Capitalism discriminates against the poor and disabled, one professor said during a panel entitled, “Disability and the Global South” at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention. This year, it was held in Austin, Texas, hardly…
Topic: Modern Language Association
‘The Hunger Games’ is Sexist, says Professor
A panel of professors at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention, this time held in Austin, Texas, argued about feminism and sexism in today’s young adult (YA) novels in “The Hunger Games” and other similar…
Academics Try to Interpret ‘Serial’ Podcast
After the widespread and unexpected popularity of the ‘Serial’ podcast, where a team of journalists review an old criminal case and interview the imprisoned suspect and other witnesses, academics are wondering whether they could use…
Rape Narrative Over Due Process
The Modern Language Association’s (MLA) new punching bag is due process, as one session in their annual convention demonstrated (The convention was held in Austin, Texas this year.) In the session, entitled, “Narrating College Sexual…
Prostitution’s Victims Ignored by Amnesty International
Occasionally the Modern Language Association (MLA) actually does look at language, and makes a valuable contribution to the sum of human knowledge. At the MLA conference this year, Kate Day, a law professor emeritus at…
Sexual Violence in the Military
In a presentation to a Modern Language Association (MLA) panel on sexual violence, Ariana Vigil, a women’s studies professor at North Carolina-Chapel Hill, linked a military deserter and his perspective on the military to the…
Bootstrapping Broads: Talking Feminism
Harriet Beecher Stowe, European gardens and gender bias were discussed in a recent Modern Language Association (MLA) panel at their annual convention held this year in Austin, Texas. The panel, entitled, “Bootstrapping Broads: On the…
Academic Animal Studies/Farm
George Orwell might have been amused. Academia is well on its way to quite literally becoming Animal Farm. Indeed, the very first day of the latest Modern Language Association (MLA) convention featured a panel on…
Rock, Paper, Scissors
It’s interesting that some of the same people who go ballistic at the suggestion that corporations are people are quite willing to ascribe human attributes to inhuman things. “I’m out to prove that rocks are…
Trapped by Modern Language
Every year we hit the road to find out what English Departments are up to at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention and always come back depressed. A look at some of the panels we…