The Modern Language Association Conference went online for 2021, and so did nine of UNM’s English faculty and graduate students, who participated on panels and as presenters of their original research.
Feroza Jussawalla, BILS Professor, and Doaa Omran, Alumna and Instructor, participated in a colloquy entitled “Speaking Persistently: Muslim Women Writers’ Resistances,” over which Omran presided. This intercultural panel considered the ways in which women “show that by persistently speaking out they are creating forms of resistance within their Islamic identities.”
Bernadine Hernandez, American Literary Studies Assistant Professor, was a panelist in a session that considered “Carla Trujillo’s Chicana Lesbians at Thirty Years.”
Chuck Paine, Rhetoric & Writing Professor, spoke as a panelist in a session that discussed “Relations between Two-Year and Four-Year Institutions.”
Nahir Otaño Gracia, Assistant Professor of Medieval Studies, presented two papers: “Language Politics and Arthuriana in Guillem de Torroella’s La Faula” and “Violence is Not Neutral: The Persistent Erasure of Violence in the Historiography of the Global North,” in panels concerning the Medieval Mediterranean and race in Medieval Iberian studies, respectively.
Lauren Perry, American Literary Studies PhD student, was present in her capacity as regional delegate from the Central and Rocky Mountain Region.
David Puthoff, PhD student of American Literary Studies was a panelist for “Climate Activist Pedagogies.”
Tania Balderas, American Literary Studies PhD student, was a panelist on a panel entitled “Solitude and the Community: Teaching and Learning during a Pandemic.”
Vicki Vanbrocklin, American Literary Studies PhD student, presented her research, “A Constellation of Lost Stars: Nineteenth-Century Black Women Activists,” in a session that focused on Black women and intellectualism in the nineteenth century.
As an executive committee member of the MLA’s LLC Nineteenth-Century American Literature Forum, Jesse Alemán, Professor of American Literary Studies, helped to arrange the 2022 MLA panels for the group, including the session he is chairing on “Revolución/Révolution: Insurrection, slave rebellion, civil unrest, social change, or literary activism in the US and the Americas, especially in languages other than English.” Also, as a member of the American Literature Society executive committee (an MLA Allied Organization), he helped to plan their 2022 MLA sessions and is chairing the panel titled “No Justice/No Peace: On the role, relevance, and responsibilities of American literature and social change.”
As an executive committee member of the MLA’s CLCS Arthurian Forum, Anita Obermeier, Professor of Medieval Studies, helped to arrange the 2022 MLA panel for the group: “Different Endings – Happy and Otherwise: The nature and role of endings in various Arthurian traditions, especially endings across more than one national literature or across time periods.”
Calls for Papers can now be found on the MLA CFP site for the 2022 conference to be held in Washington, DC.
