Search results for "MLA"

Could this, to revive a phrase that might be used by the more traditional English professors who populated the MLA in days of old, lead to a a renaissance for the organization?

A resolution to boycott Israel was rejected by the Modern Language Association, which has resisted such efforts in the recent past.

In our latest visit to the Modern Language Association, we discover, once again, that if you love literature, you may want to avoid most English courses.

“Hamilton,” a popular Broadway hip-hop musical, has now made it into the Modern Language Association consciousness. At the 2017 convention held in Philadelphia, one professor dissected the significance of the musical for minorities in America. Scott Poulson-Bryant, an assistant professor at Fordham University who teaches African-American literature in the 20th century, pop culture, gender and […]

There is at least one way in which the Modern Language Association (MLA) that thousands of English professors belong to lives up to its name: they traverse in a vocabulary most of us working stiffs would never contemplate employing informally, or even formally. Here is a sampling of what we got to hear for four […]

In the days before Wayne Gretzky brought elegance to hockey, a running joke about the sport was, “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.” Something like this might be said of the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (MLA), where thousands of English professors from around the world gather to […]

At the Modern Language Association (MLA) annual convention in Philadelphia this year, we got to see some of the “Creative Responses to Black Lives Matter” They included: A filmed street theater presentation on “The Shooting of Africa,” presented by Kimberly Welch of UCLA, and featuring actors with signs. A group called #JusticeforFlint, that did a […]

As we saw from interviews with students at last weekend’s protests, higher education, and lower, probably need to spend more time on self-improvement and less on self-esteem, just to further their own interests. For example, there was, as usual, at least one feminist who wanted to end women’s suffrage. You would think our left-wing friends […]

Just as political careers are often launched from electoral defeats, so too do academic careers blossom when Left wing movements fail. Examples of the former abound, from Ronald Reagan’s rise in the wake of the Goldwater defeat of 1964 to Barack Obama’s in the wake of John Kerry’s loss in 2004. For illustrations of the […]

Here’s the problem with the English professors at the Modern Language Association (MLA) attempting to define humor: They’re not funny, at least intentionally. “Theories of life-writing do not work in stand –up comedy,” Dale Tracy of the Royal Military College of Canada said at a panel on Boundaries: Humor Studies, that was held at the […]

While you’re getting started on your New Year’s resolutions, we’re knocking one off of our own bucket list: We’ll be kicking off 2017 with our friends at the Modern Language Association (MLA) at their annual convention in Philadelphia. Several thousand English professors will be in the City of Brotherly Love to attend about 800 panels […]

Colleges and universities are forever feeling shortchanged by taxpayers. They needn’t worry. For one thing, they are far richer than those of us who actually pay federal levies. For another, academia has succeeded in securing millions for what look like panel discussions at the Modern Language Association. “The National Institutes of Health has spent more […]