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UMD English at MLA 2022

December 17, 2021 English

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University of Maryland faculty and graduate students will present recent research on a variety of topics at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting from January 6-9, 2022.

The 2022 MLA Annual Convention will be held at the Marriott Marquis Washington, DC, and the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, from 6 to 9 January, 2022. Faculty, graduate students, and alum presenting current research include Marisa Parham, Nabila Hijazi, Lee Konstantinou, Shenika Hankerson, Edlie L. Wong, Jason R. Rudy, Maria Beliaeva Solomon, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, Lindsey O'Neil, Sangeeta Ray, Tita Chico, Aqdas Aftab, Charlotte Joublot Ferré, Sara Faradji, Cecilia Shelton, Martha Nell Smith, Orrin N. C. Wang, Raffaele Viglianti, and John MacIntosh.

Thursday, 6 January:

  • Teaching with Data Feminism
    Speakers: Marisa Parham, U of Maryland, College Park; Mark Sample, Davidson C; Edward Whitely, Lehigh U; Lauren Gilmore, Lehigh U
    Respondent: Lauren Klein, Emory U
    Presenters share how they are using Data Feminism in the undergraduate and graduate classroom. Short presentations are followed by a response by one of the authors and a substantial open discussion with attendees.
  • Stories of Linguistic Diversity: Translingual and Multilingual Approaches to Composition Pedagogy
    Presiding: Nabila Hijazi, U of Maryland, College Park
    "Translingual Identities as Pedagogical Practices," Nabila Hijazi, U of Maryland, College Park
  • Democracy and the Contemporary Novel of the United States
    Speakers: Michaela Bronstein, Stanford U; Lynn Itagaki, U of Missouri, Columbia; Sara Marcus, U of Notre Dame; Christopher Pexa, U of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Sean Joseph McCann, Wesleyan U; Lee Konstantinou, U of Maryland, College Park; Omari Weekes, Willamette U
  • Increasing the Representation and Impact of Linguistics in the MLA
    Speakers: Holly Cashman, U of New Hampshire, Durham; Usree Bhattacharya, U of Georgia; Shenika Hankerson, U of Maryland, College Park; María Irene Moyna, Texas A&M U, College Station; Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown U; Maya Angela Smith, U of Washington, Seattle; and Robert Train, Sonoma State
  • Literatures of Reconstruction and Their Resonances for the Present
    Speakers: Jesse Alemán, U of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Eric S. Gardner, Saginaw Valley State U; Amy Gore, North Dakota State U; Rhondda Thomas, Clemson U; and Edlie L. Wong, U of Maryland, College Park
    Exploring the literatures of and about Reconstruction, panelists consider how they approach the broader Reconstruction era in their research and teaching and focus on the period’s relevance for literary and cultural studies in our current moment.
  • Victorians in Relation
    Speakers: Zarena Aslami, Michigan State U; Alisha Walters, Penn State U, Abington; Lindsay Wilhelm, Oklahoma State U, Stillwater; Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, U of Massachusetts, Amherst; Erica Kanesaka, U of Wisconsin, Madison; and Jason R. Rudy, U of Maryland, College Park
    Session Description: How might Victorian studies be brought into closer relationship with other fields of study, such as Asian American studies, Black studies, Indigenous studies, Afghanistan studies, Pacific studies, and Caribbean studies?
  • Métropoles
    Speakers: Maria Beliaeva Solomon, U of Maryland, College Park; Keith Wagner, U of Texas, Austin; Sophia Basaldua-Sun, independent scholar; Daniel Sipe, U of Missouri, Columbia; Jacek Blaszkiewicz, Wayne State U; and Michael D. Garval, North Carolina State U
    Session Description: Panelists discuss urban centers and their relationships to provinces, suburbs, colonies, and empires in nineteenth-century French and francophone contexts.
  • Radical Aesthetics and the Rehearsal of Black Liberation
    Presiding: La Marr Jurelle Bruce, U of Maryland, College Park
    "What Will Happen to All That Beauty? Assembly and Groundwork in Critical Race Aesthetics," Paul Taylor, Vanderbilt U
    "Lucille Clifton’s Rhetorics of ‘Here’," Kevin Quashie, Brown U
    "Where the Music Comes From: Blackness Present to Its Own Making," Alessandra Raengo, Georgia State U
    "Recuration as Rehearsal: Blackness and the Aesthetics of Defacement," John Brooks, Boston C

Friday, 7 January

  • Francophonie and the Early Modern: Intertextual Connections
    Speakers: Oumelbanine Nina Zhiri, U of California, San Diego; Charlee Bezilla, U of Maryland, College Park; Chloé Brault MacKinnon, Stanford U; Jonathan Haddad, U of Georgia; Christina Kullberg, Uppsala U; Chelsea Stieber, Catholic U of America; and Charly Verstraet, U of Alabama, Birmingham
    Session Description: Panelists consider how twentieth- and twenty-first-century francophone authors engage with early modern literary works or colonial histories and explore anti-racist and decolonial approaches to researching and teaching early modern texts.
  • Mad Studies beyond Whiteness
    "Dispatches from the Asylum; or, Mad Black Rants," La Marr Jurelle Bruce, U of Maryland, College Park
    "‘Knowledge Can Be a Prescription against Despair’: Race, Madness, and Technologies of Care," Declan Gould, Temple U, Philadelphia
    "Autotherapy: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Activist Strategies for Antinormative Healing," Megan Paslawski, Queens C, City U of New York
    "Race, Gender, and Sanism: Remapping Mad Feminist Genealogies," Jess Waggoner, U of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Debunking Imperial Myths and Dreaming Decolonization in the Long Nineteenth Century
    Speakers: Kyle McAuley, Seton Hall U; Emma Mincks, U of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Lindsey O'Neil, U of Maryland, College Park; Oishani Sengupta, U of Rochester; and Arun Sood, U of Plymouth
    Session Description: Panelists explore how the study of British empire in the long nineteenth century can be transformed by critical approaches that center the perspectives of Indigenous and colonized subjects, confronting Romantic and Victorian studies’ participation in systems of white supremacy and settler colonialism and articulating new methods for redressing historical patterns of exclusion, erasure, and marginalization.
  • Decolonizing Comparative Literature
    Speakers: Chadwick Allen, U of Washington, Seattle; Renae Watchman, McMaster U; Eileen M. Julien, Indiana U, Bloomington; Evan Mwangi, Northwestern U; Sangeeta Ray, U of Maryland, College Park; Rei Terada, U of California, Irvine; and Dina Al-Kassim, U of British Columbia, Vancouver
    Session Description: Comparative literature as a discipline emerged in the late nineteenth century at the height of European colonialism. What does decolonization mean for the discipline? How does asking questions about race and indigeneity change the contours of the field? Is comparative literature a form of settler knowledge? What might a decolonized or decolonial comparative literature look like?
  • Sylvia Wynter’s Eighteenth Century
    Presiding: Tita Chico, U of Maryland, College Park
    "Decolonizing the Archives of the Eighteenth Century in the Wake of Wynter’s Demonic Ground," Nicole N. Aljoe, Northeastern
    "After Man and Before: Placing the Early American Child beside Wynter’s Man," Camille Owens, Harvard
    "Lessons from Wynter; or, The Continuing Ontological Stakes of Late-Eighteenth-Century Writing," Samantha Plasencia, Colby C
    "Bird Song and the Plantationocene" Chi-ming Yang, U of Pennsylvania
  • The New Humanities
    Speakers: Paula Johnson, Wellesley C; David Theo Goldberg, U of California, Irvine; Marisa Parham, U of Maryland, College Park; Kimberly Moffitt, U of Maryland Baltimore County; and Alondra Nelson, Social Science Research Council
    Plenary Session Description: Administrators who have an impact on or are knowledgeable about curriculum discuss how to restructure the study of the humanities at the undergraduate level and promote humanities research in higher education more broadly. Each participant proposes ways to redesign the study of the humanities rather than defend the humanities as they are. Attendees will have the opportunity to discuss these proposals throughout the session.

Saturday, 8 June

  • The Aesthetics of Kinship
     "Introduction: The Aesthetics of Kinship," Tyler Bradway, State U of New York, Cortland and Elizabeth Freeman, U of California, Davis
    "The Mixed-Race Child Is Queer Father to the Man: Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Kinship Aesthetics," Brigitte Fielder, U of Wisconsin, Madison
    "Star, Brother: Kinstillatory Praxis across Turtle Island," Joseph Pierce, Stony Brook U, State U of New York
    "Trans Rhythms of Ecstatic Kinship in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet," Aqdas Aftab, U of Maryland, College Park
  • Language and Literature Program Innovation Room
    "Recovering Nineteenth-Century French Print Culture in the Digital Age," Maria Beliaeva Solomon, Theavy Din, and Charlotte Joublot Ferré, U of Maryland, College Par
    Session Description: Showcase presenters share models of curriculum reform, including new programs, credentials, courses, and initiatives in areas such as experiential learning, digital humanities, public humanities, and career diversity. The event, a poster-style session with each presenter at an individual station, allows audience members to drop by any time while the Innovation Room is in session and spend as much time as desired exploring the showcase.
  • Joining Forces to Fill the Talent Pipeline: ALC Bridge
    Speakers: Bill Rivers, WP Rivers and Associates and Stephen Lank, U of Maryland, College Park
    Session Description: Demand for qualified interpreters and translators is rising, and talent is in short supply. Too few language majors enter the marketplace with real-world skills; industry and association veterans seek to connect higher education and the workforce. ALC Bridge joins educators from the American Translators Association to highlight career pathways. Presenters identify ways we can support the needs of higher education as it prepares students for jobs in the business world.
  • Unexpected Bodies in Eighteenth-Century German Culture: Staging and Staring—the Politicized Body
    Presiding: Julie Koser, U of Maryland, College Park
  • (Un)Civil Humanities: The Possibilities of Public Engagement in Language and Literature
    Speakers: Holly Jackson, U of Massachusetts, Boston; Barbara McCaskill, U of Georgia; Robert Levine, U of Maryland, College Park; Tess Chakkalakal, Bowdoin C; D. Berton Emerson, Whitworth U; Annika Bjornson, Whitworth U; and Annaclare Splettztoeszer, Whitworth U
    Session Description: Public engagement seems desirable and even necessary in the humanities. But how do language- or literature-focused humanists specifically engage the public? What is the relationship between scholarly and civic endeavors? How does pedagogy play a part? Panelists share concrete projects, reflect on the possibilities and problems of such work, and invite ideas from the audience.
  • Building Bridges and Breaking Down Walls: The Teaching of World Literature in English
    "Women of the World: Inclusive Approaches to Teaching Global Anglophone Literature," Sara Faradji, U of Maryland, College Park
    "Teaching Borges and Translation Studies," Emron Esplin, Brigham Young U, UT
    "Transfigured in Translation: Teaching Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis to a Community College Class in the United States," Maria Shine Stewart, Notre Dame C
    "From Greenhorns to Grown-Ups: Teaching Cortázar to AP Spanish, University, and Adult Education Students," Pamela A. Lim-McAlister, U of California, Berkeley
  • Demanding Civic Accountability through Critical Rhetorical Practices
    Speakers: Shenika Hankerson, U of Maryland, College Park; Cecilia Shelton, U of Maryland, College Park; and Temptaous Mckoy, Bowie State U
    Session Description: The project of American democracy is just as linguistic and rhetorical as it is political. We explore the critical potential of Black (and other marginalized) linguistic and rhetorical practices and violence of white supremacist (and other oppressive) linguistic and rhetorical practices. Thinking across contexts of civic and community engagement (classrooms, publics, institutions), we consider the role of accountability in the American myth of democracy.
  • Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Apart from Emily Dickinson
    Speakers: Martha Nell Smith, U of Maryland, College Park; Sandra Harbert Petrulionis, Penn State U, Altoona; Wendy Tronrud, Graduate Center, City U of New York; William Hunt, Barton C; Cheryl Weaver, U at Buffalo, State U of New York; and Scott Ellis, Southern Connecticut State U
    Session Description: Thomas Wentworth Higginson is mostly remembered as a correspondent with Emily Dickinson and early editor of her poems, yet he had a long career as a clergyman, writer, editor, abolitionist, and advocate of women’s rights and writing. His personal relationships, writings, and behind-the-scenes activism helped shape nineteenth-century American literature and culture. Panelists seek to spark new discussion about Higginson’s life and work beyond Dickinson.
  • Romanticism and World Literature
    Presiding: Orrin N. C. Wang, U of Maryland, College Park
    Session Description: Panelists generate a spirited, substantial conversation about the possibilities and challenges of thinking about British Romanticism and world literature together.
  • From Canons to Collectivities: Digital Editions and Scholarly Labor
    "Contributor-Editor Collaboration on ‘Microeditions’ at Scholarly Editing," Noelle A. Baker, independent scholar; Raffaele Viglianti, U of Maryland, College Park; Robert Riter, U of Alabama, Tuscaloosa; and Kathryn Tomasek, Wheaton C, MA
    "Creating Collectively: DH and the Bilingual Edition of La Princesse de Clèves," Helene Bilis and Jenifer Bartle, Wellesley C
    "Valuing Expertise and Collaboration in Digital Editing," Caitlin Postal, U of Washington, Seattle


Sunday, 9 January

  • Periodical Poetry in the Global Nineteenth Century
    Presiding: Jason R. Rudy, U of Maryland, College Park
  • Infrastructures of Care
     "Sex Work, Queer Femininity, and the Biometric Database," Jill Richards, Yale U
    "Infrastructures of Care in Gulf Guest Worker Fiction," John MacIntosh, U of Maryland, College Park
    "‘Walking Social Services’: Mapping Multicultural Care in Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange," Ethan King, Boston U
    "Failing to Care: National and Familial Emergencies in Rohinton Mistry’s Anglophone Worlds," Aruni Mahapatra, U of Alabama, Birmingham