From the President

Columns by Dana A. Williams

Students studying in a library

Doing What We Can Do, Well. . .

Dana A. Williams·
Now more than ever, graduate students need support in teaching preparation. Liberal arts classrooms are among the most fraught spaces precisely because of the work we aim to do—to encourage critical thinking, to promote diverse perspectives and develop leadership that values these perspectives, and to communicate complex ideas with clarity. Doing this work is hard; doing it without intentional training is harder.
Columns by Dana A. Williams
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Doing the Work of Discourse

Dana A. Williams·
As we live through this polarizing time, we must model the types of interactions and debates that we would like to see lived out by our wider community. After all, what is humanities scholarship but doing the work of discourse with civility? We teach our students how to use textual analysis to deal with conflict and communicate ideas in the classroom, and we can also provide living examples of how to grapple with conflict outside the classroom.
Columns by Dana A. Williams
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From the President

Columns by Frieda Ekotto

Still Waiting for a Visa

Frieda Ekotto·
We can talk about genealogies of violence from crossing borders that have produced trauma, chaos, loss, and death. It is possible to examine the devastating impact of migration on the physical and psychic lives of the people in specific parts of the world. Can we confront the disturbing ways that violence and oppression are repeated in the cultural imaginary despite efforts by Black subjects to speak out against this oppression and the invisible violence done to citizens by nation-states?
Columns by Frieda Ekotto
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From the President

Columns by Christopher J. Newfield

From the President

Columns by Barbara Fuchs

Small globe on table

A Multilingual MLA

Barbara Fuchs·
My punning emphasis in this year’s presidential theme—Multilingual US—is intended to remind us of what is at stake both for the nation and for each of us, personally and professionally, in imagining a multilingual home defined by multiplicity rather than singularity.
Columns by Barbara Fuchs
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From the President

Columns by Judith Butler

multiple microphones on stage

The Future of the Humanities Can Be Found in Its Public Forms

Judith Butler·
These are among the many sites in the university where the connection to public worlds is already being made; these sites should be supported as the portals to a broader world, the link between the university and those who require the humanities to live a more illuminated life. The future of the humanities may well depend on realizing that the best case for art, poetry, literature, and performance is already being made by our most publicly engaged fields.
ColumnColumns by Judith Butler
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From the President

Columns by Simon E. Gikandi

From the President

Columns by Anne Ruggles Gere

From the President

Columns by Diana Taylor

When the Resolution Causes the Breach

Diana Taylor·
This past year has been difficult and at times heartbreaking. In addition to the attacks on public education throughout the pre-K–12 system, our universities are under siege. The government is pulling back on its obligation to education, as evidenced most recently when Betsy DeVos argued that “we’ve done a disservice to young people for many years by suggesting that the only path to success as adults is through a four-year college or university” (qtd. in Harris). Several campuses have become the scene of intense struggles to define and defend an open democratic space.
Columns by Diana Taylor
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From the President

Columns by K. Anthony Appiah

Taking Issue, Taking Stock

Kwame Anthony Appiah·
The Modern Language Association of America is a scholarly organization. Is it also a political one? Not in a straightforwardly partisan way: our legal status prohibits us from endorsing candidates for elected office. But on topics that are central to our mission and that we can address in a clear and unified voice, the MLA can make a contribution to the national conversation. Among the issues that the association has been concerned with are the growth of contingent labor and the decline of tenure in higher education; language study as an educational right; and, very broadly, a diminishment in support for the humanities. . . .
Columns by K. Anthony Appiah
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From the President

Columns by Roland Greene

Speaking for Interpretation

Roland Greene·
As our convention in Austin approaches, I’ve been reflecting on our profession as I have observed it from the vantage of president of the world’s largest scholarly organization. My three previous columns noted several of the important initiatives that the MLA has recently begun and will continue. . . .
Columns by Roland Greene
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From the President

Columns by Margaret Ferguson

Tense Conversations

Margaret W. Ferguson·
A few weeks ago, my twin teenage daughters gave me a lesson in how to talk to Siri, the female ghost in my new smartphone. “Ask her a question,” said Marianne. I couldn’t think what to ask, so Christina intervened: “Tell her to make a joke.” Seeing that I still didn’t get it, Christina prompted Siri, and she responded with unnerving speed: “Past, Present, and Future met in a bar. It was tense.”
Columns by Margaret Ferguson
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