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.
Topic: #MLA17
The Right has become “Intrusive” on College Campuses
One college professor is worried about the increasingly “intrusive” nature of conservative and libertarian-leaning activists on college campuses. David Theo Goldberg, a professor of comparative literature, anthropology, criminology, law and society at the University of…
Jane Austen at 200: She Gave “Comfort to Whiteness”
Several college professors picked apart Jane Austen, who would have turned 200 years old this year. In a packed room full of female attendees at the Modern Language Association (MLA), the professors criticized Jane Austen’s…
Melville Mixes with Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump
A panel of college professors claimed that Herman Melville’s books can be applied to today’s issues of Black Lives Matter, America’s capitalist society and the presidency of Donald Trump. The panel discussion was held at…
Remembering Black Lives Matter, Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray
A panel of college professors memorialized Black Lives Matter and the movement’s icons, Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray. At the Modern Language Association’s (MLA) annual conference in Philadelphia, these professors praised Black Lives Matter’s activism…
Professors Sticking Together in Trump’s America
At the Modern Language Association, one panel of professors discussed a thirty-year-old book and one professor encouraged the Left to stick together in a post-Donald Trump America. Christopher Castiglia, a Penn State professor specializing in…
Gays, Zombies and Queer Literature in Caribbean Culture
In an offering typical of the academic exotica on display at the Modern Language Association, and for that matter, in academia itself, a panel of profesors discussed what they called “queer (i.e. gay or homosexual)…
“Hamilton” at the MLA
“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….
MLA Vocabulary Contest
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…
Workers of Berkeley Unite!
Now here’s a man-bites-dog story: Labor strife at Berkeley. Janitorial, custodial and cafeteria workers at Berkeley are fighting to maintain their raise from $9 to $17 an hour with benefits at a university that prides…