frame our present and shape our future. In my work with the South Central Modern Language Association, I see that we have incredible potential to sustain our work if we choose a collaborative, inclusive approach as advocates for the power of humanities research and learning. I also see that the regional associations bring a grassroots access that could and should be more effectively mobilized to support the practice of the humanities and to seek ways to connect our research and teaching with local, regional, and national issues. As a delegate for the South, I would work to strengthen the connections between the national organization and the regional organizations. I would also work across disciplines to facilitate collaborative and cross-disciplinary approaches promoting humanities research and learning in our institutions, communities, and regions.

Candidate Information – 49

127. Mary A. Watt. Assoc. prof. Italian studies, Univ. of Florida. PhD, Univ. of Toronto; JD, Univ. of Toronto. Assoc. dean, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Florida (UF), 2016– ; ch., Dept. of Langs., Lits., and Cultures, UF, 2010–15. Rothman Faculty Summer Fellowship in the Humanities, Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, UF, 2011. Visiting appointment: Goggio Ch., Dept. of Italian Studies, Univ. of Toronto, spring 2015. Anderson Scholar Faculty Honoree, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UF, 2007. 2014. Grant proposal reviewer: SSHRC, 2011; Lang. Flagship, Inst. of Intl. Educ., 2016. Advisory comm. (2012–15) and sec. (2016– ), Canadian Soc. for Italian Studies; planning comm., 2017 Conference on Diversity, Learning, and Student Success, 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), Dante, Columbus, and the Prophetic Tradition: Spiritual Imperialism in the Italian Imagination (2017); 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), The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492–1750 (2017); articles in Dante e l’arte, Dante Füzetek / Quaderni danteschi (Hungary), NEMLA Italian Studies, Spunti e ricerche, 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. ☼ 128. Haley L. Osborn. Grad. student Spanish, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville. MA, Loyola Univ., Chicago. Teaching grant, Ministerio de Educación, Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, June 2010. Recognition for outstanding academic and professional merit, Dept. of Modern Foreign Langs. and Lits., Univ. of Tennessee, May 2014; Certificate of Excellence (for work as founding ed. of Vernacular), Aug. 2015–Apr. 2016. Judge, Tennessee Porch Swing Forensics Tournament, Carson-Newman Univ., Nov. 2016. Founding ed. in chief, Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, and Culture, Jan. 2015–May 2016. Conference presentations: Intl. Conference on Caribbean Studies, Marquette Univ., Apr. 2013; Interdisciplinary Research Symposium for Grad. School Students, Loyola Univ., Chicago, Apr. 2013; Kentucky Foreign Lang. Conference, 2013; Faculty Research Seminar on the Caribbean, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, Jan. 2015, Jan. 2017; Escritura, individuo y sociedad en España, las Américas y Puerto Rico (Univ. of Puerto Rico, Arecibo), Mar. 2015; Hispanic Studies Symposium, Dept. of Modern Foreign Langs. and Lits., Univ. of Tennessee Knoxville, Mar. 2015; Programa Académico del Festival de la Palabra (San Juan, PR), Oct. 2016; SAMLA, 2016; MLA, 2017. Publications include contrib., Gabriel García Márquez in Retrospect: A Collection (2016). 50 – Candidate Information

Statement As a fourth-year doctoral student and GTA involved in strengthening the modern foreign languages and literatures community at the University of Tennessee, my professional concerns include ensuring the success of graduate students in the humanities as they complete their studies, develop teaching skills at the university level, and enter the job market for the first time. Because new graduate students face the unique challenges of balancing work, study, professional development, personal health, mental well-being, and surviving on scarce compensation for the sake of pursuing their passions, I believe that graduate programs should prioritize mentorship. For example, as MA students begin their programs, they often do so with expectations of succeeding academically, involving themselves actively in their departments and campus communities, and bettering themselves intellectually through completion of a master’s thesis. Yet many students do not know how, in practical terms, to realize these expectations. Due to their overwhelming workloads and lack of guidance, they frequently abandon these goals. Meanwhile, some faculty members expect new graduate students to be able to successfully adapt to this lifestyle. But graduate students are not yet experts. On the contrary, they seek out such programs in order to be inspired, encouraged, and challenged and to become expert scholars in their fields. I believe that new graduate students need both engaged and empathetic departmental advisers and graduate student mentors—students who have already overcome the shock of beginning a new program. Additionally, for further support, departments should offer workshops on thesis writing, publication, and professionalization.

129. Brittany Sulzener. Grad. student English, Univ. of Kentucky. MA, Xavier Univ. Conference presentations: Louisville Conference on Lit. and Culture since 1900, 2015; Celebrating African Amer. Lit. and Lang. (Penn State Univ., University Park), Oct. 2016. Statement With the proposed shutdown of the National Endowment for the Humanities and funding cuts to universities more broadly, the future of the humanities and those currently working toward attaining a degree in the humanities is ever more tenuous. As an educator, I am interested in pursuing strategies for instilling an understanding of the importance of the humanities in the current generation of college students. I would also like to explore ways the MLA might promote activism and self-advocacy for those who feel their futures in the humanities to be threatened by these budget cuts and the general, federally-sanctioned, devaluation of the humanities.

VI. Central and Rocky Mountain (3 contests) Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming

130. John C. Parrack. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Univ. of Central Arkansas. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Coll. of Liberal Arts representative (2005–11, 2014–17), parliamentarian (2006–08), pres. elect (2008–09), and pres. (2009–10), Faculty Senate, Univ. of Central Arkansas (UCA); exec. comm., UCA chapter, AAUP, 2014–18. Mellon fellowship, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1997–98. Outstanding Faculty Member, Coll. of Liberal Arts, UCA, 2009–10; Univ. Public Service Award, UCA, 2016. Foreign Lang. Statewide Transfer Team, Arkansas Dept. of Higher Educ., 2006; foreign lang. workshop facilitator, Conway School District, 2015, 2016; pedagogy comm., Praxis World Langs. Pedagogy Exam, ETS, 2016– . Reader (2000–03, 2005–07, 2010–11) and scoring/table leader (2014– ), Advanced Placement Program in Spanish, Coll. Board. Board member, Arkansas Foreign Lang. Teachers Assn., 2005– 08; board member (2010– ), treasurer (2011–14, 2016–17), and pres. (2014–16), Arkansas Shakespeare Theatre. Publications include ed., La Estrella de Sevilla (2008); contrib., Women in the Discourse of Early Modern Spain (2003), Hacia la tragedia áurea: Lecturas para un nuevo milenio (2008), Approaches to Teaching Lazarillo de Tormes and the Picaresque Tradition (2009), Ovid in the Age of Cervantes (2010); Candidate Information – 51

articles in Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, La corónica: A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Romance Notes, Philological Quarterly. Statement Blah, blah, blah. It’s sad to say, but that is what far too many of our political and business leaders hear when we talk about the humanities being in crisis. They don’t care, and sometimes they are even happy about it. Make no mistake, the fields of study represented by the MLA face threats from every possible quarter: national and state governments, corporate America, and even our own administrations and colleagues. We all know what the issues are: the increasing reliance on contingent faculty positions, the reduction in university degree requirements in the humanities, and the growth in dual-credit coursework, among many others. There are no easy answers, but if we are going to proclaim the importance of language study, cultural literacy, and human empathy, we must engage in a real conversation rather than simply advocate for our fields. I do not claim to have all of the answers. However, if elected to the Delegate Assembly, I am committed to working with my colleagues on what this conversation needs to be about and the people we need to invite to the table. Some questions include: What is the value of a liberal education? How can it prepare men and women to be successful in an ever-changing world? And why does any of this matter? The answers have profound implications not just for the humanities but also for our nation and the intellectual formation of our future leaders.

131. Brian Yothers. Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Prof. in English, Univ. of Texas, El Paso. PhD, Purdue Univ. Participant, Natl. Humanities Center summer seminar, 2006. Univ. of Texas Regents Outstanding Teaching Award, 2014. Dir., Summer Inst. for Teachers, Humanities Texas, 2016. Trustee, Murray Endowment, Melville Soc., 2012–13. Coed., Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, 2008– ; assoc. ed., Melville’s Marginalia Online, 2011– ; travel section coed., Melville Electronic Library, 2011– ; series ed., Literary Criticism in Perspective, Camden House , 2012– ; assoc. ed., Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, 2014– . Publications include The Romance of the Holy Land in American Travel Writing, 1790–1876 (2007), Melville’s Mirrors: Literary Criticism and America’s Most Elusive Author (2011), Sacred Uncertainty: Religious Difference and the Shape of Melville’s Career (2015), Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass (2016); ed., Critical Insights: Billy Budd, Sailor (2017); coed., Visionary of the Word: Melville and Religion (2017); guest coed., Journeys: The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing (2009); contrib., Approaches to Teaching Poe’s Poetry and Prose (2008), Critical Insights: The Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (2010), Critical Insights: Herman Melville (2012), Travel, Discovery, Transformation (2014), Critical Insights: Moby-Dick (2014), Critical Insights: LGBTQ Literature (2015), Critical Insights: Contemporary Immigrant Short Fiction (2015), Critical Insights: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest (2015), Critical Insights: Short Fiction of Flannery O’Connor (2016), Critical Approaches to Literature: Moral (2017); articles in Leviathan, Poe Studies, Journeys, Journal of American Studies, Early American Literature, Margins, Studies in the Novel, South Asian Review, Gothic Studies, Writing Lab Newsletter. Statement I have served in my institution as a vigorous advocate for the liberal arts in general and English studies in particular. We need to be able to communicate clearly and passionately the value of our work in the humanities to our students, our faculty and administration colleagues, our surrounding communities, and our elected representatives. This means being able to tell a story about how the humanities contribute to human flourishing, to citizenship, to an appreciation for diversity in its many varieties, and to our students’ prospects in the wider world. All of my work, from my teaching (which has been honored by the UT system with its UT Regents Outstanding Teaching Award) to my print scholarship to my digital humanities work to my service and administrative work at my institution to my outreach to the El Paso community through organizing reading groups and continuing education classes has built on my conviction that the humanities need able and eloquent advocates. I would be delighted to work with my colleagues in the MLA Delegate Assembly to think through how we can both defend and advance humanistic scholarship and teaching in the twenty-first century. I have also come to feel a great deal of affection for and rootedness in the Rocky 52 – Candidate Information

Mountain region, so it would be a privilege for me to give voice to the particular challenges and opportunities we face in the Mountain West and, for many of us, in the vicinity of the U.S./Mexico border. ☼ 132. 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; William A. Ringler Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2014. Best Conference Paper of the Year Award, Comm. on Early Modern Studies, Penn State Univ., 2012; Albert C. 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), Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: One First Matter All (2017); articles in Milton Studies, Philological Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation, Studies in Philology; review in Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada. Statement As an assistant professor of English who takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying Shakespeare, Milton, and their afterlives in popular culture, I work with diverse media—including print, art, and film—and across diverse areas of specialization, including cultural studies, religion and literature, book history, and political philosophy. The MLA has a long history of celebrating diversity, and the range of my research subjects is both a product of that diversity and an attempt to bridge gaps between disciplines and fields and 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 positions. As the associate director of graduate studies at my institution, I run our Professional Development Curriculum, which meets weekly to equip students with the tools they need to thrive in these conditions. I am committed to helping young professionals succeed in their scholarly and career (academic and alt-ac) aspirations, and my actions in the Delegate Assembly would mirror that devotion. I believe that training junior scholars in professionalism goes hand in hand with the MLA’s larger campaign of enlarging the place of the humanities in American 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.

133. Priscilla Solis Ybarra. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of North Texas. PhD, Rice Univ. Aldo and Estella Leopold Mi Casita Writing Residency, 2016. Scholar’s Award, Office of the State Historian of New Mexico, 2008. Publications include Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment (2016); contrib., New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism (2004), Teaching North American Environmental Literature (2008), Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy (2008), Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (2011), Critical Insights: Nature and the Environment (2012); article in MELUS. ☼ 134. Kenna Neitch. Grad. student English, Texas Tech Univ. MA, Texas Tech Univ. (TTU). Institutional service (TTU): codir., Comparative Lit. Symposium, 2016–17; asst. to dir. of grad. studies, Dept. of English, 2017– . Pulla Maha-Nanda Akkaraju Scholarship, Dept. of English, TTU, 2015–16; William Bryan Gates Grad. Award in English, TTU, 2016–17; Warren Walker Award for Critical Writing, Dept. of English, TTU, 2016–17. Conference presentations: Southwestern Psychological Assn., 2014; Texas Tech Univ. Comparative Lit. Symposium, 2015, 2016, Candidate Information – 53

2017; Violent Bodies (grad. student conference, Ohio State Univ.), Oct. 2015; Popular Culture Assn. / Amer. Culture Assn., 2016; NWSA, 2016, 2017. Statement As a PhD student, teacher, scholar, and activist, I believe that the ability to research—to know the standards of credible information and have access to that information—is of paramount importance in our academic and sociopolitical communities. Having taught first-year composition, I have found that this ability is one of the most valuable tools we can give our students, whether they are nonmajors who are only with us briefly or future colleagues in the study of literature, culture, and language. I work in comparative literature and feminist theory to encourage critical engagement with voices deemed peripheral in the canon and, far too often, in the institutions of literary study. My experience has been that our students want (and our broader society needs) to encounter texts and perspectives that challenge national, racial, and gendered hierarchies. The work of the MLA, an organization that works across disciplinary and cultural borders, involves maintaining and innovating ways to transmit the skills of our field in the face of increased American anti- intellectualism and disinterest in the humanities. As a delegate, I would be committed to serving the MLA’s mission of advocating for both humanities education and workplace equity and would focus in particular on greater mentorship of and representation for graduate students, emerging scholars, and underrepresented voices. If elected, I will work to create opportunities for dialogue across the many disciplines and communities this organization brings together.

135. No candidate

VII. Western United States and Western Canada (3 contests) Alaska, California, Guam, Hawai‘i, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington; Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan

136. Richard Scott Carr. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks. PhD, Univ. of Minnesota. NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2003. Outstanding teacher award, Coll. of Liberal Arts, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008. Board member, Amer. Assn. of Australasian Literary Studies, 2006– . Review ed., Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian / New Zealand Literature, 2004– ; managing ed., Alaska Journal of Dispute Resolution, 2011–15; ed. board, Applied Dispute Resolution Journal, 2016– . Publications include contrib., Routledge Bibliography of English Studies (2008– ), A Companion to Australian Literature since 1900 (2010); articles in British Journal of Australian Studies, Antipodes, Writing Lab Newsletter, Contemporary Pacific, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Statement I share the national concern with the expansion of the contingent faculty, both term and part-time. As a department chair, I have found this concern deepening. Students gain by working with faculty members who are committed to the institution, teachers whose advice matters or whose courses taken at different stages of students’ careers can shape students’ future direction. Institutions gain by presenting an image of stability, of a place dedicated to fostering student growth. The current situation depends too heavily on the work of an undercompensated group with little opportunity for advancement and no ability to plan beyond a semester or year. Repercussions ensue as graduate students, drawn to a field with a sense of vocation, often believe themselves prepared for a working life of contingency. I believe as well that the humanities must find inspired methods of attracting students to its various fields and demonstrating to them the value of immersion in the world of ideas. The great thinkers, writers, artists, and composers hold enduring relevance and rewards for our students, but nationwide decline in such study indicates that we professors must explore with vigor new means of inviting them into the humanities. Overuse of contingent faculty members and declining undergraduate interest in the humanities—I seek fresh approaches to addressing these issues with the larger hope of altering the current trajectory.

54 – Candidate Information

137. Jorge Galindo. Assoc. prof. Spanish and Latin Amer. studies, Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas. PhD, Univ. of Kansas. Publications include El cine mexicano en la novela mexicana reciente (1967–1900) (2003); article in Chasqui: Revista de literature latinoamericana. ☼ 138. Eva Cherniavsky. Andrew R. Hilen Prof. of Amer. Lit. and Culture, Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Exec. board, Univ. of Washington (UW) chapter, AAUP, 2016– 19. Cross-disciplinary research grant (2014–16) and Soc. of Scholars fellowship (2015–16), Simpson Center for the Humanities, UW. Faculty teaching award, Dept. of English, UW, June 2013. Reviewer of postdoctoral fellowship applications, ACLS, 2009, 2010, 2013. Ch., Mary C. Turpie Prize Comm., ASA, 2011–14. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2005–07. Ed. or advisory boards: Genders, 1995–2008; Global South, 2005– ; Hemispheres, 2008– . Publications include That Pale Mother Rising: Sentimental Discourses and the Imitation of Motherhood in Nineteenth-Century America (1995), Incorporations: Race, Nation, and the Body Politics of Capital (2006), Neocitizenship: Political Culture after Democracy (2017); contrib., Discovering Difference: Contemporary Essays in American Culture (1993), The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe (1995), Keywords for American Cultural Studies (2007), American Studies: An Anthology (2009), The Encyclopedia of the Novel (2011), Theory after “Theory” (2011), American Studies as Transnational Practice: Turning toward the Transpacific (2015); articles in Journal of American Studies, Biography, Social Text, Global South, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Angelaki, Feminist Studies, Cultural Critique, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Boundary 2, Genders, Arizona Quarterly. Statement I have been an MLA member since 1989 and served previously as a delegate. In my view, two major issues bear on the future of our profession: the defunding of public higher education and threats to academic freedom posed by racist state policies (old and new). The defunding of higher education has produced a culture of austerity and a focus on intellectual property and corporate partnerships that potentially sound the death knell for the humanities (and particularly for humanities research) in the academy. Faculty members need to organize across all ranks (tenured and non-tenure-line) to oppose this race to the bottom for academic labor conditions. The MLA can and should take a leading role in this movement. State policy in the draconian form of threatened travel bans and deportation of undocumented people as well as in the more mundane form of fraught and restrictive processes for visas and work permits imperils access to the United States academy for foreign faculty members and students (particularly from majority-Muslim nations) and for undocumented students within the United States. These policies pose a direct threat to the free exchange of ideas and the idea of the global university. The MLA can and should join with other academic and civil-society organizations in opposing them. In this regard, I am deeply disappointed in the recent affirmative vote on Resolution 2017-1, designed to shut down debate about the impact of Israeli state policies that vitiate the academic freedom of Palestinian faculty members and students.

139. Margaret E. Johnson. Prof. English, Idaho State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Oregon. Board member, Idaho Humanities Council, 2014– ; board member, Idaho Center for the Book, 2016– . MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2004–06. Ed. board, Relevant Rhetoric: A New Journal of Rhetorical Studies, 2010– . Publications include coauthor, Literary Studies: A Practical Guide (2014); contrib., The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film (1998; 2nd ed., 2005), The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism (2009); articles in Genre, CEA Forum, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Rendezvous, Film-Philosophy, Popular Culture in Libraries. Candidate Information – 55

Statement I am honored to be nominated to represent the western United States and western Canada. Having lived and worked in California, Oregon, and Idaho, I am deeply committed to working on the issues relevant to the region as well as to the profession. During my last eighteen years in Idaho, I have become very aware of the variety of challenges faced by colleges and universities in the region: we have not only experienced dramatic budget cuts and decreasing enrollments but have also seen our students and their educational goals change. While these changes have at times made our work as educators more difficult, they have also encouraged us to be more creative in our programs, more committed to the importance of the humanities, and more attentive to the needs of our students. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I would actively support innovations in teaching and research, promote the value of the humanities to both internal and external audiences, and advocate for improved conditions for all faculty members doing this important work to enhance and enrich the lives of our communities. The MLA provides an excellent forum for discussing issues of importance in our discipline and for communicating these ideas to our larger society, and it would be my pleasure to represent my colleagues by serving in the Delegate Assembly. ☼ 140. Corinne Bancroft. Grad. student English, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara. MA, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Institutional service (UCSB): Comm. of Grad. Students, Dept. of English, 2014–16 (ch., 2015–16); convener, Critical Pedagogy Initiative, Dept. of English, 2016– ; Reads Advisory Comm., 2016–17, 2017–18. Chancellor’s Fellowship, UCSB, 2013; Chicano Studies Grad. Student Affiliate Award, UCSB, 2013. Conference presentations: Intl. Soc. for the Study of Narrative, 2010, 2017; Native Amer. Studies Grad. Student Symposium, Univ. of California, Davis, 2014; NCTE, 2014; MLA, 2015, 2016; Contact: The Sovereign Body and Realized Zones of Community (Amer. Cultures and Global Contexts Center, UCSB), Apr. 2016; The Humanities, the Neurosciences, and the Brain (Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, UCSB), May 2016. Publications include contrib., Digressions in European Literature: From Cervantes to Sebald (2011); articles in Style, Journal of Cognitive Semiotics. Statement Surviving whatever crisis or siege threatens the humanities necessarily involves celebrating the work literature can do, both in our research and our classrooms. As a graduate student at UCSB, I helped to convene the Critical Pedagogy Initiative, which brought professors and graduate students together to discuss the praxis of teaching at a large research university. I hope that, in addition to this commitment to pedagogy, my experience as a graduate student and my service as the chair of the Committee of Graduate Students in the Department of English will bring an important perspective to the Delegate Assembly.

141. Lauren Dembowitz. Grad. student English, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. MA, Univ. of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Institutional service (UCLA): pres., English Grad. Union, 2012–13; grad. student coordinator, Postcolonial Theory and Literary Studies Colloquium, 2012–14. Grad. research grant, UCLA, 2013, 2016; grad. travel grant, 2016, 2017. Conference presentations: Friends of English Southland Grad. Conference, UCLA, 2014; Amer. Lit. Assn., 2016. Statement I feel honored to be nominated as a graduate student representative in the MLA Delegate Assembly. If elected, I will draw from my institutional-service experience as president of the English Graduate Union at UCLA to represent the interests of graduate students and contingent faculty members in the western region. I will advocate in particular for underrepresented students whose professional aspirations and personal well- being are most threatened by the policies of the new administration, including undocumented students, LGBTQ students, women, students of color, students with disabilities, and students with dependents. As a graduate student and mother of two young children, I am keenly sensitive to the need for access to a living wage, essential benefits like affordable child care, and professional support at all stages of graduate study. 56 – Candidate Information

The MLA is an invaluable organization with an astounding reach. As a member of the assembly, I would work to increase the visibility of the MLA’s underutilized professional and community-oriented resources. I would also strive to facilitate greater engagement with the MLA’s diverse committees and governing bodies to ensure that all students and contingent faculty members are informed about and invested in shaping the organization’s future direction. I have been incredibly fortunate to pursue graduate study in a department marked by its collegial community and its excellent pedagogical training and support. My aim as an elected representative would be to help ensure that other graduate students have access to the kinds of support they need to be innovative scholars and passionate teachers.

Part V: Voting for Forum Delegates Only the forums listed below are holding delegate elections this year. Eligibility to vote in these elections is determined by voters’ primary forum affiliations, as recorded in their membership profiles. The term of office of those elected will be from 8 January 2018 through the close of the January 2021 convention. The numbers preceding the nominees’ names correspond to the numbers assigned to the nominees on the paper ballot sheet.

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies 20th- and 21st-Century French Medieval Francophone Renaissance and Early Modern Galician Romantic and 19th-Century 20th- and 21st-Century German to 1700 Arthurian 19th- and Early-20th-Century German European Regions Hungarian Global Arab and Arab American Medieval and Renaissance Italian Global Hispanophone Japanese since 1900 Mediterranean 20th- and 21st-Century Latin American Genre Studies Travel Writing Occitan Scottish Languages, Literatures, and Cultures African since 1990 Slavic and East European 19th-Century American 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish and Iberian Late-19th- and Early-20th-Century American Language Studies and Linguistics African American Language and Society Asian American Southern United States Media Studies Screen Arts and Culture Arabic Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies West Asian History and Theory of Rhetoric Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literacy Studies Old English Transdisciplinary Connections Middle English Age Studies 16th-Century English Cognitive and Affect Studies Restoration and Early-18th-Century English Disability Studies Victorian and Early-20th-Century English Marxism, Literature, and Society 20th- and 21st-Century English and Anglophone Candidate Information – 57

Medical Humanities and Health Sciences Sexuality Studies Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature Translation Studies

If you have established a primary affiliation with any of the forums listed above, find the relevant contest(s) below and vote for one nominee.

CLCS Medieval

600. Nadia R. Altschul. Senior lecturer Hispanic studies, Univ. of Glasgow. PhD, Yale Univ. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Johns Hopkins Univ., 2003–09. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Medieval Iberian, 2014–Jan. 2019. Managing ed., Hispanic issue, MLN, 2007–16; ed. board, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 2009–14; cofounder and exec. ed., Digital Philology, 2012– ; advisory board, Medievally Speaking. Publications include La literatura, el autor y la crítica textual (2005), Geographies of Philological Knowledge: Postcoloniality and the Transatlantic National Epic (2012); coed., Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of “the Middle Ages” outside Europe (2009); contrib., Metaphilology: Histories and Languages of Philology (2009), Philology and Its Histories (2010), Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (2014), Manuel de la philologie de l’édition (2015), The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016); articles in Studies in Medievalism, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Digital Philology, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, History Compass, Revista de poética medieval, La corónica, Hispanic Issues Online, Textual Cultures, Neophilologus. Statement Having recently moved to the United Kingdom after fifteen years in United States academia, I will bring to the assembly a comparative knowledge of trends in the neoliberalization of universities that pressure United States institutions yet are further under way in the United Kingdom. After spending many years in non-tenure-track positions, I am aware of some of the burdens faced by the new generation of academics and interested in revisiting the expense of attending the MLA convention, which is especially costly considering the median income of our constituency. As a scholar of the history and effects of the idea of “the medieval” in the world, and at a time that many outside the humanities and outside academia have called “neofeudal” and “a new middle ages,” I will also advocate for the ways in which our profession and subject matter have always been enmeshed in policy making and broader social constructions across the world.

601. Nhora Lucia Serrano. Visiting asst. prof. comparative lit., Hamilton Coll. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Smithsonian Natl. Postal Museum scholarship, spring 2014; Teagle Foundation grant, 2017. Most Valuable Prof., Coll. of Liberal Arts, California State Univ., Long Beach, 2011–12. Advisory Board, ACLA, 1999–2001; Council, Medieval Acad. of America, 2002–03; founding member and treasurer, Comics Studies Soc., 2014– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., GS Comics and Graphic Narratives, 2013–Jan. 2018. Publications include coed., Curious Collectors, Collected Curiosities: An Interdisciplinary Study (2010); contrib., Men and Masculinities: A Social, Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia (2003), The Age of Milton: An Encyclopedia of Major 17th-Century British and American Authors (2004), Encyclopedia of Hispanic American Literature (2008), Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas (2014), Oxford Bibliographies Online (2015), Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games (2017), Gendering XXI: Latinas, caribeñas y sus otros modos de ser (2017), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Orhan Pamuk (2017); articles in X-Tra Contemporary Art Quarterly, Museological Review, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, Genre.

58 – Candidate Information

Statement As a long-standing member of the MLA and a comparative medievalist and visual studies scholar by training, I have been recently involved with the forum on comics and graphic narratives. My biggest concern is that medieval studies, as a humanities discipline and an interdisciplinary field, continues to be at the table of the sociopolitical discussions and debates confronting the MLA. Ranging widely across periods and geographies, this rich and dynamic medieval period is not only a powerful resource for creative expression and scholarly work in fields such as art, literature, and digital media today; it can also be a crucial cultural lens that the global modern world requires in order to change and progress. If elected to the Delegate Assembly as the representative for CLCS Medieval, I would listen carefully, advocate on behalf of those less empowered, and push continuously for intellectual diversity. It would be my pleasure to ensure that the MLA assembly continues to address the academic job market, especially for non-tenure-track positions; multimodal/distance education; the future of area-specific programs; equitable hiring practices; support for the digital humanities; and trends in online publishing. I am excited by the prospect of serving as a member of the Delegate Assembly, and I hope to solicit feedback from, and represent, members working in the field of medieval comparative literary and cultural studies. Ultimately, I hope to contribute to the MLA’s ongoing efforts to highlight the importance of the humanities in cultivating politically informed citizens.

CLCS Renaissance and Early Modern

602. Lynn Enterline. Nancy Perot Mulford Prof. of English, Vanderbilt Univ. PhD, Cornell Univ. Previous appointment: Yale Univ., 1988–97. Rhodes Scholarship, Somerville Coll., Oxford Univ., 1978–81; Woodrow Wilson Foundation dissertation grant, 1986–87; Natl. Grad. Fellowship, 1987–88; fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt Univ., 2002–03; visiting research fellow, Clare Hall, Cambridge Univ., spring 2004; Folger Shakespeare Library (FSL) fellowship, fall 2004; ACLS senior scholar research grant, 2003–04; FSL grant, 2012. Outstanding Grad. Prof. in Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt Univ., 2002–03; life member, Clare Hall, Cambridge Univ., 2005– . District selection comm., Rhodes Scholarships, 1985–87, 1992–98, 2005–08, 2010– ; District 6 sec., Rhodes Trust, 2013– ; Long-Term Fellowship Comm., FSL, 2017. Board member, Amer. Assn. of Rhodes Scholars, 1982–98; nominating comm. (1999–2000) and program comm. (2010–11), Shakespeare Assn. of America. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Comparative Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Lit., 1996–2000; PMLA Advisory Comm., 1999–2002; James Russell Lowell Prize Selection Comm., 2000–01; Delegate Assembly, 2000–02; Publications Comm., 2002–05; forum exec. comm., CLCS Renaissance and Early Modern, 2016–Jan. 2021. Ed. board, Memoria di Shakespeare. Publications include The Tears of Narcissus: Melancholia and Masculinity in Early Modern Writing (1995), The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (2000), Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion (2012); contrib., Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (1994), Sensible Flesh: On Touch in Early Modern Culture (2003), Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide (2003), From Performance to Print in Shakespeare’s England (2006), Early Modern English Poetry: A Critical Companion (2007), Othello: The State of Play (2014), The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. 2 (2015), Shakespeare in Our Time: A Shakespeare Association of America Collection (2016), The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (2016), The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies (2017); articles in Critical Quarterly, Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Studies, Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, Yale Journal of Criticism. Statement After thirty years of membership in the MLA, I find I have three major concerns: developing best practices for mentoring those just entering our profession; promoting advanced comparative language studies among American undergraduates; and finding ways to demonstrate how important the study of earlier literary traditions and periods remains for thinking through issues of contemporary social and cultural concern.

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603. Ayesha Ramachandran. Asst. prof. comparative lit., Yale Univ. PhD, Yale Univ. John Carter Brown Library fellowship, 2011–12; Mellon New Directions Fellowship, 2016–19. Leab Exhibition Award (for outstanding exhibition brochure), Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Assn. of Coll. and Research Libraries, 2008; Isabel MacCaffrey Award (for best essay in Spenser studies), Intl. Spenser Soc., 2010; Founder’s Prize (publication subvention award), Sixteenth Century Soc. and Conference, 2015; cowinner, Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies (for The Worldmakers), MLA, 2015; John T. Shawcross Award (for distinguished chapter on Milton in The Worldmakers), Milton Soc. of America, 2016. Publications include The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe (2015); guest coed., Spenser Studies (2016); contrib., Celebrating Mutabilitie: Essays on Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos (2010), Comparative Early Modernities: 1100–1800 (2012), Edmund Spenser in Context (2016); articles in Spenser Studies, MLN, Theatre Research International, Forum Italicum, Spenser Review, Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies. Statement As a scholar of literary and intellectual histories across nations, languages, and cultures, I have a deep commitment to intellectual boundary-crossing and thinking at both the local and global levels. My path through different countries and academic settings, including public and private institutions, has paralleled my scholarly interest in diversity, expansiveness, and engagement across disciplinary frontiers—an approach I hope to bring to my work in the MLA. As a scholar of humanism, it seems clear to me that the defense of our scholarly and pedagogical mission in the public and political spheres is paramount, as is the defense of our ever-vulnerable labor force. I see the MLA as a powerful and crucial advocate for the values and intellectual rigor that define the humanities and a liberal arts education. I am committed to exploring new ways to expand the MLA’s role in public and policy debates, to promote sustainable changes to the academic labor structure, and to emphasize the continuing importance of humanistic and historical understanding.

CLCS Romantic and 19th-Century

604. Lily Gurton-Wachter. Asst. prof. English, Smith Coll. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Charles Bernheimer Prize (for best dissertation), ACLA, 2011. Publications include Watchwords: Romanticism and the Poetics of Attention (2016); articles in Studies in Romanticism, European Romantic Review. Statement Thank you for considering me as a candidate for the Delegate Assembly. In my years as a graduate student and assistant professor, I have had the opportunity to teach at both large public universities and small liberal arts colleges across the United States in English and comparative literature departments, from which I have gained a sense of our shared commitments and concerns. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I hope to help the MLA insist on the importance and relevance of the humanities to public life and to advocate for marginalized members of our own community.

605. Susan Zieger. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of California, Riverside. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Mellon fellowship, 1995–96; Huntington Library fellowship, 2005; ACLS fellowship, 2006–07; NEH summer seminar fellowship, 2011. Panelist, ACLS, 2014, 2015, 2016. Exec. sec., North Amer. Victorian Studies Assn. (NAVSA), 2015–20. Ed. board, Journal of Victorian Culture, 2016–20. Publications include Inventing the Addict: Drugs, Race, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century British and American Literature (2008); contrib., Reading Sex and the City (2004), A Companion to Sensation Fiction (2011), George du Maurier: Illustrator, Critic, Author. Beyond Svengali (2016; articles in Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature, Journal of Victorian Culture, Victorian Studies, Cabinet, 60 – Candidate Information

Modernism/Modernity, Nineteenth-Century Studies, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, American Literature, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, PMLA, Genre. Statement I received my PhD in English from the University of California, Berkeley, with Cathy Gallagher, and an MSc in the history of science, medicine, and technology from Imperial College, United Kingdom, with Roy Porter. I have published on the politics of consumption, gender, sexuality, and race in literature and culture; my first book was about addiction, and my second, forthcoming in 2018, is on print media, affect, and consumerism. My work puts literary form and genre into dialogue with historical media studies and the history of psychology. My institutional interests include graduate student mentorship, having recently served my department as placement director and director of graduate studies. I am on the faculty of the Dickens Universe and serve as executive secretary of NAVSA and on the editorial board of the Journal of Victorian Culture. If elected, I would encourage exploration of the recent return to formal literary issues; the new interest in historical media studies and its intersection with digital technologies; the Anthropocene, animal studies, and other environmentalist concerns; and the broadening of Romantic and nineteenth-century studies to account for global and diasporic cultural materials. In addition to supporting research, I would seek to foster discussions of pedagogy and to support graduate students seeking academic and nonacademic careers. Having said all of this, I am also a good listener. If elected, I would reach out to learn your concerns, so that I may better represent them. Thanks for your consideration!

CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century

606. Michael Allan. Assoc. prof. comparative lit., Univ. of Oregon. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley (UC, Berkeley). Dissertation fellow, Townsend Center for the Humanities, UC, Berkeley, 2006–07; fellow, Soc. of Fellows in the Humanities, Columbia Univ., 2008–09; EUME (Europe in the Middle East–The Middle East in Europe) fellow, Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin), 2011–12; Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, 2017–18. A. Owen Aldridge Prize (for paper by a grad. student), ACLA, 2006; David and Nancy Petrone Faculty Scholar, Univ. of Oregon, 2016–19. Site dir. (Tangier, Morocco), Critical Lang. Scholarship Program, Amer. Councils for Intl. Educ., summer 2011, summer 2012; consultant, NEH, summer 2015. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Arabic, 2016–Jan. 2021. Assoc. ed. and book review ed., Comparative Literature, 2009– ; exec. ed. and ed. board, Syndicate Literature, winter 2016– . Ed. boards: Philological Encounters, spring 2012– ; Journal of World Literature, fall 2014– . Publications include In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (2016); guest ed., Comparative Literature (2013); guest coed., Philological Encounters (2017); contrib., Commitment and Beyond: Reflections on/of the Political in Arabic Literature since the 1940s (2015), What Makes a Man? Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin (2015); articles in Modernism/Modernity, Early Popular Visual Culture, Comparative Literature Studies, Philological Encounters, Journal of Arabic Literature, International Journal of Middle East Studies. Statement I am grateful for the nomination to the Delegate Assembly as a delegate for the forum CLCS 20th- and 21st-Century. Comparative literature has historically been understood to encompass a classical humanistic canon structured around literary traditions in Greek, Latin, French, English, Italian and German. I am committed to a vision of our discipline—and of the humanities more generally—that embraces and also extends this classical model to take seriously the rigorous linguistic, historical and cultural study of non- Western literatures, texts and traditions. I appreciate that the MLA has increasingly reflected this expanded scope with the addition of new committees and initiatives, and I would be eager to advocate for continued resources to serve the concerns we share as scholars working across various languages and media. As our fields develop in new directions, I would hope to serve an MLA that is both responsive to and nurturing of critical developments in the humanities.

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607. William J. Spurlin. Prof. English, Brunel Univ. London. PhD, Columbia Univ. NEH grant, summer 1996; Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom) fellowship, 2004; fellowship (2009) and principal fellowship (2016), Higher Educ. Acad. (United Kingdom). Visiting appointments: Univ. of Cape Town, 1998; Loyola Univ., Chicago, 2017. Peer Review Coll., Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2007–16. Assembly on Gay and Lesbian Academic Issues Awareness (coch., 1993–97), Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Issues in Academic Studies Advisory Comm. (2001–2003 [coch.], 2006–08), and Commission on Lit. (2003–05), NCTE; Exec. Comm. (2010– ) and Comm. on Comparative Gender Studies (ch., 2010–16), ICLA. Article ed., Postcolonial Text, 2013– . Publications include Imperialism within the Margins: Queer Representation and the Politics of Culture in Southern Africa (2006), Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009); coed., The New Criticism and Contemporary Literary Theory: Connections and Continuities (1995), Reclaiming the Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest (1996), Comparatively Queer: Interrogating Identities across Time and Cultures (2010), Écritures du corps: Nouvelles perspectives (2013); guest ed., Comparative Literature Studies (2014); contrib., Reconceptualizing American Literary/Cultural Studies: Rhetoric, History, and Politics in the Humanities (1996), Coming Out of Feminism? (1998), Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture, and the Performance of Grief (1999), James Baldwin Now (1999), De- centring Sexualities: Politics and Representations beyond the Metropolis (2000), Who’s Who in Gay and Lesbian History (2001), Postcolonial, Queer: Theoretical Intersections (2001), Qu’est-ce qu’un espace littéraire? (2006), Queer: Écritures de la différence?, vol. 1 (2008), Gendering Border Studies (2010), A Companion to Translation Studies (2014), The Future of Postcolonial Studies (2015), Queer in Translation (2017); articles in College English, Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap, Middle- Atlantic Writers Association Review, Études anglaises, Feminist Review, African Studies Review, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Research in African Literatures. Statement I support strongly the MLA’s commitment to research and teaching excellence in modern languages and literatures. As a trained comparatist working at the nexus of postcolonial studies, 20th- and 21st-century literatures, and queer studies, my work encompasses the analysis of a broad range of literary/cultural texts from the fin de siècle through the contemporary, including francophone texts, texts written in German, and texts from southern and north Africa and the wider African diaspora. I will advocate strongly for multilingual and multimodal literacies and for informed dialogue across cultures. Reading texts and, indeed, the world relationally, bringing together ideas in different languages, and queering translation as a disruptive space for the homogenization of linguistic differences are at the heart of comparative work. I have served as a twice- elected chair of the ICLA Committee on Comparative Gender Studies; during my tenure, the committee became a permanent committee of the ICLA and a major presence at both the ICLA and ACLA meetings, with worldwide membership for advancing the study of comparative gender and sexuality studies. We supported graduate students and early-career academics producing innovative scholarship by encouraging them to give papers in our seminars and publishing their work. I will advocate for increased financial support for comparative literature programs, for new approaches to what it means to compare, and for the academic and public importance of comparative literature study, which enables us to see the world through the positions of others and against rising tides of nationalism and heightened xenophobia.

CLCS Arthurian

608. Jean Blacker. Prof. emerita French, Kenyon Coll. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. NEH summer stipend, 2007; Pathways to Learning Collegium grant (for pedagogical research project), Great Lakes Coll. Assn. (GLCA) / Teagle Foundation, 2009. James Randall Leader Essay Prize (for best Arthurian essay), Intl. Arthurian Soc.–North Amer. Branch, 1997. Panelist, NEH, 2011, 2017; referee, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Campus facilitator (Kenyon Coll.), New Directions Initiative, GLCA / Mellon Foundation, 2009–11. Sec.-treasurer, Intl. Arthurian Soc.–North Amer. Branch, 2000–03. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on 62 – Candidate Information

Arthurian Lit., 1994–98. Ed. in chief (1998–2006) and contributing bibliographer (1986–2000), Encomia: Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Courtly Literature Society. Ed. boards: Romance Quarterly, 1999– ; Arthuriana, 2005– . Publications include The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum (1994); coauthor, Wace: A Critical Bibliography (2008); ed. and trans., Anglo-Norman Verse Prophecies of Merlin (2005); coed. and cotrans., Wace, the Hagiographical Works: The Conception Nostre Dame and the Lives of St Margaret and St Nicholas (2013); contrib., The Arthurian Tradition: Essays in Convergence (1988), Anglo-Norman Anniversary Essays (1993), The Formation of Culture in Medieval Britain: Celtic, Latin, and Norman Influences on English Music, Literature, History, and Art (1995), Violence against Women in Medieval Texts (1998), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), and others; articles in Arthuriana, Romance Quarterly, Annales de Normandie, Text: An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies. Statement In recent years, the MLA has broadened its focus as a professional organization primarily serving the university-level professoriat to become a key advocate for the humanities on the national stage. The MLA has recognized its responsibility to inform the membership of developments that affect the education and literary and artistic expression of students of all ages, from the primary level through adults returning to complete secondary or higher education. On issues of inclusion, diversity, and workplace equity, the MLA provides invaluable leadership in the face of ever-changing financial and political challenges to humanities- based education. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I would be honored to address issues important to the forum and to serve the MLA and academic communities at large through advocacy in several areas: expanding teaching modes to reach all students, regardless of learning differences; mentoring of junior and contingent faculty members; achieving diversity at all levels; and reversing, if not eliminating, the growing trend toward the substantial reduction in institutional library access to electronic and book resources for retired faculty members, a circumstance that segregates a significant portion of the academic community based solely on age. As part of its ongoing campaigns to improve the quality of the academic experience, the MLA must work both to remedy this inequity, which seriously restricts retired faculty members’ active engagement in research, and to facilitate, for example, the creation of venues where retired faculty members can apply their lifelong advising skills to mentoring programs and engage with alternative learning communities.

609. Lisa Graham Robeson. Prof. English, Ohio Northern Univ. PhD, Catholic Univ. of America. Participant, Summer Inst. on the Integration of Faith and the Intellectual Life, Collegium, 1994; participant, NEH summer inst., 1997. Publications include contrib., Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes (2005), The Arthurian Way of Death: The English Tradition (2009), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology (2010), Arthurian Literature, vol. 32 (2015); articles in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, Arthuriana, Oral Tradition, Medieval Feminist Newsletter. Statement Thank you for considering my candidacy for the Delegate Assembly. I believe that, as scholars and teachers of a legend that continues to live 1,400 years after its birth, Arthurian scholars have a unique opportunity to demonstrate to those in the profession—but perhaps more important, to those outside the profession—that the humanities are relevant. My focus as the representative of CLCS Arthurian would be on demonstrating to our professional colleagues the vitality of Arthurian scholarship today and promoting both the innovative and the traditional scholarly forms we are engaged in (e.g., digital humanities, medievalism, interdisciplinary work). I have published on and advocated for innovative teaching strategies that draw on similar strategies (film, popular culture, high-impact project-based learning) and that involve interdisciplinary teaching (I have cooperated with a computer scientist on bringing Arthurian stories to life) to connect Arthurian legend with the larger world. As someone who has evenly divided her professional life among teaching, scholarship, and administration, I have also come to believe that ensuring the future of Candidate Information – 63

Arthurian studies requires a focus on work that extends the critical insight of scholars to a general-education audience within our universities and to popular audiences outside the academy. I believe that we need to articulate the way in which our teaching and scholarship in Arthurian legend enrich the human experience. The continued popularity of the legend and the support of a major organization such as the MLA will enable us to do so.

CLCS European Regions

610. Thomas Oliver Beebee. Edwin Erle Sparks Prof. of Comparative Lit. and German, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Univ. of Michigan. NEH travel grant, 1990; Folger Inst. seminar and research grant, 1991; Fulbright fellowship, 1993. Evaluation comm., NEH, 1994–98; panelist, ACLS, 2010. Advisory board, ACLA, 2004–07. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Comparative Studies in 20th-Century Lit., 2009– Jan. 2014; forum exec. comm., CLCS European Regions, 2016–Jan. 2021. Ed. in chief, Comparative Literature Studies, 2001– ; series ed., Literatures as World Literature, Bloomsbury Press, 2014– . Publications include Clarissa on the Continent: Translation and Seduction (1990), The Ideology of Genre: A Comparative Study of Generic Instability (1994), Epistolary Fiction in Europe, 1500–1850 (1999), Millennial Literatures of the Americas, 1492–2002 (2008), Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction (2008), Citation and Precedent: Conjunctions and Disjunctions of German Law and Literature (2011), Transmesis: Inside Translation’s Black Box (2012); ed., German Literature as World Literature (2014); trans., Moacyr Scliar, Kafka’s Leopards (2011); articles in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Clio, Comparatist, Comparative Literature, German Quarterly, Law and Literature, Monatshefte, Neohelicon, Prooftexts, Revue de littérature comparée, SubStance, Translation Studies. Statement I have been an MLA member for more than thirty years, and for about half that time I have served my departments at Penn State (German and comparative literature) in preparing students for a difficult job market. If elected, I will devote my energies to the two core missions of the MLA: the facilitation and recognition (as in MLA book prizes, etc.) of language and literature research and teaching and the defense and promotion of the language and literature profession in the university and in the larger society. Nearly every week of the year sees another effort on the part of a central higher-education administration to eliminate or severely downgrade a language or literature unit, while a more insidious, acidic drip-drip of economic pressure erodes tenure, other forms of job security, and compensation. Trump’s proposal to eliminate the NEH is the last straw. The MLA’s most valuable ongoing work lies in its Academic Workforce Advocacy Kit, Academic Workforce Data Center, and similar initiatives and in its recommendations on minimum compensation and starting salaries. I look forward to becoming part of a team that maintains and develops these resources, invents other ways to assist graduate students and those entering the job market, and reaches out to other humanities organizations and initiatives so as to weave networks of mutual support.

611. Sara Kippur. Charles A. Dana Research Assoc. Prof. of Lang. and Culture Studies, Trinity Coll., CT. PhD, Harvard Univ. Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities, Harvard Univ., 2008–09; Landes Grant, Reed Foundation, 2013–14. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., CLCS European Regions, 2017–Jan. 2022. Publications include Writing It Twice: Self-Translation and the Making of a World Literature in French (2015); coed., Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture, and Politics Today (2016); guest coed., Journal of Romance Studies (2006); contrib., Mémoires occupées: Fictions françaises et Seconde Guerre mondiale (2013); articles in Yale French Studies, L’Esprit Créateur, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies. Statement My research and teaching aim to situate the place and study of French literature in a wider context, both within Europe and more broadly transnationally. I currently serve as a member of the CLCS European 64 – Candidate Information

Regions executive committee and, as a delegate, I would be committed to thinking through the shifting place of Europe and European studies in the academy. My experience teaching in a liberal arts college has made me increasingly attentive to the ways in which language departments need to think creatively to ensure that their scholarly mission can maintain relevance with undergraduate students. As language departments across the country are shrinking and morphing into new configurations, it is imperative for us as scholars and teachers to articulate points of contact across our various regions and languages. I would look forward to taking up these and other issues with the members of the Delegate Assembly, if elected.

CLCS Global Arab and Arab American

612. Hoda El Shakry. Asst. prof. comparative lit., Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. FLAS fellowship, 2007; short-term research grant, Amer. Inst. for Maghrib Studies, 2009; faculty fellow, Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York Univ., 2012–13; resident scholar, Inst. for the Arts and Humanities, Penn State Univ., fall 2015. ACLA, Middle East Studies Assn. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Arabic, 2014–Jan. 2019. Publications include contrib., Arabic Literature in the Classroom: Teaching Methods, Theories, Themes, and Texts (2017); translations in Souffles-Anfas: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics (2016); articles in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Journal of Arabic Literature, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. Statement The recent formation of the Global Arab and Arab American forum was part of a broader initiative, led by the executive committee of the Division on Arabic Literature and Culture, to increase representation of the diverse populations, cultures, and languages that compose the Arab world and its diaspora. It also addresses an institutional and disciplinary lacuna within the broader study of Arab/ic literatures, in which nonarabophone cultural production of the region is undertheorized. As a comparatist who works on both arabophone and francophone literature, criticism, and visual culture from North Africa, this is a reality I am all too familiar with. During my tenure on the LLC Arabic executive committee, I have organized panels that reflect the polyvalent and polylingual cultures of the Middle East and North Africa and their diasporic communities. In the midst of a fraught political climate in which Muslims, Arabs, Arab Americans, and (im)migrants are targets of governmental and populist discrimination, fostering critical awareness of these populations is of the utmost importance. Though we have begun to address the underrepresentation of cultural production from these communities across scholarly, pedagogical, and institutional contexts, there remains much work to be done. In addition to diversifying the bodies that represent the study of literature outside of European or hemispheric contexts, it is also imperative that we deprovincialize these less- commonly-taught languages within the MLA. This entails thinking beyond questions of inclusivity and critically reframing these institutional structures outside of the ubiquitous world-systems-theory language of center and periphery.

613. Karim Mattar. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder. DPhil, Univ. of Oxford. Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom) doctoral fellowship, 2010–12. ACLA, Postcolonial Studies Assn., Middle East Studies Assn., Soc. for Novel Studies. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., CLCS Global Arab and Arab Amer., 2016–Jan. 2021. Ed. board, English Language Notes, 2015– . Publications include guest ed., English Language Notes (2014); guest coed., Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2014); articles in Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World Review, Translation and Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Studies Association Newsletter.

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Statement As representative for CLCS Global Arab and Arab American in the Delegate Assembly, I believe it would be my responsibility to represent the interests of the forum as fully and accurately as possible. As such, I intend to consult with the forum’s executive committee on all matters brought to ballot in the Delegate Assembly and to elicit feedback and, if necessary, votes from the membership at large on matters of particular interest or sensitivity to the forum. Transparency and communication are necessary for our investment in MLA governance, which is increasingly important given the conditions of institutional austerity and corporatization, shrinking job markets, declining enrollments, and contingency which the humanities now face. By adhering to these principles during my tenure as a member of the Delegate Assembly, I hope to further promote such investment among the forum’s members.

CLCS Global Hispanophone

614. Adolfo Campoy-Cubillo. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Oakland Univ. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Fulbright scholarship, 1996–98; Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Endowment for Islamic Undertanding grant, Oakland Univ., 2015, 2017. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Sephardic, 2013–Jan. 2018; forum exec. comm., CLCS Global Hispanophone, 2015–Jan. 2018. Publications include Memories of the Maghreb: Transnational Identities in Spanish Cultural Production (2012); ed., Ramón J. Sender, Imán (2014); coed. and cotrans., José Díaz-Fernández, The Blockhouse (2016); contrib., Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000–2010): Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos (2011), Castilla bajo mirada extraña (2016); articles in Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, European Judaism, Hispanic Journal, Letras hispanas, Romance Notes. Statement As a member of CLCS Global Hispanophone, I am constantly reminded of the need to continue giving voice to minorities in our scholarly work, our curricula, and our teaching practices. My work in postcolonial studies has made me keenly aware that distorted representation is the cornerstone of marginalization. At present, our work as academics is as vital as ever to counter the flood of negative characterizations of minority communities at home and abroad. The higher education market is changing rapidly, and this requires us to be ready not only to embrace new challenges but also to pursue new opportunities. Literary and cultural studies should provide our students with a solid critique of economic and political realities that result in oppression. They should also empower our students to excel in today’s competitive job market with the conviction that cross-cultural understanding is not a skill of choice but rather a professional requirement for those who seek to find their place in our global economy. Humanistic wisdom should go hand in hand with curricula that promote the development of technical skills in the languages we teach.

615. N. Michelle Murray. Asst. prof. Spanish, Vanderbilt Univ. PhD, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York. Faculty fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, Vanderbilt Univ., 2016–17. Ed. board, Afro-Hispanic Review. Publications include contrib., Theorising the Ibero-American Atlantic (2013), Espectros: Ghostly Hauntings in Contemporary Transhispanic Narratives (2016), Gender in Spanish Urban Spaces: Literary and Visual Narratives of the New Millennium (2017); articles in Letras femeninas, Research in African Literatures, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas. Statement I am deeply honored to be nominated as the Global Hispanophone representative to the Delegate Assembly. My research and teaching focus primarily on contemporary Spanish literature and film and the related fields of gender studies and migration studies. My work is informed by my personal experiences as a black woman and a first-generation American citizen. As a delegate representing CLCS Global Hispanophone, a field devoted to the study of language and culture across diverse global regions and 66 – Candidate Information

traditions, I will support cutting-edge research that takes into account diverse perspectives and seeks insights beyond established disciplinary borders. In addition to cultivating diversity as a tool of cultural analysis and organizational enrichment, I will embrace the MLA’s call for advocacy by advancing policies that advance women faculty members, faculty members of color, and LGBTQI faculty members. To me, the clear entanglements of humanistic inquiry and equity in our disciplines reflect the important notion that the gate to justice is study. As humanists, we must champion not only scholarship that invites us to question and reformulate how we interpret the world but also practices that create more equitable, inclusive, and just environments, including our own workplaces. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I look forward to dialoguing across the disciplines and working to build academic communities that further these principles.

CLCS Mediterranean

616. Hassan Melehy. Prof. French, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. PhD, Univ. of Minnesota. Previous appointments: Univ. of Connecticut, 1998–2004; Univ. of Vermont, 1996–98; Univ. of New Mexico, 1995–96; Vanderbilt Univ., 1994–95; Miami Univ., Oxford, 1993–94. ACLS travel grant, 1996; NEH summer seminar fellowship, 1997; New York Public Library short- term fellowship, 2013. MLA activities: Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Lit. Selection Comm., 2014–17. Ed. board, Romance Notes, 2004– . Publications include Writing Cogito: Montaigne, Descartes, and the Institution of the Modern Subject (1997), The Poetics of Literary Transfer in Early Modern France and England (2010), Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory (2016), A Modest Apocalypse (poems, 2017); coed., French Connections in the English Renaissance (2013); trans., Jacques Rancière, The Names of History: On the Poetics of Knowledge (1994), François Dosse, Empire of Meaning: The Humanization of the Social Sciences (1999), Pierre-André Taguieff, The Force of Prejudice: On Racism and Its Doubles (2001); contrib., The Science Fiction Film Reader (2004), Jacques Rancière: Key Concepts (2010), Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory (2016), A History of Modern French Literature (2017), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature (2017); articles in Studies in American Fiction, American Literature, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance, L’Esprit Créateur, Symplokē, Studies in Philology, Comparative Literature Studies, Film Criticism, French Forum, Neophilologus, Postmodern Culture, kultuRRevolution: Zeitschrift für angewandte Diskurstheorie, Montaigne Studies. Statement Almost every current MLA member is at least somewhat aware of the urgent issues of the moment. Rather than stating the concern for them that anyone running for MLA office should have, I’ll offer my perception of the need for the organization to extend the efforts that members, delegates, and officers have made to respond to the circumstances of all those who live and work as literary scholars. As a member for more than twenty-five years, I’ve seen the organization shift from being mainly a set of forums for scholars secure in their careers to a network that takes account of the insecure positions of most of its membership and potential membership. In the framework of the former model, it may be fairly easy (though incorrect) to say that the focus of our professional association is primarily scholarship and that political questions are extraneous. However, when current working conditions require reflection on the very possibility of scholarly expression, discussions in the MLA can’t avoid the question of academic freedom and hence the broader one of free expression. Given the international scope of most literary scholarship and the corollary of international exchange, the political ramifications of these questions should be at the center of MLA attention. If I’m elected to the Delegate Assembly, this idea will guide the way I carry out my duties.

617. Zahi A. Zalloua. Prof. French and interdisciplinary studies, Whitman Coll. PhD, Princeton Univ. NEH summer seminar fellowship, 2008; Inst. for the History of Philosophy summer workshop fellowship, 2010. Rutledge Prize (for grad. student paper), Southern Comparative Lit. Assn., 1999; Grad. Student Essay Award, Women in French, 2001. Ed., Comparatist, 2012– . Candidate Information – 67

Publications include Montaigne and the Ethics of Skepticism (2005), Reading Unruly: Interpretation and Its Ethical Demands (2014), Continental Philosophy and the Palestinian Question: Beyond the Jew and the Greek (2017); ed., Montaigne after Theory, Theory after Montaigne (2009); coed., Esprit généreux, esprit pantagruélicque: Essays by His Students in Honor of François Rigolot (2008), Torture: Power, Democracy, and the Human Body (2011), Contagion: Health, Terror, Sovereignty (2012), Spectacle (2016); guest ed., L’Esprit Créateur (2006), American Book Review (2009), SubStance (2009), Symplokē (2011); guest coed., Dalhousie French Studies (2007); contrib., Terror, Theory, and the Humanities (2012), Capital at the Brink: Overcoming the Destructive Legacies of Neoliberalism (2014), Criticism after Critique: Aesthetics, Literature, and the Political (2014), The New Public Intellectual: Politics, Theory, and the Public Sphere (2016), Dead Theory: Derrida, Death, and the Afterlife of Theory (2016); articles in Symplokē, Montaigne Studies, Journal of Narrative Theory, Philological Quarterly, Women in French Studies, Intertexts. Statement In my research and teaching, I am committed to exploring ways of combating the ever-increasing commodification of knowledge in the university. What we do in the classroom is being more and more influenced by a neoliberal set of values. How do we respond to these market forces? What does it mean to be critical today? It often means resisting the ideological ways problems are thematized or formulated and the solutions they suggest. The university must remain a space for intellectual contestations, an irritant to the status quo. It must continue to foster a climate of imaginative thinking. My formative training in literary studies and my interdisciplinary work in gender studies and race and ethnicity studies have helped me cultivate an eye for ideology and a skeptical ethos about the ways one talks about difference, belonging, community, and values. I believe that such a critical perspective on these matters is required more than ever in higher education.

GS Travel Writing

618. Lauren Coats. Assoc. prof. English, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge. PhD, Duke Univ. Dir., Digital Scholarship Lab, Louisiana State Univ. Libraries, 2015– . Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) fellowship (Lehigh Univ.), 2007–08; Mellon Foundation grant, 2011, 2013. Grad. Teaching Award, Dept. of English, Louisiana State Univ., 2016. Grant reviewer, Natl. Historical Publications and Records Commission, 2015. Assoc. dean, Postdoctoral Fellows Program, CLIR, 2015– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., GS Travel Writing, 2015–Jan. 2020. Founding ed., Archive Journal, 2010– ; ed. board, Anvil Academic, 2013–15. Publications include ed., Ameri[c]an Atlas (digital scholarly edition, 2010); contrib., A Companion to the Regional Literatures of America (2003), Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (Norton, 2010), The Process of Discovery: The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Future of the Academy (2015), Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments (2016); articles in J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, PMLA. Statement I teach and study travel literature for how it shows the movements of and encounters among bodies, ideas, and texts. The aesthetics and politics of mobility mirror some of the tensions in our profession and the academy at this moment. I am interested in joining the MLA’s work on a range of issues that pose problems as well as possibilities. These include exploring avenues and forms for scholarship, publication, and scholarly communication; expanding careers available to graduates inside and outside the academy; addressing the status of and continued reliance on adjuncts; sustaining vulnerable faculty members and students; supporting pedagogical initiatives driven by faculty members; and advocating for robust academic freedom. I am honored to be considered for a position in the Delegate Assembly representing the travel literature forum and am eager to work with colleagues to support the work of humanists and the value of the humanities. Such advocacy is central to the MLA’s mission, and I am interested in how the MLA—in 68 – Candidate Information

concert with other humanities professional organizations—can build on its ongoing advocacy within as well as outside the academy.

619. David Farley. Assoc. prof. English, St. John’s Univ., Jamaica. PhD, Univ. of Tulsa. Faculty Recognition Award, St. John’s Coll., 2010–11. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., GS Travel Writing, 2014–Jan. 2019. Publications include Modernist Travel Writing: Intellectuals Abroad (2010); contrib., Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Travel Writing (2015), The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing (2015); articles in Paideuma, Yeats Eliot Review, Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society. Statement I am particularly interested in the political aspect of motion and mobility and would, as the delegate for GS Travel Writing, be an advocate for all MLA initiatives that seek to understand these politics and foster this mobility. Whether it would be promoting awareness of the impact of the logistics of the national convention on the disability community; assuring that adjunct and contingent faculty members, who more and more fuel our discipline, have better control over where and under what conditions they work; or ensuring that international scholars have the ability to travel in the face of the draconian restrictions of the Trump administration, the politics of mobility are a critical concern now more than ever. In addition, in these times of virulent and hateful attacks on academics—such as those recently on Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor, Johnny Eric Williams, Sarah Bond, Tommy Curry, and George Ciccariello-Maher, a list that will no doubt grow—it is important to formulate a response to the free speech canard that is fueling this hate, promote solidarity among our members, discuss ways of communicating these concerns with the public, and continue to work with our institutions to ensure the protection and relevance of our discipline.

LLC African since 1990

620. Olabode Ibironke. Asst. prof. English, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. PhD, Michigan State Univ. Postdoctoral fellowship (Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities), Comm. on Institutional Cooperation, 2008–09; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship (Johns Hopkins Univ.), 2009–11. African Lit. Assn., African Studies Assn., Intl. Assn. for Langs. and Intercultural Communication. Ed., H- AfrLitCine, 2008– . Publications include contrib., The Creative Circle: Artist, Critic, and Translator in African Literature (2003), Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the History/Literature Debate (2006), Rethinking African Cultural Production (2015); articles in Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture, Language and Intercultural Communication, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Nordic Journal of African Studies, Journal of Cultural Studies.

621. Rosemary J. Jolly. Weiss Ch. of the Humanities in Lit. and Human Rights, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Univ. of Toronto. Previous appointment: Queen’s Univ., 1991–2013. SSHRC grant, 1995–98, 2001–04, 2006–10, 2011; Global Health Research Initiative grant (HIV/AIDS-related research), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), 2003–04, 2004–06; Leverhulme Visiting Fellowship, York Univ. (United Kingdom), Jan.–Apr. 2005; CIHR grant, 2007–11, 2008, 2009–14, 2010–15; fellow, Research School of the Humanities, Australian Natl. Univ., Mar.–May 2009. Frank Knox Teaching Award, Queen’s Univ., 1994; Grad. Teaching Award, Dept. of Comparative Lit., Penn State Univ., Apr. 2016. Grant reviewer: CIHR, SSHRC, Human Research Council (South Africa). Joel Gregory Book Prize Selection Comm., Canadian Assn. of African Studies, 2001. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., CLCS Global South, 2017–Jan. 2022. Ed. boards: Penn State Univ. Press, Comparative Literature Studies, Global South, Hemispheres, English Academy Review: A Journal of English Studies. Candidate Information – 69

Publications include Colonization, Violence, and Narration in White South African Writing: André Brink, Breyten Breytenbach, and J. M. Coetzee (1996), Cultured Violence: Narrative, Social Suffering, and Engendering Human Rights in Contemporary South Africa (2010); coed., Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995 (1998); contrib., J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual (2006), J. M. Coetzee in Context and Theory (2009), The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities (2016); articles in South African Medical Journal, Australian Feminist Studies, Canadian Journal of African Studies, Social Theory and Health, Global South, South Atlantic Quarterly, PMLA, World Literature Written in English. Statement In a world of increasing globalization and health and income disparities, I am particularly committed to a number of activities the MLA facilitates and encourages, especially as the value of the humanities is increasingly not supported by appropriate national funding in the United States. I believe we can learn much from our fellow artists, colleagues, and readers on the African continent in terms of persisting in these conditions. Contemporary African literatures and cultures are at the nexus of global colonialist capitalist advancements and retreats: they demonstrate some of the devastating effects of what the Warwick Research Collective has theorized as “combined and uneven development”; but they also manifest resiliencies and opportunities in the face of this phenomenon that we, located in a center of the colonialist-capitalist culture, either have difficulty in conceiving or cannot conceive of (or both). My goals are: to use every opportunity to ensure the increased participation of Africanists from the continent in MLA proceedings; to foster a robust generation of future Africanist scholars of all languages with the appropriate field research credentials and access to the archives they need, no matter where they originate and study; and to ensure lively MLA sessions that represent input from established and emerging scholars. Current, heated debates on race, anthropocentrism, slavery, tyranny, and democracy are crucially informed by the cultural wealth of Africa; but this process can only be appropriately recognized if African knowledges and languages are expertly debated in MLA settings.

LLC 19th-Century American

622. Beth Piatote. Assoc. prof. Amer. and Native Amer. studies, Univ. of California, Berkeley. PhD, Stanford Univ. Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship, 2001–03; Whiting Dissertation Fellowship in the Humanities, 2006–07; Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, 2009–10; visiting fellow, Bard Grad. Center (New York, NY), Sept.–Nov. 2016. Evaluator of grant applications: SSHRC, Canada Council for the Arts, Natl. Research Council. Mentor, Mellon Manuscript Revision Workshop, First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies, 2012. Wise-Susman Prize juror (2013, 2014) and annual meeting program comm. (2017), ASA. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Amer. Indian Lits., 2011–Jan. 2016; Comm. on the Lits. of People of Color in the United States and Canada, 2017–19; William Riley Parker Prize Selection Comm., 2017–19. Ed. board, Occasion: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities, 2009– . Publications include Domestic Subjects: Gender, Citizenship, and Law in Native American Literature (2013); guest coed., Studies in American Indian Literatures / American Indian Quarterly (2013); contrib., Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women (2008), Leslie Marmon Silko: Ceremony, Almanac of the Dead, Gardens in the Dunes (2016), American Literature in Transition, 1910– 1920 (2017); articles in American Quarterly, Kenyon Review, American Literary History, Studies in American Indian Literatures. Statement I am grateful for the opportunity to stand for election to the Delegate Assembly as the representative for LLC 19th-Century American. In the context of the Delegate Assembly’s role of setting policy and guidelines for the profession, I would continue to support the MLA’s goals and visions for a more equitable workplace, especially addressing the problems of gender, race, LGBTQ, and disability bias. I also support policies that illuminate and challenge the corporatization of the university and the erosion of tenure-track positions as intellectual and material hazards. From a scholarly standpoint, I would advocate for teaching and scholarly approaches that emphasize a broad conceptualization of 19th-century print culture, comparative 70 – Candidate Information

study of literature across fields, and the innovative use of digital archives and nonconventional texts. In furtherance of the Delegate Assembly’s role as a voice in contemporary American society, I would work to defend the humanities at a time when their unique ability to reflect the human condition, engage uncomfortable contradictions, articulate complex histories, provide beauty, and illuminate the social world is most in need.

623. Melissa Daniels Rauterkus. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Southern California. PhD, Northwestern Univ. Previous appointment: Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham, 2013–17. Fellow, Diversifying Higher Educ. Faculty in in Illinois, Illinois Board of Higher Educ., 2007–11. African Amer. Lit. and Culture Soc., ASA, Amer. Assn. of Blacks in Higher Educ., C19: The Soc. of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. Publications include articles in American Literary Realism, Mississippi Quarterly, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, African American Review. Statement I am delighted to be nominated to the Delegate Assembly. I can think of no greater honor than representing the interests of my colleagues in the LLC 19th-Century American forum. In my forthcoming book, African American Realisms and the Romances of Race: Rethinking 19th- Century Literary History (LSU Press), I contest the widely held belief that African Americans did not write American literary realism and the attending misconception that white realists did not write African American literature. In making such a provocative claim, I aim to challenge facile generalizations about what constitutes a “black text,” how we define the project of literary realism, and problematic assumptions about literary history. For the sake of greater complexity, I argue that we need a new paradigm for thinking about race in literary studies. My sense is that we need to move beyond notions of racial authenticity toward a definition of African American literature that is animated by black writers and their meditations on blackness but is also porous enough to include nonblack writers and their representations of race and their engagements with black rhetorical forms so that we might theorize, in more complex and sophisticated ways, the larger social order that constitutes race in America. If elected to the forum, I’d like to advocate for these kinds of provocative approaches toward canon formation and literary history. I believe that such approaches create a richer and more textured account of race, aesthetics, and politics in 19th-century African American and American literary studies.

LLC Late-19th- and Early-20th-Century American

624. Mark Andrew Eaton. Prof. English, Azusa Pacific Univ. PhD, Boston Univ. Junior research fellowship, Rothermere Amer. Inst., Univ. of Oxford, 2006. Distinguished Service Award, Honors Coll., Azusa Pacific Univ., 2009. Board of advisers, Oklahoma Humanities Council, 2000; ch., board of advisers, Film Studies Program, Univ. of Oklahoma, 2000–05. 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), Approaches to Teaching Henry James’s Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (2005), Approaches to Teaching DeLillo’s White Noise (2006), 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, Literature/Film Quarterly, Modern Fiction Studies, Pedagogy, Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies. Statement With both higher education generally and the humanities in particular facing budget cuts, declining enrollments, and other changes on the horizon, I affirm the MLA’s mission statement and will work to ensure Candidate Information – 71

that the organization continues to be a forum for vigorous debates about the major issues of our time, especially where these issues intersect with our expertise in languages and literatures. I embrace changes and innovations that the MLA has already undertaken to expand opportunities for scholarly communication, such as MLA Commons. The MLA must continue to expand its areas of focus by developing partnerships with other national organizations in the emerging global commons. Given its mandate to support the intellectual and professional lives of its members, the MLA should avoid sectarian disputes about which members disagree. I am committed to preserving intellectual diversity even as the MLA strives to advocate for the study of languages and literatures and of the humanities.

625. 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); introd., Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Crux (2003); articles in American Literature, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Criticism, American Quarterly.

LLC African American

626. Michelle Commander. Assoc. Prof. English, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville. PhD, Univ. of Southern California. Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation Fellowship, 2007–08; Fulbright grant (Ghana), 2012–13. Excellence in Teaching Award, Dept. of English, Univ. of Tennessee, 2015–16; Diversity Leadership Award, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Tennessee, 2015–16. Managing ed., American Quarterly, 2005–07. Publications include Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (2017); contrib., Hurricane Katrina: Response and Responsibilities (2005), African American National Biography (2008); articles in American Quarterly, ASAP/Journal, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, Journal of Popular Culture, Los Angeles Review of Books, Sounding Out!. Statement It is a great honor to be nominated for the Delegate Assembly. My scholarly and teaching interests lie in twentieth- and twenty-first-century African American cultural production, diaspora studies, and speculative fiction. Given the transnational and interdisciplinary qualities of my research and my commitment to intentional advocacy, I would have two immediate goals: to promote more collaborations between United States–based and international scholars within and outside our forum and to (re)open a discussion with our forum members about establishing a mentoring network for interested graduate students and faculty members who would appreciate reliable guidance on a variety of discipline-related issues. In the Delegate Assembly, I would be interested in strategizing actively against the current onslaught of attacks on the humanities, especially the persistent political threats to defund the very ethnic studies programs in which many of us have joint appointments or with which we feel an affinity. I would be eager to share the many lessons that I have learned at a university campus in east Tennessee, where there has been unusual and significant legislative overreach about diversity matters. Across the nation, we have seen a marked rise in hostility toward those of us who teach and speak openly about issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, class, nationality, and other forms of identity. If elected, I will advocate vigorously on behalf of the members of LLC African American and support the MLA in upholding its mission to encourage the advancement of humanities scholarship.

627. Wanda Raiford. Instructor English, Florida Intl. Univ. PhD, Univ. of Iowa; JD, Univ. of Miami. FLAS fellowship (Arabic), Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced Intl. Studies, Johns Hopkins Univ., summer 2006; R. D. Mullen Research Fellowship, J. Lloyd Eaton Collection, Univ. of California, Riverside, 2009; Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, 2015–16. Award of Excellence in Teaching, Coll. of Arts, Sciences, and Educ., Florida Intl. Univ., 2017. 72 – Candidate Information

Publications include contrib., New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction (2008); article in South: A Scholarly Journal. Statement Issues of racial, ethnic, and gendered justice, perhaps now more than ever, shape our daily thinking about what it means to be a citizen in a participatory democracy. I have long believed that in our testimony about lived experience and in our imaginative lives, African Americans provide a singular and critical contribution toward helping the people who live in this country—and those who don’t—to make sense of the American national predicament in the United States. As a member of the Delegate Assembly for LLC African American, my focus will be on questions of epistemic justice. As both a path follower and a trailblazer, I hope to direct and foster discussion not only of the creative and aesthetic achievements of black writers but also of the societal value of these writers’ works as reliable expert-witness testimony that brings theoretical and practical knowledge to the fore that our country has no other avenue for accessing.

LLC Asian American

628. Lynn Itagaki. Assoc. prof. English, Ohio State Univ., Columbus. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2006. Ohio Asian Award (for educational leadership), Asian Amer. Commerce Group, 2016. Delegate, Amer.-German Young Leaders Conference, Amer. Council on Germany, 2013. Amer. Lit. Assn. Series ed., Since 1970: Histories of Contemporary America, Univ. of Georgia Press, Jan. 2017– . Publications include Civil Racism: The 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion and the Crisis of Racial Burnout (2016); contrib., Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook (2002), Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them, supplement 1 (2003), A History of California Literature (2015); articles in African American Review, Biography, Feminist Formations, Prose Studies, Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies. Statement I welcome the opportunity to help shape how our professional organization serves as a critical public voice for the humanities and higher education. This organization’s national and international reach influences generations of students and teachers and the flourishing of the humanities. I would be honored to represent LLC Asian American in the Delegate Assembly and to advocate for members invested in Asian American literary studies and ethnic studies. I have attended and taught at a range of United States institutions and have done research, teaching, and service in Asian American studies, comparative race studies, and intersectional feminism. I have organized faculty members, staff members, students, and community members to address issues of inequality, and I have significant experience on campus and in academic associations with coordinating Asian American studies, developing workshops for undergraduate and graduate students of color, and mentoring junior faculty members. In prioritizing mentorship opportunities and improved working conditions in which these campus constituencies can thrive, my main concern is to create communities in our departments, schools, and professional organizations that can better address the needs of contingent faculty members, graduate student employees, and workers vulnerable to shifting labor conditions, privatization, and budget cuts at universities. Our membership must amplify the interest from students at all levels in how critical skills in the humanities generally and literary and cultural analyses specifically might increase the profession’s visibility now and provide blueprints for action for those working within, benefiting from, and making decisions about higher education.

629. Marguerite B. Nguyen. Asst. prof. English, Wesleyan Univ. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. FLAS fellowship, 2004, 2005, 2005–06; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship (Tulane Univ.), 2009–11. Site comm., AAAS, 2011; judge, Constance M. Rourke Prize, ASA, 2017. Candidate Information – 73

Publications include guest coed., MELUS (2016); contrib., Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South (2013), The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American West (2016); articles in MELUS, Minnesota Review, Diaspora. Statement It is an honor to be nominated for the MLA Delegate Assembly. I hope to advance conversations about current issues as well as possible future directions for the study of Asian American literature. Some questions that have been resurfacing at recent conferences relate to issues of pedagogy, interdisciplinary work, and the field’s relation to critical race studies more broadly. I would be deeply committed to examining these and any other concerns. I currently teach courses related to Asian American literature, Vietnam War culture, and literary genre at Wesleyan University. My first book offers a formalist and historicist analysis of representations of Vietnam in American literature, enlisting a longue durée approach that considers American, Vietnamese, and Vietnamese American perspectives. My next project theorizes what I call a refugee aesthetics of protraction by examining Southeast Asian refugee narratives based in New Orleans. I also coedited a special issue of MELUS with Catherine Fung titled Refugee Cultures: Forty Years after the Vietnam War. My interests thus span local, national, and transnational frames and invest in understudied aspects of Asian American literature and criticism, including multilingual sources, untapped archives, and underexamined sites. I have not yet served on an MLA committee, but I would be dedicated to understanding what colleagues hope and envision for Asian American literary studies.

LLC Southern United States

630. Benjamin Mangrum. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. PhD, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Postdoctoral fellowship, Soc. of Fellows, Univ. of Michigan, 2017–20. Linda Wagner-Martin Prize (for best dissertation on post-1900 Amer. lit.), UNC-CH, 2014–15; Gill Holland Award for Excellence in Service and Teaching, Davidson Coll., 2016–17. ASA. Ed. board and founding member, Ethos: A Digital Review of Arts, Humanities, and Public Ethics, 2013–16. Publications include articles in Nineteenth-Century Prose, Arizona Quarterly, American Literature, Literature and Theology, Philosophy and Literature, Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture, Religion and Literature, Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas. Statement Among the many challenges facing our profession, the crisis of employment that’s undermining instructional labor in United States higher education is the one that motivates my candidacy. I’ve held positions as a visiting faculty member at Davidson College and currently hold a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan. I entered my first graduate program a few months before the great recession; then, in 2014–15, I first went on the job market during what the MLA’s 2015 study of its job list identified as a six-year-long trough. This sustained precarity has shaped my experience with graduate education. Therefore, while I’m committed to responding to the many challenges facing higher education, I am especially concerned with advocating for the interests of early career scholars who are attempting to navigate an atrophied job market. The MLA Delegate Assembly can’t create tenure-track jobs, but the MLA has in recent years undertaken efforts to discourage the casualization of instructional labor in higher education. If given the privilege of serving as a delegate, I’d like to be a vocal supporter of this work. In addition, I’m a native of the Deep South and am well acquainted with the social and institutional forces at work in the region. I’ve been associated with several types of schools in the region, including Mississippi College and UNC-CH, and my scholarship and teaching regularly include Southern studies. I’d be honored to represent the forum and believe my personal and scholarly experiences would make me an effective delegate.

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631. Monica Miller. Asst. prof. English, Middle Georgia State Univ. PhD, Louisiana State Univ. (LSU). Previous appointment: Georgia Inst. of Technology. Participant, NEH summer inst., 2014. Josephine A. Roberts Alumni Assn. Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, LSU, 2015; Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Service, Writing and Communication Program, Georgia Inst. of Technology, 2017. Cocurator, February Four (speakers series), Andalusia Farm, 2017. Exec. board, WCML, 2011–17; exec. board, Carson McCullers Soc., 2014–16; exec. board, Emerging Scholars Organization, Soc. for the Study of Southern Lit., 2014–16. Publications include Being Ugly: Southern Women Writers and Social Rebellion (2017); articles in South Atlantic Review, Flannery O’Connor Review, Eudora Welty Review, OFO: Journal of Transatlantic Studies, Journal of Appalachian Studies. Statement As an early career scholar who was very recently on the job market, I bring to the Delegate Assembly an acute awareness of the realities of the academy’s changing landscape and the evolving relationship between the humanities and the larger world. At a time when austerity, precarity, and insecurity have become the norm, the MLA must find new ways to support its most precarious members and respond to these unprecedented times. One such strategy should be to address the divide between the humanities and STEM. While STEM and STEAM attract headlines and funding, those of us with foundations in the humanities realize how such disciplinary divisions can often be counterproductive. Rather, we should show how the humanities writ large are a necessary foundation for learning and innovation across all disciplines. Drawing on my interdisciplinary background in literature, cultural studies, and multimodal composition, I’d like to work to support the increasingly important public humanities. Having served for six years on the executive board of the Women’s Caucus for the Modern Languages as well as the founding executive board of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s Emerging Scholars Organization, I look forward to having the opportunity to serve in the MLA’s Delegate Assembly.

LLC Arabic

632. Samer Mahdy Ali. Assoc. prof. Arabic and Islamic culture, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. PhD, Indiana Univ. Dir., Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Univ. of Michigan, 2017– . Fulbright-Hays doctoral dissertation grant, US Dept. of Educ., 1998–99; fellowship, Inst. for Advance Study (Berlin), 2000–01; summer research grant, Amer. Inst. for Maghrib Studies, 2003; Fulbright- Hays research grant, US Dept. of Educ., 2004–05; Fulbright research grant, CIES, 2009–10. Expert witness, Amer. Civil Liberties Union, Aug. 2010– . Fellowship application reviewer: ACLS, 2012, 2013, 2014; Amer. Research Center in Egypt, 2017. Nominating comm. (2010–11), program comm. (2012), and Albert Hourani Book Award Selection Comm. (2017), Middle East Studies Assn. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group/Div. on Arabic Lit. and Culture, 2006–Jan. 2011; Texts and Translations Series Ed. Board, 2009–14; Delegate Assembly, 2010–Jan. 2012, 2012–Jan. 2016; Exec. Council, 2012–Jan. 2016; Delegate Assembly Organizing Comm., 2012–Jan. 2016; Ad Hoc Comm. on Advocacy Policies and Procedures, 2017–18. Book review ed. (Nov. 2008– ) and advisory board (Aug. 2011– ), Journal of Arabic Literature. Publications include Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poets, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past (2010); guest coed., CALICO Journal (2004); contrib., Writers and Rulers: Perspectives on Their Relation from Abbasid to Safavid Times (2004), Arabic Literary Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship (2009), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women (2013); articles in Journal of Arabic Literature, Al-Qantara: Revista de estudios árabes, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Statement My prime long-term focus centers on our academic freedom. I see that freedom, and our independence in pursuing knowledge, eroding with the decline in per-student public funding of higher education, the encroachment of corporate money into the university to fill the void, and the swell of ultranationalism, Islamophobia, and white supremacy in mainstream United States discourse and politics. Candidate Information – 75

The consequences have been damaging in our workplace: the proliferation of corporate models of putative value, higher tuition and debt for students, increasing student-faculty ratios and vulnerable contingent labor (coupled with the decline of tenure), and an ever more punitive system of compliance with economic and political “realities.” Note for example the conservative’s attack on Title VI programs that fund Middle Eastern studies and the rise of blacklists like CampusWatch.org and Canary Mission, which all began on the fringes of culture but now translate into intimidation of thought and activism often sanctioned by our own institutions. In response to these pernicious trends, the MLA has played a leading role in defending academic freedom and making the case for teaching global languages, not only those related to supposed security but also the languages of the world as a public good unto itself. For the past fourteen years, I have stepped into several service roles to support the MLA’s efforts to globalize our outlook with expertise representing the regions and cultures of the world. I ask for your support again to continue that project.

633. Ken Seigneurie. Prof. world lit., Simon Fraser Univ. PhD, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Visiting appointment: Edward Said Ch. in Amer. Studies, Amer. Univ. of Beirut, 2017–18. 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 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); contrib., Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (2005), Teaching Modern Arabic Literature in Translation (2017); translations in 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, Deus Loci, South Atlantic Review, Journal of Narrative Theory. Statement I am keen to work with the MLA in the aim of fulfilling its mission to “[facilitate] scholarly inquiry in and across periods, geographic sites, genres, languages, and disciplines in higher education” (The MLA’s Mission). From a standpoint between Arabic studies and world literature, I seek to bring scholarship on Arabic literature and language into conversation with scholarship in other fields and locales by promoting Arabic language study, initiating scholarly cooperation and exchange, and encouraging the translation of literary works from Arabic. I also believe that as an institution devoted to understanding culture, the MLA has a duty to support the cultures it studies by standing in solidarity with scholars the world over who endure persecution.

LLC West Asian

634. Başak Çandar. Asst. prof. English, Appalachian State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Mary I. and David D. Hunting Grad. Student Fellow, Inst. for the Humanities, Univ. of Michigan, 2012–13; EUME (Europe in the Middle East–The Middle East in Europe) fellow, Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin), 2014–15. Publications include article in Journal of Turkish Literature. Statement My PhD is in comparative literature. My work interrogates how Turkish and Spanish literature from the second half of the twentieth century respond to state violence. Currently, I am assistant professor of world literature in the English department at Appalachian State University. My recent transition into an English department and into teaching world literature in English has made me keenly aware of the persistence of East-West binaries in pedagogies of literature. Especially when the topic is Middle Eastern literatures, it seems that current curricula tempt students to rely on such binaries and clichés, making (world) literature pedagogies overlap in insidious ways with current political realities. This would be one of the 76 – Candidate Information

topics of conversations I would want to initiate as the Delegate Assembly representative for LLC West Asian. I see this theoretical and pedagogical conversation as part of a broader discussion of the role of the humanities in the Trump era and of MLA’s role in challenging political violence and repression, within and outside of the United States. I am honored to be nominated as the LLC West Asian representative and, if elected, look forward to carrying out the responsibilities Delegate Assembly membership.

635. Gretchen Head. Asst. prof. lit., Yale-NUS Coll. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Fulbright fellowship (Egypt), 2000–01; research fellowship, Amer. Inst. for Maghrib Studies, 2005; faculty fellow, Center for Arabic Study Abroad, Harvard Univ., 2010; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Townsend Center for the Humanities, Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2012–13’ EUME (Europe in the Middle East–The Middle East in Europe) summer acad. fellow, Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin), 2014. Book review ed., Journal of Arabic Literature, 2017– . Publications include trans., Mohamed Choukri, Paul Bowles: The Recluse of Tangier (2008); contrib., The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016); articles in Journal of Arabic Literature, Global South, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, Journal of North African Studies, Portal 9, Jadaliyya. Statement It is an honor to be nominated to represent my colleagues in the MLA. If my academic career at this stage can be characterized by one thing, it is an interest in decentering; the reconceptualization of what constitutes a humanities canon away from a model that situates the West as center is the primary mission of my current position at Yale-NUS in Singapore. It is this focus on the need to shift the terms of our literary engagement to become more inclusive of the languages and literatures that we have historically placed on the periphery that will define my work as forum delegate. From my earliest graduate school membership in the MLA, I have watched its gradual transformation from a professional space that offered few opportunities for those specializing in non- European languages and literatures to a venue of active participation for those of us working in literatures that would once have been considered marginal to the organization. The progress the MLA has made here is immediately apparent in the growing inclusivity of its annual convention. As a literary scholar who works primarily in Arabic, I recognize the potential—and responsibility—the MLA holds to fully integrate non- European languages into the organization’s mainstream, to provide these languages and literatures an equal seat at the table so to speak. While the MLA’s progress in recent years has been significant, I am committed to pushing the organization to be the truly global community it needs to become if it is to remain relevant.

LLC Modern and Contemporary Chinese

636. Christopher M. Lupke. Prof. Chinese cultural studies, Univ. of Alberta. PhD, Cornell Univ. Ch., Dept. of East Asian Studies, Univ. of Alberta. Previous appointment: Washington State Univ., Pullman. Fulbright research grant, US Dept. of State, 2001–02; Blakemore Foundation fellowship, 2003, 2005; Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation research grant, 2005–06, Fulbright- Hays research grant, US Dept. of Educ., 2006–07; grant, Undergrad. Intl. Studies and Foreign Lang. Program, US Dept. of Educ., 2007–10, 2010–13; Humanities Washington grant, 2008–09; NEH summer seminar grant, 2011, 2014; Natl. Science Council (Taiwan) grant, 2012; Henry Luce Foundation Residency, Vermont Studio Center, summer 2017. Visiting appointment: Canada Fulbright Visiting Research Ch., Univ. of Calgary, 2014–15. Natl. nominating comm. (for Boren Fellowships), Natl. Security Educ. Program, 2008–10; Fulbright Natl. Screening Comm., 2011–14. External grant evaluator: Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, SSHRC, Royal Netherlands Acad. of Arts and Sciences, Natl. Humanities Center. Pres., Assn. of Chinese and Comparative Lit., 2010–13; vice pres. (2017), pres. (2018), and past pres. (2019), RMMLA. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on East Asian Langs. and Lits. after 1900, 2003–06; Delegate Assembly, 2008–Jan. 2011, 2013–Jan. 2016; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2012–15; Elections Comm., 2014–15 (ch., 2015); forum exec. comm., LLC Modern and Contemporary Chinese, Candidate Information – 77

2016–Jan. 2018. Assoc. ed., Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, 2002– . Ed. boards: Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 2000– ; Rocky Mountain Review, 2004– ; Pacific Coast Philology, 2005– ; Studia Formosiana, Verlag Harrassowitz, 2008– ; Chinese Literature Today, 2009– ; Cambria Sinophone World Series, Cambria Press, 2017– . Publications include The Sinophone Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien: Culture, Style, Voice, and Motion (2016); ed., The Magnitude of Ming: Command, Allotment, and Fate in Chinese Culture (2005), New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry (2008); contrib., Who’s Who in Contemporary Women’s Writing (2001), The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature (2003), Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 328 (2007), vol. 370 (2013), Chinese Women’s Cinema: Transnational Contexts (2011), Documenting Taiwan on Film: Issues and Methods in New Documentaries (2012), Approaches to Teaching The Story of the Stone (Dream of the Red Chamber) (2012), The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies (2016), The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature (2016), A New Literary History of Modern China (2017), and others; articles in Journal of Taiwan Literary Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, Senses of Cinema, Journal of Asian Studies, Chinese Literature Today, Positions, Asian Cinema, Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese, Boundary 2, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. Statement These are difficult times for the humanities. As someone at the forefront of expanding the reach of the MLA to include Asian languages, I view the recent reorganization of the MLA into forums as a major structural improvement; however, my worry is, was it too late? We find ourselves under siege, politically and economically. What do we do? We cannot sit idly by. There are no easy answers, but the work of such scholars as Chris Newfield provides a partial blueprint toward repositioning ourselves. As a delegate, I intend to continue to advocate for more space for non-Western languages in the convention program and on standing committees. Broadening the MLA is not solely a way to create a more equitable distribution of space within the association for the benefit of all; it is absolutely vital to the well-being of the association itself and to the profession at large. One component of the survival and future resurgence of the humanities in North America resides in a redrawing of the boundaries of viable subject matter in the academy. Asian and African languages should be available not only to the privileged few at Ivy League universities, top public universities, and a few small colleges. They should be available everywhere. As the largest academic organization representing the humanities in the world, the MLA has to be making that argument forcefully and repeatedly. Additionally, the MLA must reflect it in its own representational apparatus.

637. Sijia Yao. Asst. prof. of practice Chinese, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln. PhD, Purdue Univ. Purdue Research Foundation grant, 2015; Promise Award, Purdue Univ., 2016. Online Innovation Award, Purdue Univ., 2014–15; Excellence in Teaching Award, School of Langs. and Cultures, Purdue Univ., 2015; Parents’ Recognition Teaching Award, Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln, 2017. Publications include contrib., Handbook of Research on Foreign Language Education in the Digital Age (2016); articles in Forum for World Literature Studies, Movie Review. Statement The humanities in higher education are experiencing a time of significant changes and challenges. I strongly support the core mission of the MLA and advocate for promoting research and teaching in the interests of all instructors of literatures and languages to bolster academic freedom and autonomy. If elected to the Delegate Assembly, I will raise the following concerns in meetings: academic collaboration across borders and disciplines, literary translation that is currently undervalued and discouraged, skepticism about the value of less-taught-language education, budget shortages, declining enrollments in languages and literatures, and the erosion of tenure due to the increase of part-time faculty positions. I believe that the MLA, given its expansive and significant influence, should voice an indispensable response to the ongoing crisis in higher education. To implement our shared ideals and beliefs in the real world, instructors and scholars need to extend their attention beyond academia and defend the value of the humanities.

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LLC Old English

638. Nicole Guenther Discenza. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of South Florida. PhD, Univ. of Notre Dame. Lindsay Young Visiting Faculty Fellowship, Marco Inst. for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, July 2014. Outstanding Undergrad. Teaching Award, Univ. of South Florida, 2010. Bibliographer, Old English Newsletter, 2017– . Advisory board, Exemplaria, 2009–14; board of review eds., Medieval Review, 2015– . Publications include The King’s English: Strategies of Translation in the Old English Boethius (2005), Inhabited Spaces: Anglo-Saxon Constructions of Place (2017); coed., A Companion to Alfred the Great (2015); contrib., Rome and the North: The Early Reception of Gregory the Great in Germanic Europe (2001), Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature (2005), Conversion and Colonization in Anglo-Saxon England (2006), Anglo-Saxon Traces (2011), Conceptualizing Multilingualism in England, c. 800–c. 1250 (2011), Teaching Beowulf in the Twenty-First Century (2014); articles in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Literature Compass, Studia Neophilologica, Anglo-Saxon England, Neophilologus, Exemplaria. Statement My research engages with issues of place and space, translation, and, most recently, wonder and curiosity in early medieval England. Old English studies is a vital field with practitioners at all levels and all kinds of institutions. The members of our forum think through past and present in creative and productive ways, engaging our own and our students’ wonder and curiosity. I hope to bring our voices to the Delegate Assembly as we consider how the MLA should adapt to contemporary circumstances while staying true to its basic missions. I hope to further the MLA’s work of becoming more inclusive and reaching out to more scholars, teachers, and learners while we sustain studies of languages and literatures in a hostile atmosphere. I would like to assist the MLA in helping institutions to value newer kinds of scholarship and models less used in some areas of the humanities, including digital and collaborative work. The MLA must speak up particularly for graduate students, contingent faculty members, independent scholars, and academics in areas of economic or political vulnerability.

639. Mary F. Dockray-Miller. Prof. English, Lesley Univ. PhD, Loyola Univ., Chicago. Series ed., Medieval Texts in Translation, Soc. for Medieval Feminist Scholarship; ed. board, Old English Newsletter. Publications include Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England (2000), Saints Edith and Æthelthryth: Princesses, Miracle Workers, and Their Late Medieval Audience (2009), The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders (2015); contrib., Naked before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England (2003), Women Medievalists and the Academy (2005), Misconceptions about the Middle Ages (2007), and others; articles in Old English Newsletter, Heroic Age, Fifteenth-Century Studies, Literature Compass, Women and Language, ANQ, Philological Quarterly, Medieval Feminist Forum, NWSA Journal, Studia Neophilologica, Exemplaria, Modern Language Studies. Statement The MLA needs to focus on protecting and advocating for the study of language and literature in the age of the corporate university.

LLC Middle English

640. Christine Nuhad Chism. Prof. English, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. PhD, Duke Univ. Previous appointments: Rutgers Univ., Allegheny Coll. New Directions Fellowship, Mellon Foundation, 2003. Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergrad. Educ., School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers Univ., 2001–02. Campus liaison, Univ. of California Multicampus Research Project in Mediterranean Studies, 2012–15. Book review ed., Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 1997–2002. Candidate Information – 79

Publications include Alliterative Revivals (2002); contrib., Remembering the Crusades: Myth, Image, and Identity (2012), Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages (2013), Christopher Marlowe in Context (2013), Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debate (2014), A Companion to British Literature (2014), Alexander the Great in the Middle Ages: Transcultural Perspectives (2016), Medieval Textual Cultures: Agents of Transmission, Translation, and Transformation (2016), Robin Hood and Outlaw/ed Spaces: Media, Performance, and Other New Directions (2016); introd., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Hackett Classics, 2011), Troilus and Criseyde in Modern Verse (Hackett Classics, 2014); articles in Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Culture Studies, PMLA, Chaucer Review, Arthuriana, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Statement My research, teaching, and professional service aim to broaden the conception of the medieval period and globalize treatments of its culture and literature by encompassing Mediterranean, Asian, and African circuits of encounter, violence, and transmission. Trained in the literature, drama, and culture of British Middle Ages, ten years ago I received a Mellon grant to study Arabic and the broader history of premodern Islamic cultures to which it opens doors. My work contests the polarization of these cultural traditions, investigating questions of transculturation and periodization in order to question how Western so- called Western society has ever been. I joined the faculty of UCLA in 2009, after holding positions at Rutgers University and Allegheny College. Since completing my first book, Alliterative Revivals, I have been working on several projects. Mortal Friends: The Politics of Friendship in Medieval England, forthcoming from Penn, explores the social force of friendship in a range of late medieval texts. A second project, Strange Knowledge: Translation and Cultural Transmission in the Arabic and English Middle Ages, draws on the skills amassed while working on a Mellon New Directions fellowship between 2003 and 2005. I have also been working on medieval Arabic and European travel narratives and the Middle English and Arabic Alexander romances. I am currently editing the second volume (medieval) of the five-volume Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie, and have served for four years on the executive committee of the University of California Mediterranean Seminar.

641. Ruth Evans. Dorothy McBride Orthwein Prof. of English, St. Louis Univ. PhD, Univ. of Leeds. Visiting appointments: Ohio Univ., Mar.–Apr. 1993; Centre for Medieval Studies, Univ. of York, Jan.–June 1997; Beaufort Visiting Scholar, St. John’s Coll., Univ. of Cambridge, Oct.–Dec. 2016. Faculty Excellence Award, Student Govt. Assn., St. Louis Univ. (SLU), 2010; Chauncey E. Finch Award for Distinguished Mentoring, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, SLU, 2011. Exec. dir., New Chaucer Soc., 2012–18. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Middle English, 2012–Jan. 2017. Series coed., New Century Chaucer, Univ. of Wales Press, 2014– ; series ed. board, Medieval Lit. and Culture, Manchester Univ. Press, 2006– . Publications include coed., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (1999), Medieval Virginities (2003), Secrets, Mysteries, Silences (2006), Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (2006), A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Middle Ages (2011), Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads (2016); contrib., Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition (2001), Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (2002), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (2003), Chaucer: An Oxford Guide (2005), Women’s Space: Patronage, Place, and Gender in the Medieval Church (2005), Chaucer and the City (2006), Translating Others (2006), A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350–c. 1500 (2007), Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (2012), Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts (2013), On Style: An Atelier (2013), Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (2014), Burn after Reading, vol. 1 [Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies] (2014), New Casebooks: Medieval English Literature (2015); articles in Exemplaria, In the Middle (medieval studies group blog), Postmedieval Forum, Manuscripts on My Mind: News from the Vatican Film Library, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, Textual Cultures, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Revista canaria de estudios ingleses, Arthurian Literature, New Medieval Literatures.

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Statement The major issues that the MLA currently faces within the profession are the decline of tenure, the expansion of the contingent faculty, the decline of language study, and the defunding of the humanities, exemplified by Trump’s recent budget proposal to end support for the NEH and NEA. These should be the MLA’s priorities. I strongly support the MLA’s advocacy in these areas and would be keen to push the MLA to do even more, especially to counter the widespread public disparagement of the humanities. I served on the executive committee for LLC Middle English from 2013 through 2017, helping to set the agenda for intellectual work within our discipline and to engage nonmedievalists in this agenda (through, for example, panels on New Materialisms and the End of Critique and Transgender). If elected to represent LLC Middle English in the Delegate Assembly, I would advocate for retaining the current configuration of MLA medieval forums, and I would also speak up on behalf of a currently underrepresented group within my discipline, namely medievalists of color. As executive director of the New Chaucer Society (2012–18), I have gained considerable experience in academic leadership and in responding to the needs of a large and varied constituency. On the MLA’s involvement in politics more widely, I very much support the MLA’s protests against assaults on the academy around the world and not just in the United States, such as Erdogan’s 2016 attack on higher education in Turkey.

LLC 16th-Century English

642. Joseph Campana. Assoc. prof. English, Rice Univ. PhD, Cornell Univ. NEA creative writing fellowship, 2007; individual artist’s grant, Houston Arts Alliance, 2009, 2014; Theodore Morrison Fellowship in Poetry, Bread Load Writers’ Conference, 2014. Isabel MacCaffrey Award (for the year’s 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 Memorial Award (for best poem), Southwest Review, 2013. Exec. comm., Intl. Spenser Soc., 2007–09. Ed. for 1500–1659, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 2011– . Publications include 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); contrib., Queer People: Negotiations and Expressions of Homosexuality, 1700–1800 (2007), The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Europe (2009), The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser (2010), The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Middleton (2012), The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies, Volume II (2014), Romeo and Juliet: A Critical Reader (2016), The Year’s Work in the Oddball Archive (2016), Affect Theory and Early Modern Texts: Politics, Ecologies, and Form (2017), Childhood, Education, and the Stage in Early Modern England (2017), John Donne and Contemporary Poetry: Essays and Poems (2017); articles in PMLA, Modern Philology, ELH, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Studies, Spenser Studies, Shakespeare International Yearbook, Prose Studies, Literature Compass, and others.

643. Anne Myers. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. Francis Bacon Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2007; Newberry Library / British Acad. Exchange Fellowship, 2009. Honorable mention, Soc. for the Study of Early Modern Women essay award, 2007; English Literary Renaissance essay prize, 2011; Gold Chalk Award for Grad. Educ., Grad. and Professional Council, Univ. of Missouri, 2014. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC 16th-Century English, 2015–Jan. 2020. Publications include Literature and Architecture in Early Modern England (2013); contrib., Catholic Culture in Early Modern England (2007), The Intellectual Culture of the British Country House, 1500–1700 (2015); articles in English Literary Renaissance, ELH.

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Statement My greatest professional concern is the current training of graduate students. While I believe strongly in the acquisition of certain traditional skills in research and critical investigation, I am skeptical that the usual model for dissertations (imagined as monographs in progress) reflects the present realities of either the academic publishing market or the types of jobs many of our students will be taking. This concern is distinct from the idea of presenting graduate students with alternatives to an academic career. That is, I think we need to ask what an academic career usually looks like now (and not just for students who are trained and hired at elite institutions) and how we can best prepare our students for its demands while still instilling intellectual growth and academic rigor. Another area of professional concern is the erosion of belief in the value of historical literary study. We need not overtly relate every discussion of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or Burney to the current political climate in order for it to be relevant. Active belief in the study of other times and places, as well as in education for its own sake, is already a form of political resistance. For me, it is not that we need to show that Chaucer is in conversation with Trump’s America. Rather, we need to believe in the importance of what we are already doing as a means of remembering what other conversations and values are possible—and make sure that they persist.

LLC Restoration and Early-18th-Century English

644. David Samuel Mazella. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Houston. PhD, Columbia Univ. Founding faculty board member and dir., Center for Teaching Excellence, Univ. of Houston, 2010–13. Whiting Foundation fellowship, 1994–95; visiting fellow, Thomas Reid Inst., Univ. of Aberdeen, 1998. Distinguished Leadership in Teaching Excellence Award, Univ. of Houston, 2014. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2000–02. Publications include The Making of Modern Cynicism (2007); contrib., Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment (2011); articles in ELH, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Studies in the Novel, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Profession. Statement Working at an urban public research university in Texas has taught me that much of the labor undertaken by students and faculty members goes unacknowledged and unsupported. Students experience a lot of hardship to earn their degrees, while faculty members often lack sufficient resources to do their jobs. At institutions like mine, faculty research and teaching roles need to be thoughtfully integrated, if everyone is to survive the forces of attrition that we all face. These forces confront not just students but also TAs, adjuncts, and non-tenure-track faculty members. These were the kinds of pedagogical, organizational, and governance issues I addressed in my own teaching, departmental, and faculty senate work and ultimately in the university teaching center I helped establish and direct. If elected, I would push the MLA to use its unique organizational role to model an inclusive approach to English that would encourage departments to take advantage of the multiple fields (e.g., literature, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, linguistics) that often share the same students. I would also encourage the MLA to recognize how historically-constituted fields of literary study (like my own, 18th-century British literature) have been changing over the past few decades to take in new students, new topics, and new research possibilities and to make possible less- stratified models of research and teaching. These new models are the basis for stronger arguments for the humanities as a public good and will help public universities win broader and deeper support for their singular mission.

645. Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace. Prof. English, Boston Coll. PhD, Columbia Univ. Mellon fellowship, Aspen Inst. for the Humanities, 1982; NEH summer stipend, 1983, 1989, 1998; ACLS grant, 1984; NEH fellowship, 1994–95; visiting fellow, Chawton House Library, May 2008. Florence Howe Award (for outstanding feminist scholarship), WCML, 1985; 82 – Candidate Information

Distinguished Teaching Award, Boston Coll., 2002–03. Pres., Women’s Caucus, NEMLA, 1992; coch., Board of Directors, Grad. Consortium in Women’s Studies, 1997–99. Advisory board, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1996–99. Publications include Their Fathers’ Daughters: Hannah More, Maria Edgeworth, and Patriarchal Complicity (1991), Consuming Subjects: Women, Shopping, and Business in the Eighteenth Century (1997), The British Slave Trade and Public Memory (2006); ed., Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory (1996, 2009); coed., Refiguring the Father: New Feminist Readings of Patriarchy (1989), Women’s Worlds: The McGraw-Hill Anthology of Women’s Writing (2008); contrib., History, Gender, and Eighteenth-Century Literature (1994), Imagining Transatlantic Slavery (2010), Women and the Material Culture of Death (2013); articles in Journal of Popular Television, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, Studies in the Novel, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, PMLA, Comparative Drama, Eighteenth-Century Life, Novel, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, Prose Studies, Modern Language Studies, Nineteenth- Century Contexts, Feminist Studies. Statement I am interested in establishing stronger connections between the robust work of the American Society for 18th-Century Studies and the MLA. How do we bring a wider contingent of scholars and professors working in eighteenth-century studies into the MLA? Where are the points of overlap between the two professional societies, and how can participation in both societies be mutually enriching? While a focus on teaching characterizes both the MLA and ASECS, new scholarly trends in eighteenth-century studies foreground the special challenges that we all face in an age of diminishing resources. The turn in eighteenth- century studies to postcolonial and diasporic studies, gender studies, history of science, environmental criticism, animal studies, and new materialisms all suggest that instructors are eager to highlight the ways in which “the eighteenth century isn’t over” and to make the case for the ongoing relevance of our field. Established practices at ASECS, such as the teaching awards for innovative curricula, further highlight the commitment of ASECS members to the humanities classroom. Yet this commitment might become the subject of conversation with those facing similar pressure to justify the importance of their subjects. While ASECS has traditionally defined its historical period as liberally as possible (for some, from 1660 to 1830), its distinct mission can only be enhanced by fruitful collaboration with wider trends in English. ASECS has long had some presence at the MLA convention, but this is the time to enhance that presence and to promote a more dynamic relationship with the MLA.

LLC Victorian and Early-20th-Century English

646. Jonathan Farina. Assoc. prof. English, Seton Hall Univ. PhD, New York Univ. Affiliated scholar, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers Univ., 2010–11. Conference comm. (2011, 2012, 2016, 2017) and program ch. (2016), Northeast Victorian Studies Assn. Assoc. ed. (reviews), Wordsworth Circle, 2013– . Publications include Everyday Words and the Character of Prose in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2017); contrib., The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (2015), The Routledge Research Companion to Anthony Trollope (2016); articles in Boundary 2, BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History, Dickens Studies Annual, Nineteenth-Century Prose, Victorians, Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Periodicals Review, Victorian Studies, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, Wordsworth Circle. Statement I am honored to be nominated as a candidate for the MLA Delegate Assembly. I have come to love the MLA conference as a meeting of friends, old and new, with remarkable interests and ideas. We are a wonderful community. But I think the MLA could more effectively engage the public on our behalf. I would encourage the MLA to better promote its mission by providing departments and members standards and advice to leverage arguments for full-time hiring; to uphold and strengthen language and literature requirements; and, most important, to market the profession at the grassroots level—not only in Candidate Information – 83

freshman classrooms, where students are most open to choosing a major, but also in high schools and at dinner tables and at businesses. We know the immense political, personal, social, and practical value of what we study and teach, but clearly the public often does not. Members would feel more invested in the MLA if it were inspiring interest in the study of languages and literatures much more visibly outside of academia and among other disciplines.

647. Mario Ortiz-Robles. Prof. English and Mellon-Morgridge Prof., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. PhD, Columbia Univ. Fellow, Inst. for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2010–11; Vilas Associates research fellowship, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2013–14; Romnes Faculty Fellowship, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, 2016. Codir., Mellon Workshop in Animal Studies, Inst. for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2011–13. Distinguished Honors Faculty Award, Coll. of Letters and Science, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2014–15. Exec. Board, Soc. for Novel Studies, 2014–18. Publications include The Novel as Event (2010), Literature and Animal Studies (2016); coed., Narrative Middles: Navigating the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (2011); contrib., The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature (2015), Futures of Comparative Literature: ACLA State of the Discipline Report (2017); articles in BRANCH: Britain, Representation, and Nineteenth-Century History, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, eHumanista Cervantes, European Journal of English Studies, 1616: Anuario de literatura comparada, ELH, Textual Practice, Comparative Literature. Statement I believe the MLA should play a strong advocacy role in promoting two areas of activity at the heart of its constituency’s many endeavors: research and teaching. The research mission of the profession is under mounting political pressure to justify its cultural legitimacy, and, as a result, the already meager funding sources necessary for its growth and sustainability are being scrutinized at institutional, state, and federal levels. At the same time, decreasing enrollments in humanities courses across the institutional spectrum have made this justification a matter of some urgency, especially in the context of a precarious academic labor market that both undergirds and perpetuates the view that teaching in the humanities is exceptional and unrelated to broader social trends. Advanced research and cutting-edge teaching will thus face considerable challenges in the coming years but also opportunities, including finding new ways of nurturing core disciplines while fostering creative configurations of transdisciplinary research. As a scholar whose work is situated at the intersection of nineteenth-century literature, literary theory, and animal studies, I am well positioned to address these challenges and to help develop new research and teaching pathways. I would welcome the chance to contribute to the efforts of the MLA Delegate Assembly.

LLC 20th- and 21st-Century English and Anglophone

648. Emily Hyde. Asst. prof. English, Rowan Univ. PhD, Princeton Univ. Princeton Inst. for Intl. and Regional Studies fellowship, 2011–12; Modernist Studies Assn. travel grant, spring 2016; stipend, Frances R. Lax Fund for Faculty Development, Rowan Univ., 2016–17. McCosh Teaching Award, Princeton Univ., 2013. Publications include contrib., The Pocket Instructor: Literature (2015), Auden at Work (2015), Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Rights (2016); articles in PMLA, Public Books, Post45: Contemporaries. Statement LLC 20th- and 21st-Century English and Anglophone casts a wide net, and I would be honored to serve as an MLA delegate for scholars in this lively and capacious field. My scholarly interests include comparative modernisms, postcolonial literature and theory, theories of world literature, and the intersection of visual art and narrative form. I teach at a large regional state university, and I am also interested in participating in MLA discussions about the importance of the humanities in higher education, interdisciplinarity and innovative pedagogy, faculty diversity and social justice, college access and affordability, and professional support for emerging scholars, adjuncts, and everyone on the job market.

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649. Melanie Micir. Asst. prof. English, Washington Univ. in St. Louis. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Research fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, Univ. of Texas, Austin, 2015–16; First Book Fellowship, Center for the Humanities, Washington Univ. in St. Louis (WUSTL), 2016. Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, WUSTL, 2015. Publications include contrib., A Companion to Virginia Woolf (2016), Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Rights (2016); articles in Journal of Modern Literature, Modern Language Quarterly, Modernism/Modernity, Virginia Woolf Miscellany. Statement As an early career scholar, I am honored to be nominated for the MLA Delegate Assembly. There are many matters of professional concern facing us today, but, to my mind, the most pressing challenge for the current MLA is the issue of contingent and otherwise precarious academic labor. I have taught at both public and private universities, and I strongly believe that MLA members should support ongoing unionization efforts by graduate students and non-tenure-track faculty members. This support takes many forms and operates on many levels: local, regional, national, global. I don’t pretend to know how to fix our profession. But I can at least pledge to cast whatever votes come my way in support of the undercommons. And as a delegate representing those working in the field of 20th- and 21st-century English and Anglophone literature, I will work to resist the stratification of scholarship along lines of academic class and to increase opportunities for collaboration within and across our field.

LLC 20th- and 21st-Century French

650. Oana Panaite. Assoc. prof. French, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. PhD, Johns Hopkins Univ.; Docteur ès Lettres, Université de Paris 4 (Sorbonne). Scholarship, École Normale Supérieure, 1996–98; doctoral research fellowship, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2000–02; Center for the Study of History and Memory fellowship, Indiana Univ., 2012–13. Visiting appointment: Institut des Amériques, Université de Rennes 2, fall 2013. Prix de la Francophonie des Amériques, Centre de la Francophonie des Amériques, 2009; Trustees Teaching Award, Indiana Univ., 2014–15. Codir., NEH summer inst., 2016. Exec. board (2010–13), program comm. (2014–17), and vice pres. (2017–19), Conseil International d’Études Francophones. MLA activities: Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies Selection Comm., 2014–15 (ch., 2015), 2017. Ed. board, Analele Ştiinţifice ale Universităţii “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” din Iaşi (Serie Nouă). Literatura, 2008– ; advisory board, Cahiers ERTA (Gdansk Univ.), 2014– . Publications include Des littératures-mondes en français: Écritures singulières, poétiques transfrontalières dans la prose contemporaine (2012), The Colonial Fortune in Contemporary Fiction in French (2017); ed., Reading Communities: A Dialogical Approach to French and Francophone Literature / Communautés de lecture: Pour une approche dialogique des oeuvres classiques et contemporaines (2016); guest ed., L’Esprit Créateur (2014); guest coed., Alternative francophone (2014); contrib., La fabrique du personnage (2007), Lire contre l’auteur (2012), Enjeux identitaires dans l’imaginaire francophone (2013), Pour un récit transnational: La fiction au défi de l’histoire immediate (2016); articles in Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, Interculturel francophonies, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, MLN, L’Esprit Créateur, Nouvelles études francophones, Littérature, Dix-Neuf. Journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, French Forum, Études littéraires, Palabres: Revue d’études africaines et antillaises. Statement I am honored by the nomination to the Delegate Assembly. In the current political and economic context, I believe that it is critically important to uphold the fundamental value of foreign languages and cultures while working actively to demonstrate and defend their vital social role. My commitments to the profession are anchored in my experience as a scholar of postcolonial francophone literature, director of graduate studies in French/francophone studies at IUB, and long-time member and recently elected vice president of the Conseil International d’Études Francophones. I have worked to respond to the challenges that language programs in general and especially French and francophone studies have had to face in recent Candidate Information – 85

years, such as institutional shifts away from the humanities, budget cuts, reduced numbers of applicants to foreign language graduate programs, and the need to reshape the graduate curriculum and refocus our professional efforts to prepare students for a changing career landscape. Yet, through my research and, most recently, through my service as Organizing Committee coordinator for the 2017 International Colloquium for 20th- and 21st-Century French and Francophone Studies, I have also been able to witness and participate in the positive changes that our discipline has undergone during and despite this period of crisis: the reconsideration of intellectual and institutional boundaries between fields of study previously separated, the emergence and expansion of new topics and approaches, and a renewed commitment in French and francophone studies to defining and strengthening the place of language, literature, and culture in today’s world.

651. Priya Wadhera. Assoc. prof. French, Adelphi Univ. PhD, Columbia Univ. Fulbright teaching assistantship (France), 1994–95; scholarship, École Normale Supérieure, 2001–02. Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching, Columbia Univ., spring 2003. MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2015–Jan. 2018. Publications include Original Copies in Georges Perec and Andy Warhol (2017); article in MLN; translation in Art in Translation. Statement I earned my PhD at Columbia University, where I stayed on as a lecturer in the Department of French and Romance Philology and director of the Maison française for three years before joining the faculty at Adelphi University a decade ago. This experience has given me a valuable perspective on nonacademic careers and on institutions of various sorts, and it equips me well to serve as a forum delegate for LLC 20th- and 21st-Century French. Having been asked to serve in this capacity two years ago, I have gained a greater appreciation of the opportunities and challenges we face as a profession. My goal is to keep learning about the needs of my peers in order to better advocate for them. I often tell my students that merely knowing that the French word for tree is arbre is not enough. Once you realize that there are people in this world who climb trees, who plant trees, and who may even be tree experts but who do not use the word tree, then you have made a critical leap in your learning. This message, that we must endeavor to see things from other perspectives in addition to our own, is one I strive to impart to my students. I would be honored to continue on in this position, bringing this philosophy to my role as a delegate as I do to my teaching every day.

LLC Francophone

652. Lia Brozgal. Assoc. prof. French, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. PhD, Harvard Univ. Univ. of California President’s Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, 2012–13; Camargo Foundation residency (Cassis, France), fall 2014; ACLS fellowship, 2015–16. Editorial comm., Soc. for Francophone Postcolonial Studies (United Kingdom), 2016–19. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Francophone, 2016–Jan. 2021. Area ed. (for North African francophone lit.), Literary Encyclopedia, 2012–14. Ed. board, Luminos Series in Jewish History and Culture, Univ. of California Press, 2017– . Publications include Against Autobiography: Albert Memmi and the Production of Theory (2013); coed., Being Contemporary: French Literature, Culture, and Politics Today (2016), Vitalis Danon, Ninette of Sin Street (2017); contrib., Littérature et jeu: Des enjeux essentiels (2013), Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity (2013); articles in Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Society for Contemporary Thought and the Islamicate World Review, Contemporary French Civilization, South Central Review, French Studies, French Forum. Statement As a member of a French and francophone studies department in a large research institution, I have been committed to both undergraduate education and the training of graduate students for ten years. I am keenly interested in the intellectual and pedagogical questions that animate both the small, specialized 86 – Candidate Information

seminar and the large, general-education lecture. I am also especially invested in thinking through questions related to the PhD in French (and in literatures more broadly). Are we able to identify a “gold standard” of graduate education? What are the essential components of graduate training, and how are these elements evaluated? How do we respond to the shifting demands that our PhDs confront once they enter the “real world”? What are our responsibilities as educators in the face of a contracting job market? As departmental models and structures morph in response to various pressures, transinstitutional dialogue will become increasingly important; the MLA provides a particularly privileged space for this type of conversation among confrères, and I would be honored, as a member of the Delegate Assembly, to take an active part therein.

653. Richard H. Watts. Assoc. prof. French, Univ. of Washington, Seattle. PhD, Yale Univ. Chateaubriand Fellowship, French Ministry of Culture, 1995–96; faculty seminar grant, NEH Regional Humanities Center, 2004; Bellagio Center residency, Rockefeller Foundation, 2010; NEH summer stipend, 2011. Codir., NEH summer inst., 2017. MLA activities: PMLA Advisory Comm., 2011–14; Program Comm., 2014–17; forum exec. comm., LLC Francophone, 2015–Jan. 2020. Acting ed., Modern Language Quarterly, 2010–11; ed. board, French Forum, 2007–15. Publications include Packaging Post/Coloniality: The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World (2005); contrib., Relire l’histoire littéraire et le littéraire haïtiens (2007), Race after Sartre: Antiracism, Africana Existentialism, Postcolonialism (2008), Postcolonial Thought in the French- Speaking World (2009); articles in Atlantic Studies, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Expressions maghrébines, French Forum, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Romance Studies, MLN, Pacific Coast Philology, Research in African Literatures, Romanic Review, Sites: The Journal of Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, TTR: Traduction, terminologie, rédaction. Statement As a member of the Delegate Assembly representing LLC Francophone, I will be an engaged participant in annual meetings and focus on making progress in three principal areas: advocating for further expansion of preprofessional training and mentorship for graduate students, especially in non- or alt- academic fields; pursuing the rethinking of graduate education and the dissertation in the light of changes in and beyond the profession; and, closer to the concerns of LLC Francophone members, supporting initiatives and structures that connect francophone literary and cultural studies to interdisciplinary or thematic fields (postcolonial studies, of course, but also environmental humanities, gender/queer studies, textual and digital humanities, etc.), whether this be in conference programming or in the ways in which fields are defined in the Job Information List.

LLC Galician

654. Danny Barreto. Asst. prof. LGBTQ studies, Colgate Univ. PhD, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York. Phi Eta Sigma Prof. of the Year, Colgate Univ., 2016–17. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Galician, 2016–Jan. 2021. Publications include contrib., Queering Iberia: Iberian Masculinities at the Margins (2012); articles in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, Abriu: Textuality Studies on Brazil, Galicia, and Portugal, Galicia 21: Journal of Contemporary Galician Studies, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies. Statement Matters of inclusivity, diversity, and interdisciplinarity are among my primary curricular and professional concerns. I have shown dedication not only to the promotion of Galician literature and culture within our profession and the MLA but also to increasing the visibility of writers who, because of their gender or sexuality, have been marginalized within the field of Galician studies. I support those initiatives that stress the importance of second-language learning, especially lesser-taught languages, as central to a liberal arts education. As the MLA continues to confront the financial and cultural obstacles that the arts and humanities face, recognizing the particular threat these pose for languages and literatures like Galician, Candidate Information – 87

which historically have not had the same institutional support, I welcome the opportunity to represent the recently formed LLC Galician forum in the Delegate Assembly.

655. Germán Labrador Méndez. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Princeton Univ. PhD, Universidad de Salamanca / Université de Paris 4 (Sorbonne). MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Galician, 2017–Jan. 2022. Publications include Letras arrebatadas: Poesía y química en la transición española (2009), Culpables por la literatura: Imaginación política y contracultura en la transición española (1968–1986) (2017); contrib., Post-Authoritarian Cultures: Spain and Latin America’s Southern Cone (2008), New Spain, New Literatures (2010), Contornos de la narrativa española actual (2000–2010) (2011), Filosofía y culturas hispánicas: Nuevas perspectivas (2016); articles in Revista hispánica moderna, Revista piauí, Hispanic Issues On Line, Hispanic Review, Manzana poética, Viento sur, Crítica latinoamericana, Estudios humanísticos, Rebelión, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Mombassa: Revista de arte y humanidades, Cuadernos dieciochistas.

LLC German to 1700

656. Stephen Mark Carey. Assoc. prof. German, Univ. of Minnesota, Morris. PhD, Washington Univ. in St. Louis. Fulbright fellowship (Germany), 1992–93; DAAD Direct Exchange (Freie Universität Berlin), 1996–98. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Arthurian Lit., 2002–06; exec. comm., Discussion Group on Germanic Philology, 2011–Jan. 2016. Publications include contrib., Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia (2001); articles in New Research: Yearbook for the Society of Medieval Germanic Studies, Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, Arthuriana, Daphnis.

657. Claire Taylor Jones. Asst. prof. German, Univ. of Notre Dame. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Mellon postdoctoral fellowship, Pontifical Inst. of Mediaeval Studies, 2014–15; distinguished fellow, Notre Dame Inst. for Advanced Study, spring 2018. Women in German Dissertation Prize, 2013. Organizing comm., Young Medievalist Germanists in North America, 2012–16; ch., Religious Cultures Network, German Studies Assn., 2016– . Publications include Ruling the Spirit: Women, Liturgy, and Dominican Reform in Late Medieval Germany (2017); contrib., Medieval Cantors and Their Craft: Music, Liturgy, and the Shaping of History, 800–1500 (2017); articles in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Speculum, Literature and Theology, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Mystics Quarterly, Eighteenth-Century Studies. Statement With ever fewer tenure-track positions for premodern Germanists, we need to find ways to make continued participation in our field both affordable and attractive for those who follow other career paths. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I will take particular interest in two issues: uses of digital technology and alt-ac training and opportunities for graduate students. Online availability of multiple manuscripts allows easy comparison of textual variants, and digitized incunables and prints facilitate analysis of typeface, paratext, layout, and image. Yet when we can access our primary materials from the comfort of our living rooms, our scholarly isolation may increase. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I will work to expand initiatives such as Humanities Commons to encourage networking through writing groups, live conferencing, collaborative digital exhibits, and the like. I will also push to continue digitizing the job application and interview process to increase accessibility and reduce costs for applicants. This point leads to my second area of interest: alt-ac careers and graduate student professionalization. The MLA is taking steps in this direction with the Connected Academics program, and at Notre Dame I am well positioned to watch the 5+1 initiative unfold. I will encourage the MLA to pursue 88 – Candidate Information

action on two fronts: developing joint PhD programs with professional degrees such as the MLIS and further including academics with nontraditional paths in the association, not just through representation but also by developing forums and programs that benefit academics outside the classroom.

LLC 19th- and Early-20th-Century German

658. Vance LaVarr Byrd. Assoc. prof. German, Grinnell Coll. PhD, Univ. of Pennsylvania. Fulbright teaching fellowship (Germany), 1999–2000; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprache / Linguistic Soc. of America summer fellowship, 2002; Stiftung Weimarer Klassik und Kunstsammlungen research fellowship, 2006; Max Kade Foundation dissertation fellowship, 2006–07; participant, Fulbright Commission Seminar for Amer. Faculty in German and German Studies, 2011; German Script Course Award, Quadrangle Historical Research Foundation, 2016. Vice pres. (2009–11) and pres. (2011–13), Iowa chapter, AATG; Comm. on Minority Concerns, Associated Colls. of the Midwest, 2010–13; nominating comm., Goethe Soc. of North America, 2015. Publications include A Pedagogy of Observation: Nineteenth-Century Panoramas, German Literature, and Reading Culture (2017); contrib., Cumaná 1799: Alexander von Humboldt’s Travels between Europe and the Americas (2013), Novel Perspectives on German-Language Comics Studies: History, Pedagogy, Theory (2016); articles in German Studies Review, Germanic Review, Interférences littéraires / Literaire interferenties, Journal of Austrian Studies, Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. Statement I would be honored to represent German studies scholars in the MLA Delegate Assembly. If elected, I would support proposals to improve labor conditions and preserve instruction in foreign languages. I commend the MLA’s call for a living wage, improved job security, health care, and a political voice for all employees at colleges and universities. At a time when the defunding and disregard of higher education threaten the ethical and intellectual core of society, the MLA needs to strengthen its outreach to higher education administrators and elected government officials. Furthermore, our campuses should become more diverse. To this end, I will continue the work of the MLA to stand up for students, staff members, and faculty members of all abilities and social classes as well as for those from LGBTQ communities and first- generation backgrounds. I am especially invested in diversifying the professoriat and its leadership. We should encourage the study of foreign languages and literatures by people of color at the undergraduate level. The organization should cultivate mentorship networks, which provide avenues for intellectual growth and professional development for these members of our community at all stages of their careers. The MLA must continue its dedication to ending discriminatory recruitment, hiring, and promotion practices. Finally, it is a worrying trend that foreign language instruction is increasingly being eliminated from our campuses and as a requirement for study-abroad programs. The MLA should promote foreign languages and literatures and their importance in a global world.

659. Ashley A. Passmore. Asst. prof. German and intl. studies, Texas A&M Univ., College Station. PhD, Univ. of Chicago. Fulbright scholarship (Vienna), 2000; junior fellowship, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften (Vienna), 2000; junior fellowship, Martin Marty Center, Univ. of Chicago Divinity School, 2002; DAAD summer stipend, Freie Universität Berlin, 2003; Goethe Inst. teacher training scholarship (Munich), Aug.–Sept. 2003; Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Lang., Lit., and Culture scholarship, YIVO Inst. for Jewish Research, 2011; summer inst. fellowship, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis Univ., 2015. Anerkennungspreis (for dissertation), Österreichische Gesellschaft für Germanistik, 2007–08. Assn. for Jewish Studies, German Studies Assn., Austrian Studies Assn., Assn. for Israel Studies. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC 19th- and Early-20th-Century German, 2017–Jan. 2022.

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Publications include cotrans., The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (2004); articles or reviews in Austrian Studies, Modern Austrian Literature, Stimulus: Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Germanistik, Journal of Religion. Statement I am very honored to have been nominated to represent this forum. For many years, I was an instructional faculty member, and I deeply value language teaching as an integral part of the scholarly presence of German in higher education. In my departmental service roles, I have explored methods to better demonstrate the profound impacts of language and culture study on scholarship and on undergraduates’ intellectual achievement. My passion for this topic comes from my desire to elevate the status of languages and the humanities in the higher education landscape and to make the case for expanding these fields, especially in public education and in underserved communities. I am also interested in finding ways to elevate the professional status of contingent faculty members. For this reason, if elected, I will work to support and strengthen the assembly’s efforts to communicate and advocate for increasing our value and our visibility in all levels of education. Now, as a research faculty member, I have focused on the composition of the New Germany and its enmeshments in the Middle East dating back into the 19th century. We all know that globalization is nothing new, and I look forward to the scholarship in our field that will continue to uncover the networks, migrations, and surprising encounters that have characterized German-speaking communities around the globe for the past few centuries. It is a very exciting time to be part of this field, and I want to bring our dynamic perspective to the assembly.

LLC Hungarian

660. Lilla Balint. Visiting asst. prof. German studies, Hamilton Coll. PhD, Stanford Univ. Previous appointment: Vanderbilt Univ., 2014–17. DAAD fellowship, 2005– 07; Freie Universität Berlin Exchange Student Award, Stanford Univ., 2011–12; Geballe Dissertation Prize Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, 2013–14; junior fellowship, Inst. for Advanced Studies, Central European Univ., 2017–18 (deferred). Centennial Teaching Award, Stanford Univ., 2012. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Hungarian, 2016–Jan. 2021. Publications include contrib., Gelebte Milieus und virtuelle Räume: Der Raum in der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft (2009), Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge: Zum Werk Barbara Honigmanns (2013); articles in Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature, Germanica. Statement As a member of the executive committee of LLC Hungarian, I have been involved with the programming of the forum’s sessions for the last two annual conventions, devising topics of interest and initiating collaborations with other forums. The latter speaks to one of my central professional convictions: as a comparatist, I am committed to inquiries that cross national boundaries and make sense of literary, cultural, and media phenomena in a comparative fashion, while at the same time remaining attentive to local specificities. Given the marginal position of Hungarian and several other less commonly taught languages, I am dedicated to initiatives that help preserve them in the academy and that enhance their status within the paradigm of world literature. Since I still keenly remember my graduate school experience, one of my pivotal concerns is the state of graduate education in languages and the humanities more broadly. The MLA has ongoing initiatives that address the changing structure of the academic job market and the influx of PhDs into nonacademic positions; these should not only be sustained but need to be expanded. A corollary to the state of graduate education is the growing number of non-tenure-track and adjunct positions, many of which are filled with recent graduates. As one of the largest professional organizations in the humanities, the MLA needs to address the exploitation of contingent labor in the academy and dedicate itself to regulatory efforts.

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661. Zsuzsanna Varga. Lecturer Hungarian, Univ. of Glasgow. PhD, Edinburgh Univ. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Hungarian, 2013–Jan. 2018. Publications include ed., Antal Szerb, Reflections in the Library: Selected Literary Essays 1926– 1944 (2016); coed., Babel Guide to Hungarian Literature (2001), At the End of the Broken Bridge: An Anthology of Contemporary Hungarian Poetry (2005), Skót bárdok, magyar költők [Scottish Bards, Hungarian Poets] (2007), Worlds of Hungarian Writing: National Literature as Intercultural Exchange (2016), Popular Cinemas in East Central Europe: Film Cultures and Histories (2017); guest ed., Cencrastus (2005); contrib., Scotland in Europe (2006), The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, vols. 3 and 4 (2007), Exchanges and Correspondence: The Construction of Feminism (2010), User Studies for Digital Library Development (2012), National Mythologies in Central European TV Series: How J.R. Won the Cold War (2013), Transnational Identities of Women Writers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (2013), Frauenbildung und Emanzipation in der Habsburgermonarchie (2016); articles in Hungarian Cultural Studies Journal, Fiction and Drama (Taiwan), Textualities, Hungarian Studies. Statement I am deeply honored to be nominated for the assembly. As a scholar of English, Scottish, and central European (CEU) comparative literature based in the United Kingdom, I share my North American colleagues’ concern with the precariousness of tenured faculty positions and of modern language programs. Using my transatlantic experience, I would support the MLA’s advocacy for the protection of such programs and the introduction of innovative pedagogical methods that help ensure their survival. As a CEU scholar with research interests in publishing, intellectual history, and popular culture, I have amply collaborated with historians and film scholars. I am strongly committed to the teaching of lesser- taught languages; I am keen to develop, promote, and evaluate learning resources, and would actively lobby for surveying best practices in lesser-taught-language instruction and for promoting expanded language study. As editor of several comparative cultural studies volumes and the Slavonica journal, I have intended to help generate a multiplicity of paradigms as a means to integrating CEU literary studies into broader comparative literature. As a Delegate Assembly member, I propose to create more effective networking opportunities for CEU scholars in order to broaden publishing opportunities in high-ranking journals. As a trained librarian and digital humanities scholar, I would like to advocate the establishment of a special- interest group for CEU digital humanities. I am offering commitment and professionalism.

LLC Medieval and Renaissance Italian

662. Gerry Milligan. Assoc. prof. Italian, Coll. of Staten Island, City Univ. of New York. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Interim dean, Div. of Humanities and Social Sciences, Coll. of Staten Island, 2017– . I Tatti Fellowship, Harvard Univ. Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2007–08. Publications include coed., The Poetics of Masculinity in Early Modern Italy and Spain (2010); contrib., Seeking Real Truths: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Machiavelli (2007), Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England (2007), Oxford Bibliographies Online (2012), A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion, vol. 3 (2017); articles in Italica, Forum Italicum. Statement Over the past four years, I have been chair of the Department of World Languages and Literatures at a public institution and have witnessed firsthand the potential that administrative bodies have in shaping institutions. In my own experience, MLA reports on retention rates and earning potential for foreign language speakers have significantly influenced college policies. With credible and evidence-based information, scholars of Italian and foreign languages more generally can counter both the cultural trend of emphasizing professional programs and the academic trend of dismissing the premodern era. The MLA is the best platform for such work, and the association can be particularly influential in the field of Italian studies. Thoughtful intervention can boost a field whose enrollment numbers are declining as well as address the needs of scholars of the medieval and Renaissance periods. Those of us who conduct research on medieval and Renaissance texts face particular challenges—necessary travel to Italian archives and libraries, difficulty Candidate Information – 91

in securing publication venues as presses discontinue their series in premodern fields. The MLA has a unique prominence and can help ensure the flourishing of Italian medieval and Renaissance studies. What is needed is the promotion of grant funding for research on premodern topics as well as strategic intervention with academic presses to encourage the publication of works on the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

663. Sherry Roush. Prof. Italian, Penn State Univ., University Park. PhD, Yale Univ. Folger Inst. grant, 2000; Bogliasco Foundation research fellowship, 2006; participant, Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, June 2017. Best Commentaries of 2011–12 (for Selected Philosophical Poems), Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary; finalist (for Speaking Spirits), The Bridge Book Award (Amer. nonfiction category), Casa delle Letterature of the Rome Municipality, Embassy of the United States in Rome, and Amer. Initiative for Italian Culture, 2016. Panelist, NEH, 2003; evaluator, New Faculty Fellows Program, ACLS, 2009. Juror, Zerilli-Marimò Prize for Italian Fiction, 2003. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Medieval and Renaissance Italian Lit., 2001–05. Ed. or advisory boards: Penn State Romance Studies, Penn State Univ. Press, 2004– ; Arts and Humanities Book Series, Penn State Univ. Press, 2007–08; Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary, 2008– . Publications include Hermes’ Lyre: Italian Poetic Self-Commentary from Dante to Tommaso Campanella (2002), Speaking Spirits: Ventriloquizing the Dead in Renaissance Italy (2015); ed. and trans., Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella: A Bilingual Edition, 2 vols. (2011); coed., The Medieval Marriage Scene: Prudence, Passion, Policy (2005); articles in Bruniana & Campanelliana, Italica, Italian Culture, Quaderni d’italianistica, Viator, Renaissance Quarterly; translations in Journal of Italian Translation, Gradiva, YIP: Yale Italian Poetry, Ricerca Research Recherche. Statement I am honored to be considered to serve in the Delegate Assembly representing the interests of Medieval and Renaissance Italian. A member of the MLA since 1998, I continue to advocate for the recognition of all aspects of early Italian culture and its appreciation, including literary and interdisciplinary scholarship, language, translation, commentary, and paleography, and their pedagogical applications in the twenty-first century.

LLC Japanese since 1900

664. Christopher Laing Hill. Asst. prof. Japanese lit., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. PhD, Columbia Univ. Previous appointments: Columbia Univ., 2012–14, 2010–11; Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2011; Yale Univ., 2001–10; Harvard Univ., 2000–01. Postdoctoral fellowship, Reischauer Inst. of Japanese Studies, Harvard Univ., 1999–2000; Japan Foundation research fellowship, 2007; postdoctoral fellowship, Freie Universität Berlin, 2014. Visiting appointment: École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales, 2011. Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication, Yale Univ., 2008. Educ. consultant, Japan Soc. of New York, 2006–12. Publications include National History and the World of Nations: Capital, State, and the Rhetoric of History in Japan, France, and the United States (2008); contrib., New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan (1997), Turning Points in Historiography: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (2002), Perversion and Modern Japan: Psychoanalysis, Literature, Culture (2010), Global Intellectual History (2013); articles in Journal of Japanese Studies, Literature Compass, Modern Language Quarterly, Representations, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Hihyô kûkan (Tokyo). Statement I have been concerned for many years that the study of Japanese literature in North America is cut off from the study of other literatures not only by language but also by methodology. As a scholar of comparative literature and intellectual history, I have tried to show by example that studies of Japanese literature and thought can contribute to larger disciplinary discussions. In the last several years, the forums related to East Asian literatures have made great progress gaining institutional recognition from the MLA. 92 – Candidate Information

The increase in forum-organized sessions is invaluable. One objective of the forum’s representative in the Delegate Assembly is to protect and expand the institutional space for Japanese literature at the MLA. I believe the next essential step for the forum is to encourage participation of scholars of Japanese literature in special sessions, both through panels organized by members of the forum and through panels organized by scholars in other fields. Thus, the forum’s representative in the assembly should also work to ensure that a wide range of special sessions are receptive to the inclusion of scholars of Japanese and other East Asian literatures.

665. Kyoko Omori. Assoc. prof. Japanese, Hamilton Coll. PhD, Ohio State Univ. Ch., Dept. of East Asian Langs. and Lits., Hamilton Coll., 2014– . Freeman Foundation research grant, 2004; research fellowship, Intl. Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2006–07; postdoctoral fellowship, SSRC / Japan Soc. for the Promotion of Science, 2007–08; Japan Foundation grant, 2014. Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award for Excellence in Japanese Lang. Teaching, Assn. for Asian Studies (AAS), 1998. Project dir., Comparative Japanese Film Archive, Digital Humanities Initiative, Hamilton Coll., 2010– . Hamako Ito Chaplin Memorial Award for Excellence in Japanese Lang. Teaching Selection Comm., 2009–14 (ch., 2013–14). MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 2008–Jan. 2011. Publications include Crossroads in Context (documentary film, 2016); contrib., The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (2005), Japan: A Traveler’s Literary Companion (2006), The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan (2006), Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913–1938 (2008), Pacific Rim Modernisms (2009), Amerika e no shōkei [Adoration for America] (2009), Senyo-ki bungaku no tamen-sei [The Diversity of Occupation-Period Literature] (2010); articles in Japan Forum, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal. Statement One of the recent trends in higher education is the decreasing emphasis on the teaching of foreign languages and cultures. Even at liberal arts colleges, the visibility of and resources given to foreign language and culture programs have been diminishing in relation to the physical, information, and social sciences. This trend threatens not only teaching and research in Japan studies and studies of other languages and cultures but also historically popular programs such as French and German. Ironically, such retrenchment is taking place in the post-9/11 world, a time when understanding different traditions and people through studies of language and culture have even more pressing urgency. Also, the interdependence that characterizes the contemporary world and the interactions and mutual (though admittedly asymmetrical) influences among different cultures require us to reconfigure the ways we study and teach foreign languages and cultural productions. As someone trained in both language pedagogy and literature who has also directed the Asian Studies Program and the East Asian languages and literatures department at my home institution, my goal as a delegate would be to improve communication among the various aspects of teaching and scholarship in Japanese and other languages and cultures and to strengthen the pipeline between K–12 teachers and instructors at the college level. If elected, I would like to work toward helping Japanese language and culture programs and departments gain a voice at the MLA.

LLC 20th- and 21st-Century Latin American

666. Jon Beasley-Murray. Assoc. prof. Hispanic studies, Univ. of British Columbia. PhD, Duke Univ. Honorable mention (for Posthegemony), Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, MLA, 2010. Publications include Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America (2010); guest ed., Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies (2002); guest coed., Angelaki (2001), Third World Quarterly (2009); contrib., Cultura Popular: Studies in Spanish and Latin American Popular Culture (2002), Nuevas perspectivas desde/sobre América Latina: El desafío de los estudios culturales (2nd ed., 2002), Ruins of Modernity (2010); articles in LASA Forum, Iberoamericana, Revista de crítica cultural, Bulletin of Latin Candidate Information – 93

American Research, Cultural Critique, Angelaki, Dispositio/n: American Journal of Cultural Histories and Theories, South Atlantic Quarterly.

667. Silvia Spitta. Robert E. Maxwell 1923 Prof. of Arts and Sciences and prof. Spanish and comparative lit., Dartmouth Coll. PhD, Univ. of Oregon. Bunting fellowship, Radcliffe Coll., 1999–2000; faculty fellow, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth Coll., 2001–02. Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award (for Misplaced Objects), Inst. for Humanities Research, Arizona State Univ., 2010. Panelist, NEH, 2002. Exec. comm., Intl. ASA, 2009–11, 2011–14. Ed. or advisory boards: Writing in Latinidad: Autobiographical Voices of U.S. Latinos/as, Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2000–13; Reencounters with Colonialism: New Perspectives on the Americas, Dartmouth Coll. Press, 2002–12; Revista iberoamericana, 2008–12; Américas entre comillas: Crítica, cultura y pensamiento interamericanos, Linkgua Ediciones. Publications include Between Two Waters: Narratives of Transculturation in Latin America (1995), Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas (2009); coed., Más allá de la ciudad letrada: Crónicas y espacios urbanos (2003), Des/memorias: Culturas y prácticas mnemónicas en América Latina y el Caribe (2016); guest coed., Comparative Literature (2009); contrib., Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997), Ángel Rama y los estudios latinoamericanos (1997), Roberto Fernández Retamar y los estudios latinoamericanos (2000), Critical Regionalism (2016), Cruzar las Américas: Perspectivas hemisféricas en lenguajes, literaturas y culturas visuales (2016); articles in Film Quarterly, Postcolonialist, Studies in Hispanic Cinema, Comparative American Studies: An International Journal, E-misférica, Dissidences: Hispanic Journal of Theory and Criticism, Boundary 2, PMLA, Revista iberoamericana, Estudios, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Americas Review, Hispamérica, Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana. Statement The current concerted and unprecedented attacks in the United States and across Latin America on institutions of higher learning take aim at the possibility of holding the kind of measured and informed public discussion that is intrinsic to any democracy anywhere. These attacks have heightened the importance of the mission of the MLA in the United States like never before. The role of Latin American studies has also never been more central—not only in terms of grounding the MLA in its hemispheric American context but also in terms of contesting the virulent stereotypes of Latinxs currently being wielded to divide communities across the country. From the murders of the forty-two students at Ayotzinapa to the threat of suspending DACA to the mass deportation of undocumented minorities, we need to focus on the intertwined, interconnected cultures and histories that have shaped the hemisphere north and south for centuries.

LLC Occitan

668. Courtney Wells. Asst. prof. French and francophone studies, Hobart and William Smith Colls. PhD, Boston Univ. Mellon summer inst. fellowship, 2006. Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dept. of Romance Studies, Boston Univ., 2006–07, 2007–08; Robert Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Translation, Boston Univ., 2007. Bibliographer, Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX, 2012– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Occitan, 2013–Jan. 2018. Publications include article in Tenso: Bulletin of the Société Guilhem IX. Statement It is more important now than ever to promote the study of foreign languages, cultures, and literatures in the university. As programs are cut or defunded, it is essential that we articulate the benefit of these studies within the curricula of universities for fostering relationships both at home and abroad and for teaching different perspectives on subjects that include history, literature, politics, philosophy, and science. As a specialist, teacher, and researcher of Occitan language, culture, and literature in France, Catalonia, and Italy, I will advocate not just for the study of major world languages, such as French, but also for the study of what are often called the minor cultures of France and of Europe, such as Occitan and Catalan. As the current 94 – Candidate Information

debate in Spain about Catalonia’s right to hold a referendum on its independence shows, the role and status of diverse cultures within modern nation states needs to be reevaluated and rearticulated. I would be honored to represent the interests of Occitan Studies (and those who teach them) both within our institutions and the MLA as the delegate representing LLC Occitan in the MLA Delegate Assembly.

669. Eliza Zingesser. Asst. prof. French, Columbia Univ. PhD, Princeton Univ. Exec. comm., Inst. for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Columbia Univ., 2016– . Fulbright fellowship (France), 2005–06; Édouard Morot-Sir Fellowship in Lit., Institut Français d’Amérique, 2011; Grace Frank Dissertation Grant, Medieval Acad. of America, 2011; dissertation fellowship, Josephine De Karman Fellowship Trust, 2011–12; research fellowship, Clare Hall, Univ. of Cambridge, 2012–15; Solmsen Fellowship, Inst. for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 2014–15; Sovern/Columbia Affiliated Fellow, Amer. Acad. in Rome, May 2017. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Provençal Lang. and Lit., 2010–Jan. 2015. Ed. board (2014–15) and asst. ed. (2015– ), Romanic Review. Publications include articles in New Medieval Literatures, French Studies, Modern Philology, Viator, MLN, Études rabelaisiennes. Statement Especially at the present moment, the MLA serves an indispensable role in the public sphere. I am running for a seat in the Delegate Assembly because I fully support its mission and would like to continue to be involved in its operations (I previously served a term on the executive committee of the Occitan forum in its earlier guise—the Discussion Group on Provençal Language and Literature—from 2010 to 2015). I am especially interested in ensuring that the ever-growing body of non-tenure-track faculty members gain proportional representation in governing bodies, both within universities and within the MLA. I am also committed to making sure that the MLA Annual Convention remains as accessible as possible to all participants.

LLC Scottish

670. John Corbett. Intl. fellow lit., Univ. of São Paulo. PhD, Univ. of Glasgow. Previous appointments: Univ. of Macau, 2011–17; Univ. of Glasgow, 1993– 2010. Intl. fellow (Univ. of São Paulo), Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Educ. Personnel, Brazilian Ministry of Educ., 2017– . Honorary appointments: Univ. of Glasgow, 2011– ; Fuzhou Univ. of Technology, 2014– . Advisory comm., Scottish Lang. Dictionaries Limited, 2002–10; advisory comm. ch., Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation, Natl. Library of Scotland, 2005–10. Council member (1998–2006) and current vice pres., Assn. for Scottish Literary Studies; Intl. Assn. for Langs. in Intercultural Communciation; Intl. Assn. for the Study of Scottish Lits. MLA activities: exec. comm., Discussion Group on Scottish Lit., 2005–09. Ed., Language and Intercultural Communication, 2005–09. Publications include Language and Scottish Literature (1997), Written in the Language of the Scottish Nation: A History of Literary Translation into Scots (1999), An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching (2003), Sir David Lyndsay’s A Satire of the Three Estates (2009); coauthor, Beginning Old English (2007; 2nd ed., 2013), Understanding Grammar in Scotland Today (2009), Exploring English with Online Corpora: An Introduction (2009; 2nd ed., 2017), English in Medical Education: An Intercultural Approach to Teaching Language and Values (2012), Spelling Scots: The Orthography of Literary Scots, 1700–2000 (2015); coed., The Edinburgh Companion to Scots (2003), Serving Twa Maisters: Five Classic Plays in Scots Translation (2005); contrib., The Power of Words: Essays in Lexicography, Lexicology, and Semantics (2006), Ethically Speaking: Voice and Values in Modern Scottish Writing (2006), The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature (2007), Voices in Translation: Bridging Cultural Divides (2007), The Media in Scotland (2008), The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature (2009), Scotland as Science Fiction (2011), The Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Drama (2011), Standards of English: Codified Varieties around the World (2012), World Englishes (2013), Scots: Studies in Its Candidate Information – 95

Literature and Language (2013), The Edinburgh Companion to Liz Lochhead (2013), Language in Scotland: Corpus-Based Studies (2013), The Scottish Sixties: Reading, Rebellion, Revolution? (2013), Sociolinguistics in Scotland (2014), The International Companion to Edwin Morgan (2015), The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System (2016); articles in Scottish Literary Review, English Language Teaching Journal, Scottish Language, International Journal of Scottish Literature, Translation and Literature, TradTerm, Cadernos de tradução, Scotlands. Statement Since I joined the MLA in 2005, I have sought a higher profile for Scottish literature in the North American academy and a greater awareness of the MLA outside North America, particularly in the Scottish literary community. To this end, I have worked on initiatives such as the establishment of the Scottish Writing Exhibition at the MLA convention (a partnership with Creative Scotland and the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, of which I am currently a vice president). The Scottish Writing Exhibition has grown over the past twelve years from a small book display on a tartan tablecloth to one of the liveliest stalls in the book exhibit. I have promoted the attendance of contemporary writers from Scotland at a number of MLA conventions and remain convinced of the value of interactions between scholars and contemporary writers. I have also worked with many others in proposing special sessions and joint panels on a wide range of Scottish literary topics, involving academics from outside and within North America. As a member of the MLA who is based outside North America, I understand the value of relationships with cognate bodies such as the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures and the European Society for the Study of English. In today’s interconnected world, there are ever-increasing opportunities for the MLA and other bodies to participate in joint ventures and international collaborative scholarly projects at individual and institutional levels.

671. JoEllen DeLucia. Assoc. prof. English, Central Michigan Univ. PhD, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. Dir., Women and Gender Studies Program, Central Michigan Univ. Folger Shakespeare Library seminar grant, 2003; dissertation fellowship, Center for Eighteenth- Century Studies, Indiana Univ., 2005–06; ASECS travel grant, 2006; Mellon fellowship, Huntington Library, 2008–09; Professional Staff Congress research grant, City Univ. of New York (CUNY), 2009–10; visiting fellow, Chawton House Library, 2009–10; NEH summer seminar fellowship, 2010; Mellon fellowship, Center for the Humanities, CUNY, 2010–11. Award for best grad. paper, Intl. Gothic Assn., 2005; Catherine Macaulay Prize (for best grad. paper on a feminist or gender studies subject), Women’s Caucus, ASECS, 2006. Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Soc., ASECS, Aphra Behn Soc. for Women in the Arts. Publications include A Feminine Enlightenment: British Women Writers and the Philosophy of Progress, 1759–1820 (2015); contrib., Representing Place in British Literature and Culture, 1660–1830: From Local to Global (2013), Called to Civil Existence: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (2014), Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism, and the Gothic (2014); articles in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, Women’s Writing, Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature. Statement Although I have belonged to the MLA for several years, this is my first opportunity to serve in a formal capacity. I am honored to be nominated to represent LLC Scottish, and I believe strongly in the value of understanding literature from particular national, cultural, as well as historical locations. I received my PhD from Indiana in 2007. Since then, I have worked as an assistant professor at urban and rural public universities. I have seen both institutions move toward measuring disciplinary value in terms of career outcomes. As a result, I am particularly committed to the MLA’s mission to raise the profile of the humanities and make visible our disciplines’ contributions to society and the workforce. Finding ways to get qualitative and quantitative data into the hands of not just department chairs but also the junior and untenured members of our profession who teach the bulk of our introductory courses would be one way of doing this. I have also been a member of two different faculty unions. I support the MLA’s commitment to inclusiveness and to fostering optimal working conditions for all of its members, not just those in tenure-track or tenured positions. Finally, since becoming an associate professor, I have also directed my university’s Women and 96 – Candidate Information

Gender Studies Program. This has provided me with additional insight into the ways the humanities are perceived by those outside of our disciplines. These are the concerns and experiences that would inform my positions as a delegate.

LLC Slavic and East European

672. Rebecca Jane Stanton. Adjunct asst. prof. Slavic langs., Columbia Univ. PhD, Columbia Univ. Bazarko Fellowship for Ukrainian Studies, Harriman Inst., Columbia Univ., 2002–03; Fulbright-Hays fellowship (Russia), summer 2005; postdoctoral fellowship, Davis Center, Harvard Univ., fall 2006; Title VIII research and lang. training fellowship, spring 2007; participant, STARTALK Inst. for Teachers of Russian, Middlebury Lang. Schools, summer 2014. Exec. board (2009–13) and pres. (2012– 13), Northeastern Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Conference; vice pres., AATSEEL, 2012–14; Assn. for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Russian and Eurasian, 2012–Jan. 2017; Delegate Assembly, 2014–Jan. 2017. Publications include Isaac Babel and the Self-Invention of Odessan Modernism (2012); contrib., Mapping the Feminine: Russian Women and Cultural Difference (2008), Rites of Place: Public Commemoration in Russia and Eastern Europe (2013), Teaching Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (2014); articles in Вопросы литературы, Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne [Poznan Slavic Studies], Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies.

673. Jonathan Stone. Assoc. prof. Russian, Franklin and Marshall Coll. PhD, Univ. of California, Berkeley. Modern Lang. Initiative grant, Mellon Foundation, 2017. Exec. Council and ch., Conference Program Comm., AATSEEL, 2014– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC Slavic and East European, 2012–Jan. 2017. Publications include Historical Dictionary of Russian Literature (2013), The Institutions of Russian Modernism: Conceptualizing, Publishing, and Reading Symbolism (2017); contrib., Briusovskie chteniia (2013), Reading in Russia: Practices of Reading and Literary Communication, 1760–1930 (2014); articles in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, Russian Review, Slavic and East European Journal. Statement Our professional scholarly organizations are the public face of the humanities. They are at the forefront of the increasingly resonant efforts to reaffirm the centrality of scholarly inquiry, debate questions of the relevance and identity of our fields, and establish the public presence of our subjects. It has been my pleasure and privilege to serve several professional organizations over the past decade. I am a member of the AATSEEL Program Committee and, since 2014, the committee chair. I sit on the AATSEEL Executive Council and work with its leadership to mount the national annual conference and shape the future of the organization. I have also been a member of the executive committee of LLC Slavic and East European and worked to organize numerous Slavic and comparative panels. At my own institution, I’m a member of a five- person humanities initiative tasked with revitalizing student interest in the humanities and founding a Humanities Center. These pursuits all reflect my strong desire to connect my interests and field with a broader audience. I believe that it is essential to situate academia within the conversations about society, politics, and justice that are central to the life of our communities. In this context, I strive to promote critical thinking and informed discussion. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would work to ensure that the MLA continues its leading role in this mission and serves as a crucial ally in spreading the practices and values we prize.

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LLC 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish and Iberian

674. Ana M. Hontanilla. Assoc. prof. Spanish, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro. PhD, Washington Univ. in St. Louis. John Carter Brown Library fellowship, spring 2013; Newberry Library fellowship, summer 2015. Board member (2011–14) and Essay Prize Comm. (2012–13), Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies; exec. board, Ibero-Amer. Soc. for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2011–14; Grad. Student Prize Comm., ASECS, 2016–19. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LLC 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish and Iberian, 2012–Jan. 2017. Publications include El gusto de la razón: Debates de arte y moral en el siglo XVIII español (2010); contrib., Word and Image in the Long Eighteenth Century: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (2008.9), Ilustración en el mundo hispánico: Preámbulo de las independencias (2009), Francisco Mariano Nipho: El nacimiento de la prensa y de la crítica literaria periodística en la España del siglo XVIII (2015); articles in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Revista de estudios hispánicos, Revista hispánica moderna, Dieciocho, Decimonónica, Boletín de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, Eighteenth- Century Current Bibliography. Statement I am deeply concerned about the defunding of the humanities in public education, particularly in minority-serving institutions. Public institutions must coordinate efforts to demonstrate the importance of the humanities in higher education for minority students. My personal belief is that Spanish is not a foreign language but a second language in the United States. I realize this issue is deeply political not only at the national level but also at the department level within a given university. Nevertheless, arguing in favor of a second or a third official language for this country (any surviving native American language should also be official) will broaden United States citizens’ multicultural understanding of their history and traditions.

675. Akiko Tsuchiya. Prof. Spanish, Washington Univ. in St. Louis. PhD, Cornell Univ. NEH summer stipend, 1990; NEH fellowship, 1994–95; research grant, Prog. for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Univs., 2002; faculty fellow, Center for the Humanities, Washington Univ. in St. Louis (WUSTL), spring 2007. Kercheville Prize (for best essay), Anales galdosianos, 1988; Certificate of Special Recognition for Excellence in Mentoring, Grad. Student Senate, WUSTL, 2007; Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award, Grad. Student Senate, WUSTL, 2017. Board of directors (1998–2001, 2008–10) and pres. (2015–17), Intl. Assn. of Galdós Scholars. Ed., Revista de estudios hispánicos, 2002–14. Ed. boards: Revista de estudios hispánicos, 1992–2002, 2014–17; Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 1993; Anales galdosianos, 2007–17; Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2012–17; Letras femeninas, 2015–17. Publications include Images of the Sign: Semiotic Consciousness in the Novels of Benito Pérez Galdós (1990), Marginal Subjects: Gender and Deviance in Fin-de-siècle Spain (2011); coed., Empire’s End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World (2016); contrib., A Sesquicentennial Tribute to Galdós, 1843–1993 (1993), Intertextual Pursuits: Literary Mediations in Modern Spanish Narrative (1998), Moveable Margins: The Narrative Art of Carme Riera (1999), El espejo y la máscara: Ensayos críticos sobre la trayectoria narrativa de Carme Riera (2000), Women’s Narrative and Film in Twentieth-Century Spain: A World of Difference(s) (2002), The Cambridge Companion to the Spanish Novel: From 1600 to the Present (2003), Mapping the Fiction of Cristina Fernández Cubas (2005), Género y géneros: Escritura y escritoras iberoamericanas (2006), La literatura de Emilia Pardo Bazán (2009), No hay nación para este sexo: La Re(d)pública trasatlántica de las letras: Escritoras españolas y latinoamericanas (1824–1936) (2015), Sexualidades periféricas: Consolidaciones literarias y fílmicas en la España de fin de siglo XIX y fin de milenio (2016); articles in Anales galdosianos, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Hispanic Review, Ínsula, Letras peninsulares, MLN, Revista canadiense de estudios hispánicos, Revista hispánica moderna, Romance Quarterly, Romance Studies, Tesserae: Journal of Iberian and Latin-American Studies.

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Statement As a representative for LLC 18th- and 19th-Century Spanish and Iberian, I will advocate for maintaining the continued relevance and visibility of these areas of Iberian studies within the MLA and the academy as a whole. I am especially committed to expanding the network of young scholars in the field through active mentoring and targeted efforts to encourage their participation in MLA-sponsored events. Given these challenging times in the academy and the nation at large, the MLA can play a significant role in helping to secure job security and fair labor practices for contingent faculty members and in advocating for the inclusion and representation of the many diverse communities, including women, people of color, GLBTQ communities, religious minorities, and disabled persons, in all areas of the profession. The organization, I believe, can provide additional infrastructural support—such as professional workshops and funding for travel to the convention—not only for graduate students and junior faculty members at institutions with limited resources but also for the growing number of contingent faculty members in the profession. Finally, as humanists, we need to join forces to combat attempts by university administrations to reduce the number of tenure-track positions and to dismantle or otherwise “restructure” our programs, particularly those in non-English languages and literatures (including Hispanic studies programs, which have become a recent target)—trends that will gradually undermine academic freedom and diversity.

LSL Language and Society

676. Andrea Adolph. Assoc. prof. English and women’s studies, Penn State Univ., New Kensington. PhD, Louisiana State Univ. Dir. of Academic Affairs, Penn State Univ., New Kensington. David Hoch Memorial Award for Excellence in Service, Ohio Campus Compact, 2008. Grant reviewer, Learn and Serve America, 2003, 2006, 2011. Exec. comm., Amer. Council on Educ. Women’s Network: Pennsylvania, 2016– . MLA activities: forum exec. comm., LSL Lang. and Society, 2012–Jan. 2017. Assoc. ed., Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 2008– ; section ed., Journal of Community Service in Higher Education, 2008–12. Publications include Food and Femininity in Twentieth-Century British Women’s Fiction (2009); coed., Bite to Eat Place: An Anthology of Contemporary Food Poetry and Poetic Prose (1995); contrib., Material Women, 1750–1950: Consuming Desires and Collecting Practices (2009), Over Ten Million Served: Gendered Service in Language and Literature Workplaces (2010); articles in Currents in Teaching and Learning, Modern Fiction Studies, Journal of Modern Literature, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Virginia Woolf Miscellany, Shaw: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies. Statement As a delegate, I will encourage collaboration and dialogue across the boundaries of disciplines and subfields. LSL Language and Society incorporates interests in writing, rhetoric, linguistics, and other forms of communication as they shape and manifest themselves in public, social practices. At this time in the life of the humanities, we have a unique opportunity to understand the importance of how language not only impacts a generalized society but also frames the work of the academy, so that its importance is clarified for a wider population. Collaboration within our membership is increasingly relevant in an age when coalition building is critical to how we move forward as a profession.

677. Jerry Lee. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of California, Irvine. PhD, Univ. of Arizona. Publications include The Politics of Translingualism: After Englishes (2017); coed., Korean Englishes in Transnational Contexts (2017); contrib., Crossing Divides: Exploring Translingual Writing Pedagogies and Programs (2017); articles in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, National Identities, College Composition and Communication, College English, Explicator.

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MS Screen Arts and Culture

678. Christina Gerhardt. Assoc. prof. German, Univ. of Hawai‘i, Mānoa. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Previous appointment: Univ. of California, Berkeley, 2000–06. Young Scholar Award, German Historical Inst., May 2004; DAAD grant, Center for Contemporary German Lit., Washington Univ. in St. Louis, June 2006; postdoctoral fellow, Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, 2006–07; Fulbright Commission research grant, 2007; visiting scholar, Minda de Gunzberg Center for European Studies, Harvard Univ., 2008; DAAD summer seminar fellowship, 2008 (Cornell Univ.), 2015 (Univ. of Chicago); summer research fellow, Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Postdam, 2009; DAAD faculty research grant, 2011; Fulbright/DAAD summer seminar fellowship (Leipzig), 2014; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2017. Visiting appointment: Columbia Univ., 2008–10. Fulbright Commission selection comm., 2012–14; DAAD Research Ambassador, 2013–17; Marshall Scholarship selection comm., 2016–17. Pres., Hawai‘i chapter, AATG, 2012–17; Grad. Student Essay Prize Selection Comm. (ch., 2015–16), DAAD Article Prize Selection Comm., (ch., 2016–17), Environmental Studies Interdisciplinary Network cocoordinator (2017–19), and exec. board (2018–20), German Studies Assn. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., MS Screen Arts and Culture, 2015–Jan. 2020; PMLA Advisory Comm., 2016–19. Ed. or advisory boards: Transit: A Journal of Travel, Migration, and Multiculturalism in the German-Speaking World, 2004–10; Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2009– ; Routledge Environmental Humanities, 2016– . Publications include guest ed., New German Critique (2006), Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture (2017); contrib., The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (2nd ed., 2004), Bombs Away!: Representing the Air War over Europe and Japan (2006), The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest, 1500 to the Present (2009), Critical Theory and Animal Liberation (2011), Culture in the Anteroom: The Legacies of Siegfried Kracauer (2012), The Place of Politics in German Film (2014); articles in New German Critique, Women in German Yearbook, Gegenwartsliteratur, ZeitRäume: Potsdamer Almanach des Zentrums für Zeithistorische Forschung, Seminar, German Studies Review, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, Film Criticism, Wide Screen. Statement As a long-term member of the MLA (twenty-year anniversary this year), I have served the organization in a variety of capacities. Currently, I serve on the PMLA Advisory Committee and on the executive committee for MS Screen Arts and Culture. And I have regularly organized, moderated, and presented on panels. I enjoy working with and for the MLA because I firmly believe that the MLA is a key professional organization for engaging with and promoting the humanities. The humanities continue to face enormous challenges. Yet the work of all languages and literatures has never been more vital to ensuring and promoting a polyvocal democracy. I consistently work to further these goals by advocating for a range of voices, including a full range of languages and literatures and younger scholars, promoting alt-ac career paths, and strengthening the working conditions of precarious adjunct faculty members. If elected, I would continue this work through the Delegate Assembly’s vital conversations on these and other pivotal topics. These conversations have not always been easy, but I believe open debate is vital. If elected, I would work to listen and include the range of voices that constitute the MLA.

679. Rebecca A. Wanzo. Assoc. prof. women, gender, and sexuality studies, Washington Univ. in St. Louis (WUSTL). PhD, Duke Univ. Assoc. dir., Center for the Humanities, WUSTL. Previous appointment: Ohio State Univ., 2003–11. Mellon fellowship, 1997; Ford Foundation predoctoral fellowship, 1999; Erskine Peters Dissertation Fellowship, Univ. of Notre Dame, 2002; Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, 2006; visiting fellow, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth Coll., 2007; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2011; fellow, Soc. for the Humanities, Cornell Univ., 2015. Russel B. Nye Award (for outstanding article), Journal of Popular Culture, 2010. Fellowship application reviewer, Ford Foundation, 2015; article prize 100 – Candidate Information

comm., African American Review, 2016. Delegate Assembly (2013–16) and Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize Comm. (2015–17), NWSA; Exec. Board, Comics Studies Soc., 2014–16; ASA delegate to Japanese Assn. for Amer. Studies, 2017; Soc. for Cinema and Media Studies. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., MS Screen Arts and Culture, 2016–Jan. 2021. Ed. or advisory boards: Feminist Formations, 2013– ; Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, 2016– ; Journal of Comics and Culture, 2016– ; Feminist Media Studies, Univ. of Illinois Press. Publications include The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling (2009); guest coed., Feminist Foundations (2013); contrib., Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara (2007), Encyclopedia of African-American Literature (2007), African American Culture and Legal Discourse (2009), Multicultural Comics: From Zap to Blue Beetle (2010), Encyclopedia of African American History (2010), African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings (2013), The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (2015), The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory (2016); articles in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies, Transformative Works and Cultures, Feminist Studies, Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention, Washington University Journal of Law and Public Policy, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Journal of Popular Culture, differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora.

RCWS History and Theory of Rhetoric

680. Donnie Sackey. Asst. prof. English, Wayne State Univ. PhD, Michigan State Univ. Center for Urban Responses to Environment Stressors grant, 2014–16; Inst. for Population Studies, Health Assessment, Administration, Services, and Economics grant, 2015–17; Natl. Inst. of Health grant, 2016–17. Heart and Soul Award, Michigan Campus Compact, 2011; President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Wayne State Univ., 2017. Stonewall Service Award Comm. (2014–15), Technical and Scientific Communication Awards Comm. (2014–15), Resolutions Comm. (2015–16), James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award Comm. (2015–16), Lavender Rhetorics Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship Comm. (ch., 2016–17), CCCC. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., RCWS History and Theory of Rhetoric, 2016–Jan. 2021. Managing ed., Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture; ed. board, Community Literacy Journal. Publications include contrib., Ecology, Writing Theory, and New Media: Writing Ecology (2012), Cultures of Copyright (2014), Rhetoric, through Everyday Things (2016); articles in Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Computers and Composition, Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society.

681. Christa Teston. Assoc. prof. English, Ohio State Univ., Columbus. PhD, Kent State Univ. Technical and Scientific Communication Award (for best article reporting qualitative or quantitative research), CCCC, 2010. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., RCWS History and Theory of Rhetoric, 2017–Jan. 2022. Series coed., New Directions in Rhetoric and Materiality, Ohio State Univ. Press, 2015– ; book review ed., Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 2013– . Ed. boards: Written Communication, 2013– ; Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, 2014– ; Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, 2015– ; Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, 2017– . Publications include Bodies in Flux: Scientific Methods for Negotiating Medical Uncertainty (2017); guest coed., Technical Communication Quarterly (2015); contrib., Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research (2012), The New Digital Scholar: Exploring and Enriching the Research and Writing Practices of Nextgen Students (2013), Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities (2015), Rhetoric, through Everyday Things (2016), Topologies as Techniques for a Post-critical Rhetoric (2017); articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Journal of Medical Humanities, Present Tense, Technical Communication Quarterly, Intercom, Digital Culture and Education, Written Communication.

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Statement As a forum member, I am eager to represent my colleagues in rhetoric and writing studies on matters regarding the uneven distribution of resources in both the workplace and the classroom. My background in studying deliberation amid uncertainty, precarious rhetorics, and institutional flux prepares me for this role.

RCWS Literacy Studies

682. Megan Fahey. Grad. student English, West Virginia Univ., Morgantown. MFA, West Virginia Univ. (WVU). Institutional service (WVU): volunteer, West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, Dept. of English, 2014–16; sec., Council of Writers, 2015–16; program asst., Center for Writing Excellence, Dept. of English, 2015–17. Stephen Crocker Fellowship, WVU Alumni Assn., 2016. Finalist, Appalachian Heritage Fiction Writing Award, Shepherd Univ., 2015; Zierold Creating Writing Award, Dept. of English, WVU, 2016; Outstanding Grad. Teaching Asst., Dept. of English, WVU, 2016. Judge, Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, 2016–17. Membership management specialist, Council of Eds. of Learned Journals, 2017. Ed. in chief, Cheat River Review (WVU), 2014–17. Conference presentations: West Virginia Undergrad. Research Symposium, Mar. 2012; South Carolina Council of Teachers of English, 2013, 2014; Confab: A Conference on Student Learning, Coastal Carolina Univ., Feb. 2013; Popular Culture Assn. / Amer. Culture Assn., 2014; 21st Century Englishes Conference (grad. conference, Bowling Green State Univ.), Oct. 2016. Publications include creative writing in Southern Humanities Review, Limestone: Art. Prose. Poetry., Avalon Literary Review, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Helen: A Literary Magazine, Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Bitterzoet Magazine, Blinders Journal, Fabula Argentea, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Cease, Cows, Allegory Ezine. Statement While I am a fiction writer by trade, my work as a research assistant at West Virginia University was underpinned by notions of scholarly workflow, inclusivity, and access. As a junior writing program administrator, I reviewed programmatic and curricular matters—like grade appeals, transfer equivalencies, and updates to the first-year writing textbooks—in addition to fulfilling my responsibilities as a mentor, organizing professional development seminars, and conducting peer observations to ensure that each of our students received an active learning experience in the first-year writing classroom. I hold degrees in English education, writing and rhetoric, and creative writing, and my primary concern as a delegate would be to foster transdisciplinary conversation and interdepartmental cooperation.

683. Laura Lisabeth. Grad. student English, St. John’s Univ., Jamaica. PhD, St. John’s Univ. (SJU). Doctoral fellow, Inst. for Writing Studies, SJU, 2011–14. HASTAC scholar, 2012. CCCC, Rhetoric Soc. of America, Writing across the Curriculum Grad. Organization. Conference presentations: Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition (Univ. of Louisville), 2012, 2016; NEMLA, 2015; MLA, 2016, 2017, 2018; CCCC, 2016; Intl. Writing across the Curriculum Conference, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, June 2016; Intl. Critical Thinking and Writing Conference (Quinnipiac Univ.), 2016. Publications include contrib., Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning (2015), Bad Ideas about Writing (2017); article in In Progress. Statement Never has there been a more important time to advocate for the importance of humanities education. The MLA takes a leadership role in this advocacy by organizing and educating its members and by speaking publicly about threats to humanities funding. But congruent with this sense of urgency about the future of the humanities is the need to challenge the wider academy’s history of insularity from engaging in public discourse around important issues. This challenge comes from two distinct fields of work already in progress that could be taken up more vigorously by the MLA. 102 – Candidate Information

First, more attention should be paid to fluid boundaries between higher education and public and political discourse so that the values promoted by humanities education can make a broader impact on the larger culture. I will work to promote a more complex understanding of academic literacy as a potential discourse of wider influence as well as a place for more robust attention to cultural and linguistic inclusivity. Second, within the fields of rhetoric and composition and writing studies there is an ongoing commitment to antiracist pedagogies and assessment, a movement in which the MLA might play a more visible role. How literacy is acquired and theorized, how writing and rhetoric are framed in departments and classrooms—these are some of the sites and spaces for antiracist work. If I am elected, I will work to bring a more detailed awareness of these important pedagogical theories and practices to the assembly.

TC Age Studies

684. Nancy C. Backes. Assoc. prof. English (ret.), Cardinal Stritch Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Previous appointment: Marquette Univ., 1992–97. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., TC Age Studies, 2016–Jan. 2021. Publications include contrib., Notable Women in the American Theatre: A Biographical Dictionary (1989), Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women’s Theatre (1989), Women of Color: Defining the Issues, Hearing the Voices (2001); articles in Journal of Popular Culture, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering; fiction in Nota. Statement I am honored by this nomination to represent TC Age Studies in the Delegate Assembly. As a life member of the MLA, I have always avidly followed the MLA’s policies, plans, and programs and, whenever possible, implemented them on my campus. For example, as chair of the English department, I used the Delegate Assembly’s Recommendations on Staffing to convert part-time positions to tenure-track positions. Another of the MLA’s strategic priorities is working with K–16 education. I was fortunate to collaborate with my institution’s College of Education to design a literacy curriculum for future teachers based on the life course. This candidacy extends my personal commitment to serve in general and to advocate for age studies in particular. Colleagues across the disciplines keenly experience the current challenges to the humanities and higher education. How do these challenges intersect with age? There are 25,000 members of the MLA, each one affected by the possibilities, limitations, and constructions of a specific point in the life course. Advocacy of age within the governing structure can address policies such as those that maintain and increase convention attendance, particularly among older members; those that engage teacher-scholars at small institutions, where faculty members often feel disempowered; those that address the specific needs of midcareer scholars; and those that enable and encourage the continuing worldwide participation in our work. As your representative, I would welcome and use every opportunity to make age and its study visible and vital.

685. Jacob Jewusiak. Assoc. prof. English, Valdosta State Univ. PhD, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. NEH summer stipend, 2016. Donald Gray Prize (for best essay published in the field of Victorian studies), North Amer. Victorian Studies Assn., 2013. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., TC Age Studies, 2017–Jan. 2022. Publications include articles in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, Victorian Literature and Culture. Statement My work as a scholar of age and literature shapes my investment in accessibility and equity in higher education. As a member of the Delegate Assembly, I would like to address issues such as continuing education for older adults, a critical approach to youth-centric campus culture, ageist hiring practices in academia, and the accessibility of the traditional classroom and online platforms to all ages. My goal would be to complement the work of our colleagues striving for equity regarding race, gender, class, and sexuality Candidate Information – 103

by spurring a critical conversation to identify and eliminate ageism in higher education as it takes place in professional and pedagogical contexts. Equity matters on all fronts, including the labor of contingent faculty members. Faculty members who require the most help—for example, at nonunionized colleges in the South—are often overlooked. As a way of combating the systematic devaluation of our work in the humanities—not only the rise of contingent labor but also the imminent defunding of the NEA and NEH—the MLA must provide a unified message that justifies our work to an increasingly skeptical public. Finally, the field of age studies takes a deeply interdisciplinary approach to scholarship that I would like to encourage across the different fields represented by the MLA. If elected, I will attempt to publicize the value of work that bridges the social sciences and the humanities and draw together scholars and professionals outside of academia.

TC Cognitive and Affect Studies

686. Patrick Colm Hogan. Prof. English and Board of Trustees Distinguished Prof., Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs. PhD, Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York. Member (elected), Connecticut Acad. of Arts and Sciences, 1995– ; Excellence in Research Award, Coll. of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Connecticut, 2013; Univ. of Connecticut–AAUP Career Excellence Award for Research and Creativity, 2017. Intl. board of directors, NeuroHumanities Studies Network (Univ. of Catania), 2013– . MLA activities: Delegate Assembly, 1999–2001, 2015–Jan. 2018; exec. comm., Discussion Group on Cognitive Approaches to Lit., 2000–04; exec. comm., Div. on Lit. and Science, 2008–Jan. 2013; Comm. on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 2012–15; forum exec. comm., TC Cognitive and Affect Studies, 2014–Jan. 2019. Series coed., Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture, 2006–15; series coed., Cognitive Approaches to Culture, Ohio State Univ. Press, 2015– . Ed. or advisory boards: Literature and Psychology, 1987–2004; University of Hartford Studies in Literature, 1988–91; College Literature, 1990– ; Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, 2006– ; Negotiations: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, 2011–12; Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies, 2013–16. Publications include The Politics of Interpretation: Ideology, Professionalism, and the Study of Literature (1990), Joyce, Milton, and the Theory of Influence (1995), On Interpretation: Meaning and Inference in Law, Psychoanalysis, and Literature (1996), Colonialism and Cultural Identity: Crises of Tradition in the Anglophone Literatures of India, Africa, and the Caribbean (2000), Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Literature (2000), The Culture of Conformism: Understanding Social Consent (2001), Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists (2003), The Mind and Its Stories: Narrative Universals and Human Emotion (2003), Empire and Poetic Voice: Cognitive and Cultural Studies of Literary Tradition and Colonialism (2004), Understanding Indian Movies: Culture, Cognition, and Cinematic Imagination (2008), Understanding Nationalism: On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity (2009), What Literature Teaches Us about Emotion (2011), Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories (2011), How Authors’ Minds Make Stories (2013), Narrative Discourse: Authors and Narrators in Literature, Film, and Art (2013), Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition (2014), The Death of the Goddess: A Poem in Twelve Cantos (2014), Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts (2016), Imagining Kashmir: Emplotment and Colonialism (2016); coauthor, Conversations on Cognitive Cultural Studies: Literature, Language, and Aesthetics (2014); ed., The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language Sciences (2011); coed., Criticism and Lacan: Essays and Dialogue on Language, Structure, and the Unconscious (1990), Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture (1995), Rabindranath Tagore: Universality and Tradition (2003); numerous book chapters and journal articles. Statement As the representative of TC Cognitive and Affect Studies, I would of course be attentive to MLA support for theoretical analysis, empirical research, and related pedagogical practices bearing on cognitive processing and emotion. Moreover, my interests in this area, though principally on the side of cognitive and affective science, extend to the sorts of political critique that are prominent in poststructurally influenced 104 – Candidate Information

affect theory. However, cognitive and affective research and teaching are likely to be direct issues in little if any Delegate Assembly business. As to more general concerns, I try to favor the sort of systematic, effortful empathy that some research suggests is cultivated by literary study. I therefore tend to support positive or ameliorative over negative or punitive approaches to political dilemmas of the sort often considered by the Delegate Assembly. For example, I would urge the positive cultivation of links with Palestinian universities and academics rather than the inhibition of links with Israeli universities and academics (to take a recent topic from Delegate Assembly business). In keeping with the views of many TC Cognitive and Affect Studies members, I would also try to connect MLA support of the humanities with empirical research on the value of literary study, insofar as this is relevant to Delegate Assembly business and possible for a delegate.

687. Eric Leake. Asst. prof. English, Texas State Univ., San Marcos. PhD, Univ. of Louisville. Coch., Master’s Degree Consortium of Writing Studies Specialists, CCCC, 2013–17. Publications include contrib., Rethinking Empathy through Literature (2014), Critical Expressivism: Theory and Practice in the Composition Classroom (2015), Rhetorics of Names and Naming (2016); articles in Composition Forum, Writing on the Edge, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric, College Composition and Communication, Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. Statement I am pleased to be nominated to serve in the Delegate Assembly, and it would be an honor to represent TC Cognitive and Affect Studies. I believe the MLA is at its strongest as a transdisciplinary organization. If elected as a delegate, I would advocate for measures to strengthen transdisciplinary ties and to lower barriers to participation, especially for members of communities and areas of interest underrepresented in the MLA. I see the MLA as a point of nexus bringing together scholars and teachers across the humanities and other disciplines for collaborative inquiries, as in cognitive and affect studies. Such collaboration, along with public engagement, is all the more necessary in response to the many challenges facing higher education in general and the humanities in particular.

TC Disability Studies

688. Stephanie Lynn Kerschbaum. Assoc. prof. English, Univ. of Delaware, Newark. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. Postdoctoral research fellowship, AAUW, 2014–15. Accessibility and Digital Composition Award, Computers and Composition Digital Press, 2014; Advancement of Knowledge Award, CCCC, 2015. Comm. on Disability Issues (ch., 2015–18) and Exec. Comm. (2016–18), CCCC. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., RCWS History and Theory of Rhetoric, 2015–Jan. 2018. Ed. board, Research in the Teaching of English, 2015–17. Publications include Toward a New Rhetoric of Difference (2014); contrib., Narrative Discourse Analysis for Teacher Educators: Managing Cultural Differences in Classrooms (2011), The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing (7th ed., 2013), How to Build a Life in the Humanities: Meditations on the Academic Work-Life Balance (2015); articles in Profession, College Composition and Communication, Research in the Teaching of English, Disability Studies Quarterly, Rhetoric Review, Composition Forum, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, Kairos.

689. Julia Miele Rodas. Assoc. prof. English, Bronx Community Coll., City Univ. of New York. PhD, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York (CUNY). Professional Staff Congress–CUNY research grant, summer 2007; research and writing fellowship, Prindle Inst. for Ethics, DePauw Univ., summer 2016; Chancellor’s Research Fellowship, CUNY, 2016–17. Coch., Columbia Univ. Seminar in Disability, Culture, and Society, 2015– . Series coed., Literary Disability Studies, Palgrave Macmillan; ed. board, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, 2007– . Candidate Information – 105

Publications include coed., The Madwoman and the Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability (2012); contrib., Oxford Reader’s Companion to Trollope (1999), Encyclopedia of American Disability History (2009), Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge (2011), Keywords for Disability Studies (2015), Disabling Romanticism: Body, Mind, and Text (2016); articles in Dickens Studies Annual, Disability Studies Quarterly, Explicator, Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Princeton University Library Chronicle, Social Text Online: Periscope, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Trollopiana, Victorian Literature and Culture, Victorian Review. Statement I am pleased to be running for the TC Disability Studies seat, and I would be honored to contribute to the work of the Delegate Assembly. I am a longtime disability scholar who has often promoted the work, ideas, and values of the field in new arenas—mine was the first disability studies (DS) dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center in 2003, a time when there were no senior disability scholars in the English program. I have published widely in DS and have continued to promote disability scholarship. Since 2007, I have served on the editorial board of the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies. I founded a disability scholarship group to support the work of DS practitioners at CUNY, and I currently serve as cochair of the Columbia University Seminar in Disability, Culture, and Society. As a forum delegate for TC Disability Studies, I would bring my dedication to DS and would remain committed to the ongoing work of the group, especially its efforts to promote more intersectional scholarship. In addition, as a faculty member at Bronx Community College, I am especially concerned that DS be more accessible. I am committed to advocating for a DS that is radically inclusive of nonwhite culture, literature, and people; I am also eager to promote conversations about teaching DS at all levels. We must work diligently to make DS accessible to community college students, to people living in poverty, and to those who are often excluded from higher education.

TC Marxism, Literature, and Society

690. Gavin Arnall. Asst. prof. Romance langs., Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor. PhD, Princeton Univ. Mellon Mays Undergrad. Fellowship, 2007–09; Grad. Prize Fellowship, Center for Human Values, Princeton Univ., 2013–14; Woodrow Wilson Natl. Fellowship Foundation dissertation grant, 2014–15; fellowship, Mellon Faculty Inst. on Arts Academic Integration, Univ. Musical Soc., Univ. of Michigan, 2016–18. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., TC Marxism, Lit., and Society, 2017–Jan. 2022. Publications include contrib., Pensar crítico y crítica del pensar: Coordenadas de una generación (2014), No Gods, No Masters, No Peripheries: Global Anarchisms (2015), Gramsci en las orillas (2015); articles in Critical Inquiry, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Theory and Event, CR: The New Centennial Review.

691. Nicole Fleetwood. Assoc. prof. Amer. studies, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick. PhD, Stanford Univ. Previous appointment: Univ. of California, Davis, 2003–05. Research fellowship, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1997–99; Mellon postdoctoral fellowship (Vassar Coll.), 2001–03; Ford Foundation Research Seminar Fellow (Univ. of Maryland), 2002– 04; NEH–Ford Foundation Scholar in Residence, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 2007– 08; Puffin Foundation conference grant, 2014; Ford Foundation conference grant, 2014; New Jersey Council for the Humanities conference grant, 2014; visiting foreign researcher grant (Univ. of the Witwatersrand), Natl. Research Foundation (South Africa), Apr. 2016; Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship, 2016–17; ACLS / New York Public Library Fellowship, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, 2016–17. Lora Romero First Book Prize (for Troubling Vision), ASA, 2012; Chancellor’s Award for Faculty Excellence, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, 2015–16. Amer. Anthropological Assn., ASA, Assn. for Black 106 – Candidate Information

Anthropologists, Assn. for the Study of the Arts of the Present, Critical Ethnic Studies Assn., NWSA, PEN Amer. Center, Soc. for Cinema and Media Studies, Black Documentary Collective. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., TC Marxism, Lit., and Society, 2015–Jan. 2020. Assoc. ed., Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Gender Series, Macmillan Reference USA, 2015–18; ed. collective, Social Text, Feb. 2015– . Publications include Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011), On Racial Icons: Blackness and the Public Imagination (2015); contrib., Youthscapes: The Popular, the National, the Global (2005), Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture (2005), Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History: The Black Experience in the Americas (2nd ed., 2005), Gender: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies (2016); articles in Aperture: The Magazine of Photography and Ideas, Public Culture, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora Arts and Letters, African American Review, American Quarterly, Social Text, Signs, TDR: The Drama Review.

TC Medical Humanities and Health Studies

692. Thomas Lawrence Long. Assoc. prof. in residence, School of Nursing, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs. PhD, Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania. Sec.-treasurer, Council of Eds. of Learned Journals, 2014–17. MLA activities: exec. comm., Div. on Lit. and Religion, 1999–2003; Delegate Assembly, 2001–03; Profession Editorial Collective, 2015–17; forum exec. comm., TC Medical Humanities and Health Studies, 2015–Jan. 2019. Ed. in chief, Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly, 2000–07; ed., NursingWriting.com; ed. board, Literature and Medicine, 2015– . Publications include AIDS and American Apocalypticism: The Cultural Semiotics of an Epidemic (2005); coauthor, Writing in Nursing: A Brief Guide (2016); coed., The Meaning Management Challenge: Making Sense of Health, Illness, and Disease (2010); contrib., Gender and Apocalyptic Desire (2005), Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives (2006), On the Meaning of Friendship between Gay Men (2008), Exploring More Signature Pedagogies: Approaches to Teaching Disciplinary Habits of Mind (2012), Civil War America: A Social and Cultural History (2013), Routledge Handbook on the Global History of Nursing (2013), A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse (2016), Women’s Narratives of the Early Americas and the Formation of Empire (2016); articles in Journal of Communication Inquiry, Journal of Medical Humanities, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, Literature and Medicine, LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory, Medical Humanities, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. Statement Since beginning my full-time career in higher education in 1989 (the same year I joined the MLA), I have observed the shifting landscape of the profession of languages and literatures and engaged in advocacy and professional leadership on behalf of that profession and on behalf of public colleges and universities. As an English professor, I have been employed at a community college, a comprehensive state university, and now a flagship public research university. The MLA needs to be attentive to the profession at all these levels. With continued erosion in public funding for higher education, we also need to advocate on behalf of labor justice for adjunct faculty members and full-time contingent faculty members (like me), students burdened with loan debt, and the humanistic values of our disciplines. MLA members must also be willing to engage in spirited, reasonable debate about public issues affecting our institutions and students at a time when civil discourse and scholarly expertise are demeaned. At the same time, the MLA must remain a steward of scholarly and instructional professionalism, providing our members with print, digital, and in-person forums for the dissemination of new knowledge about literary and cultural traditions and about teaching them to students.

693. Tana Jean Welch. Asst. prof. medical humanities, Coll. of Medicine, Florida State Univ. PhD, Florida State Univ.; MFA, San Diego State Univ. Writer in residence, Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts, Jan. 2017. Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (for Latest Volcano), 2015; silver medal (for Latest Volcano), Florida Book Awards, 2016. AWP, Assn. for the Study of Lit. and Environment, MELUS, Amer. Candidate Information – 107

Medical Women’s Assn., Amer. Soc. for Bioethics and Humanities. Ed. board, Literary AMWA: A Gallery of Writing (Amer. Medical Women’s Assn.), 2016– . Publications include Latest Volcano (poems, 2016); contrib., Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 372 (2013), Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers (2017); articles in Academic Medicine, Family Medicine, Journal of Poetry Therapy, MELUS, Journal of Ecocrticism; poems in New York Times Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, and others. Statement During my tenure as assistant professor of medical humanities at the Florida State University College of Medicine, I’ve developed various courses in the medical humanities, including courses in literature and medicine and narrative medicine. I also serve as the faculty adviser for the College of Medicine’s student literary arts journal, HEAL: Humanism Evolving through Art and Literature, and poetry editor of Literary AMWA, a new journal forthcoming from the American Medical Women’s Association. This valuable interdisciplinary experience complements the interdisciplinary nature of my research, which blends literary studies, ethics, posthumanism, science, and gender studies to examine the ways national and global politics intersect and shape various bodies. My research also draws heavily on new materialism—a methodology that takes into account how both material and social elements shape the human experience— and has thus proved useful in demonstrating how literary works can provide a practical illustration of intersectionality to health-care providers. I view the field of health humanities as an opportunity to expand the reach of the humanities while also promoting greater understanding of the social and political factors that influence health and healing—a vital necessity in our current political climate. As a delegate, I would work to create greater awareness within the MLA of the interdisciplinary possibilities within health humanities and health studies. I would also work to forge partnerships and collaborations between MLA members and organizations outside the MLA, such as the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and the Association of American Medical Colleges.

TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature

694. Russell Sbriglia. Asst. prof. English, Seton Hall Univ. PhD, Univ. of Rochester. William H. Gilman Memorial Prize (for outstanding PhD candidate), Dept. of English, Univ. of Rochester, 2012–13; commendation, Outstanding Dissertation Awards (category: Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences), Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Univ. of Rochester, 2012–13. Award nominating comm., Poe Studies Assn., 2017. Publications include ed., Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek (2017); articles in Poe Studies: History, Theory, Interpretation, Arizona Quarterly, Postmodern Culture. Statement It would be an honor to represent TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature in the MLA Delegate Assembly. Psychoanalytic theory stands at the center of my study of literature, both in general and with respect to nineteenth-century American literature (my field of specialization) in particular. In my scholarship and teaching alike, I find psychoanalysis to be one of the most effective tools not only for grounding textual interpretation but also for bringing textual interpretation back to the forefront of literary studies (interpretation having been largely displaced by the historicist emphasis on contextualization). At a moment when literary studies seems poised for a return to theory—as best seen, perhaps, in the far-reaching “objectal turn” brought about by New Materialism and object-oriented ontology—I believe that psychoanalysis, over the next few years, has the potential to become as influential as it once was in theory’s heyday. It is thus a very exciting time indeed to be working on literature and psychoanalysis.

695. Calvin Thomas. Prof. English, Georgia State Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. MLA activities: forum exec. comm., TC Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Lit., 2015–Jan. 2020. 108 – Candidate Information

Publications include Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (1996), Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (2008), Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing (2013); ed., Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (2000); contrib., Critical Essays on Laurence Sterne (1998), Masculinity Studies and Feminist Theory: New Directions (2002), Men’s Bodies (2003), The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema (2005), International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities (2007), A History of Feminist Literary Criticism (2007), The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory (2009), Abject Visions: Powers of Horror in Art and Visual Culture (2016), Derrida and Queer Theory (2017); foreword, Straight Writ Queer: Non-normative Expressions of Heterosexuality in Literature (2006); articles in Journal for Lacanian Studies, Angelaki: The Theoretical Journal of the Humanities, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy, Parallax, Twentieth Century Literature, Contemporary Literature, Men and Masculinities, Genders, Novel, New German Critique, Modernism/Modernity, Modern Fiction Studies. Statement My statement is simply this: resist.

TC Sexuality Studies

696. Travis M. Foster. Asst. prof. English, Villanova Univ. PhD, Univ. of Wisconsin. Mark and Elisabeth Eccles Teaching Award, Univ. of Wisconsin, 2005; Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Villanova Univ., 2017. Podcast Advisory Council, C19: The Soc. of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, 2017– . Publications include contrib., The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2012), The Cambridge Companion to American Gay and Lesbian Literature (2015); articles in American Literature, Edith Wharton Review, ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, American Literary History, History of the Present. Statement Our professional organization should empower and defend its members against attacks and economic precarity. I’m particularly interested in two ways the MLA can do this. First, I would like to see us both continue and expand on our tradition of defending scholars—particularly scholars working on issues related to race, settler colonialism, and queerness—who find their credibility under attack. We should not merely be defending academic freedom but also proactively affirming our colleagues’ expertise and knowledge, while also strongly encouraging university administrations to do the same. These affirmations are particularly important for defending graduate students, junior faculty members, contingent scholars, and others not protected by the tenure system. This leads to a second and related area of concern. It is vital that the MLA more actively support unionization and working-condition-improvement campaigns at all levels of the university. Our members at institutions from Fordham to Yale to Hillsborough Community College are risking their careers and livelihood, and the MLA should do everything it can to lend credibility to their arguments and to highlight the justness of their demands.

697. Ari Friedlander. Asst. prof. English, Univ. of Mississippi. PhD, Univ. of Michigan. Previous appointment: Mellon visiting asst. prof., Univ. of California, Davis, 2011–13. A. Bartlett Giamatti Fellow, Inst. for the Humanities, Univ. of Michigan, 2008–09; Francis Bacon Foundation fellowship, Huntington Library, 2012; honorary fellow, Inst. for Research in the Humanities, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, 2014; Mellon and Volkswagen Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, Dahlem Humanities Center, Freie Universität Berlin, 2015–16. Advisory board, English Broadside Ballad Archive, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, 2010–11. Digital Strategies Comm., Shakespeare Assn. of America, 2016– . Candidate Information – 109

Publications include guest coed., Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (2016); contrib., The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Embodiment: Gender, Sexuality, Race (2016), Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed (2016); articles in Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900. Statement I am honored to stand for election to the TC Sexuality Studies seat in the Delegate Assembly. My research takes an intersectional approach to the history and representation of sexuality, with a particular focus on the role of socioeconomic phenomena in the historical development of sexual categories and practices. In this historical moment, in which reactionary political forces threaten fragile recent advances in both the social safety net and LGBTQIA rights, I think it is doubly important that the MLA guard against any complacency in advocating for the disadvantaged—both within its ranks and in the larger academic world. As a delegate, I will push to acknowledge and address the role social difference plays within the profession, while also remembering that it can never be separated from interlocking axes of oppression, including those of race, sexuality, ability, and gender. As a member of TC Sexuality Studies, I will seek to make sure all sponsored panels reflect the diversity of the profession at large, including graduate students and contingent faculty members. I bring a track record of scholarly collaboration, reflected in the two international sexuality studies conferences I’ve organized in the past three years (at the Huntington Library and the Freie Universität Berlin). I believe that this capacity for communication and outreach will serve the membership well in the large and sometimes unwieldy Delegate Assembly.

TC Translation Studies

698. Kathryn Vomero Santos. Asst. prof. English, Texas A&M Univ., Corpus Christi. PhD, New York Univ. Mellon dissertation fellowship and seminar, 2011; NEH summer inst. fellowship, 2013; Renaissance Soc. of America research grant, 2014; Folger Inst. grant, 2014–15; Francis Bacon Foundation fellowship, Huntington Library, 2015; Teaching Shakespeare to Undergrads. Grant, NEH–Folger Shakespeare Library, 2016–17. Reviewer (for seminar and inst. grant program), NEH, 2017. Publications include coed., Arthur Golding’s A Moral Fabletalk and Other Renaissance Fable Translations (2017); contrib., Shakespeare and Immigration (2014); article in Philological Quarterly. Statement Having been a participant in recent seminars and institutes on the topic of translation sponsored by organizations such as the NEH, the Mellon Foundation, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, I am excited by the multiple directions that translation studies has taken as it continues to move out of the peripheries and into a more central place in academic study. But one of the reasons it remains partially in the shadows is precisely what is so important about it: its interdisciplinarity. I believe that the MLA can serve an essential role not only in bringing these various conversations together within the field of translation studies but also in identifying the key ways that they interface with larger facets of the profession. I also hope that I can use my role as delegate to support instructors as they bring translation studies into the classroom. In my teaching experience, I have observed how the multidisciplinary topic of translation energizes and encourages students from many different backgrounds to recognize how translation, in all of its forms, shapes the literature and language they study and the cultures in which they live. As an organization and as individual professionals in this field, we would do well to embrace the bridge metaphor so frequently associated with the theory and practice of translation as we continue to reexamine the role that the humanities play in higher education and in public spheres.

699. Russell Scott Valentino. Prof. Slavic and East European langs. and cultures, Indiana Univ., Bloomington. PhD, Univ. of California, Los Angeles. Assoc. Dean for Intl. Affairs, Coll. of Arts and Sciences, Indiana Univ. Fulbright-Hays research fellowship (Croatia), 1993, 1999; NEA fellowship, 2002, 2010, 2016. Panelist (2007) and consultant (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017), NEA. Advisory board, Translation in 110 – Candidate Information

America Project, Natl. Book Foundation, 2016–17. Sec.-treasurer (2010–11) and pres. (2013–16), Amer. Literary Translators Assn. Senior ed., Autumn Hill Books, 2005– ; ed. in chief, Iowa Review, 2009–13. Publications include Vicissitudes of Genre in the Russian Novel: Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, Dostoevsky’s Demons, Gorky’s Mother (2001), The Woman in the Window: Commerce, Consensual Fantasy, and the Quest for Masculine Virtue in the Russian Novel (2014); trans., Fulvio Tomizza, Materada (1999), Predrag Matvejević, Between Exile and Asylum: An Eastern Epistolary (2004), Sabit Madaliev, The Silence of the Sufi (2006), Predrag Matvejević, The Other Venice: Secrets of the City (2007); cotrans., Igor Štiks, A Castle in Romagna (2004), Carlo Michelstaedter, Persuasion and Rhetoric (2004), Susanna Tamara, Anima Mundi (2007); coed., The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation (2014); guest coed., Poroi: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention (2017); contrib., Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001: Screening the Word (2005), Bele Antiche Stòrie: Writing, Borders, and the Instability of Identity. Trieste, 1719–2007 (2008), The Art of Empathy: Celebrating Literature in Translation (2014); articles in Poroi, Slavic Review, Defunct: A Literary Repository for the Ages, Buenos Aires Review, Russian Review, Slavic and East European Journal, Iowa Review, Del Sol Review, Words without Borders, 91st Meridian, [sic]: A Journal of Literature, Culture, and Literary Translation (Univ. of Zadar), Massachusetts Review. Statement Having had the good fortune to serve the different professional communities to which I belong in a wide range of capacities—from editor and administrator to department chair and nonprofit arts board president—I can say that serving a professional community deepens and expands one’s understanding of the work performed by that community and of the people who compose it. Such service invariably enhances one’s understanding of one’s own discipline. It also keeps one grounded in the work of others, an essential feature of any scholarly and artistic community. To my mind, follow-through is essential in such work, as is attention to detail and personal care in both thought and expression. It also helps to be ready to think creatively, make connections across categories and disciplines, and keep a historical perspective. This is all part of being a good colleague, of course, but these are also principles of doing good work in general. Seeking first to understand is absolutely essential. Being able to ask questions (not comments formed as questions) in such a way as to zero in on the core of an issue; to elicit candid, honest responses; and to simultaneously demonstrate implicit respect for an enterprise or an interlocutor is a skill I have tried to cultivate. One’s own comments, suggestions, and recommendations for how best to move forward should come after. This is where expertise, analytic skill, and expressive effectiveness enter the picture and where keeping one’s cool sometimes shows whether one is where one should be.