Hi all, A reminder that the deadline for proposing sessions for the 2023 MLA convention (1/5-8 in San Francisco) is April 1.  Any MLA member may propose a special session. Possible formats include panels (three presentations and a presider), roundtables (more open discussion of broader issuse), workshops (focused e.g. on professional development…[Read more]

Dear Colleagues, I’d like to remind you that the deadline for proposing sessions for the 2023 MLA convention (1/5-8 in San Francisco) is April 1.  Any MLA member may propose a special session. The 75-minute session usually includes 4 papers or 3 papers plus response, but the format can be flexible. For more information about proposing a special…[Read more]

How are various new media forms (e.g. apps, memes, gaming avatars, Webcast rites) creating performative representations of religion?  200-word proposals by March 15.  Manisha Basu, U of Illinois, Urbana (mbasu@illinois.edu ) Adrienne Brown, U of Chicago (adrienneb@uchicago.edu ).

More information: How have visual digital forms supplemented r…[Read more]

How do cleric-sleuths or other religious detective figures (e.g., Cadfael, Granchester, Father Brown, etc.)  navigate/challenge religion alongside police or state-sponsored will-to-knowledge? 200-word proposal to mbasu@illinois.edu by March 10.

More information: From G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ to Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, from Harry…[Read more]

Memorialization, “entering the canon,” and the influence of politics, race, class, or gender. Who decides on the people, texts, places, dates, etc. selected to be commemorated, studied, and/or enshrined? Theorists such as Lonergan, Bourdieu, Girard, and Agamben have explored “sacralization” as a process of making holy or sacred that can inv…[Read more]

The exco is currently in the process of planning panels for next year’s MLA.  We have some ideas but are eager to hear suggestions and proposals from you.  If you would like to organize a panel, or to suggest a topic for one, please contact me.

Next year’s MLA will be in San Francisco, Jan. 5-8, 2023.  The Presidential Theme is described here, bu…[Read more]

As most of you know, forum executive committee members serve five-year terms; each year one new member joins the exco as one leaves.  Historically, new members have been elected by the forum membership.  However, beginning this cycle MLA is experimenting with a new policy.

Here’s MLA’s explanation:

The Program Committee has implemented a change t…

[Read more]

Pre-14th Century Chinese Forum Executive Committee/Delegate Assembly Nominations!

MLA has instituted a change to the staffing of forum executive committees, moving from an election-based process to an appointment-based one. As a result, it is all the more important that members who wish to serve on the executive committee for our forum put…[Read more]

The next election for this forum’s Delegate Assembly representative will be held in the fall of 2022, and the forum’s executive committee will take up the matter of nominations for this election when it meets in January 2022. Though the executive committee is responsible for making nominations, it is required to nominate at least one candidate who…[Read more]

Diversity, equity and inclusion are and for the foreseeable future should be high priority concerns for all manner of organizations, institutions and associations, including and perhaps especially those in the academic sphere, a space from which we believe, as humanists, meaningful changes in understanding and purposeful can emanate. Recognition…[Read more]

I am pleased to stand for election as a forum representative. My work centers on Japan, but for me, this means Japan embedded in larger regional, intellectual, and cultural networks. In particular, preoccupations with classical China and Chinese haunt many of the texts that draw me. My recent monograph, Reflecting the Past: Place, Language, and…[Read more]

Dear Members of the LLC Ming and Qing Forum,

I am Maria Franca Sibau, and I was also nominated for the executive committee elections. I am an associate professor of Chinese literature at Emory University. My research interests are in vernacular fiction, drama, and Confucian cultures of the late imperial period. I am also interested in the history…[Read more]