Drs. Jesse Alem\u00e1n and Danizete Mart\u00ednez, of the English departments at UNM\u2019s main campus and the UNM-Valencia branch campus, respectively, have had their individual conference panels selected as \u201cPresidential Theme\u201d sessions at the January 3-5, 2018 Modern Language Association Convention in New York City.<\/p>\n
Dr. Alem\u00e1n will preside over a panel titled \u201cBlack Literature Matters,\u201d which features four speakers who will present on the challenges, strategies, and practices of researching and teaching African-American, Afro-Latina\/o, and black Caribbean literatures in college classrooms in an age of racial tension, social protest, and entrenched institutional racism on and off campus.<\/p>\n
Dr. Mart\u00ednez\u2019s panel, \u201cAddressing Poverty, Silence, and Resistance in the Classroom,\u201d features three presentations that explore how instructors can engage in a productive and non-judgmental way students who experience some form of impoverishment. The speakers will discuss critical pedagogy in the composition classroom; alternatives to academic writing; and community-based volunteerism as a form of retention for place-based teaching.<\/p>\n
The Modern Language Association is the main professional organization for the study and teaching of languages and literatures. Each year, the MLA\u2019s Program Committee identifies key sessions from its over 800 panels that fall under the purview of the conference\u2019s annual \u201cPresidential Theme.\u201d This year\u2019s theme is \u201c#States of Insecurity,\u201d which MLA president Diana Taylor explains, \u201cinvites reflection on how our intellectual, artistic, and pedagogical work in the humanities offers strategies for navigating crises of our time\u201d (https:\/\/www.mla.org\/Convention\/MLA-2018\/2018-Presidential-Theme)<\/a>.<\/p>\n Selected sessions receive special billing, are covered by the MLA\u2019s media crew, and are identified to local media outlets for further coverage.<\/p>\n The \u201cBlack Literature Matters\u201d panel is one of three sessions offered by the MLA\u2019s Committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada, on which Dr. Alem\u00e1n sits as the incoming chair (https:\/\/clpc.mla.hcommons.org\/)<\/a>. The \u201cAddressing Poverty\u201d panel is sponsored by the MLA\u2019s Committee on Community Colleges (https:\/\/www.mla.org\/About-Us\/Governance\/Committees\/Committee-Listings\/Professional-Issues\/Committee-on-Community-Colleges)<\/a>, on which Dr. Mart\u00ednez sits as an executive council member.<\/p>\n Dr. Alem\u00e1n is a Presidential Teaching Fellow and the Director of Literature in the English Department at UNM\u2019s Main Campus, and Dr. Mart\u00ednez is an associate professor of English and the Chair of Communications, Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences at UNM-Valencia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Drs. Jesse Alem\u00e1n and Danizete Mart\u00ednez, of the English departments at UNM\u2019s main campus and the UNM-Valencia branch campus, respectively, have had their individual conference panels selected as \u201cPresidential Theme\u201d sessions at the January 3-5, 2018 Modern Language Association Convention in New York City. Dr. Alem\u00e1n will preside over a panel titled \u201cBlack Literature Matters,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1203,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","category-presentations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.unm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}