Originally published in the Winter 2013 MLA Newsletter This fall, during the week of 22 September, I served as the guest blogger for PhDs at Work, a Web site where people like me who earned PhDs but do not hold academic appointments describe the daily activities they perform in their jobs. I welcomed this opportunity,… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Column
Why Was the Session I Submitted Accepted for the Convention?
Originally published in the Fall 2013 MLA Newsletter Now there’s a question I have never gotten—you can imagine the one I do hear—yet I think it’s important to let members know how we choose convention sessions. The first key thing to understand is that some of the association’s entities (such as divisions, discussion groups, allied… Read more »
Organic Planting at the MLA
Originally published in the Summer 2013 MLA Newsletter If you hang around a campus long enough, you will become aware when the next strategic plan is in the works. Surveys will crop up in your in-box, you’ll be summoned to special meetings, and, if you are in an administrative position, you’ll be directed to assemble… Read more »
Tamales for Dollars: Survival Guatemalan
Originally published in the Spring 2013 MLA Newsletter “Why did you stay away from Guatemala for forty years?” “Why did you decide to return now?” These are questions that friends, family members, and colleagues asked me in the weeks preceding my travel back to the country where I completed the final year of the bachillerato…. Read more »
The Humanities: It’s What We Do
Originally published in the Winter 2012 MLA Newsletter I am always alert to news about MLA members, so I was pleased to read in September the announcement that Jean-Christophe Cloutier, a Columbia graduate student, had discovered an unpublished manuscript of a novel by the Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay. Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, his adviser,… Read more »