The Wire: A Site for the MLA Commons Community
Explorations of the sensorium; texture, sensation, affect, touch; spacing and relationscape; distance and distancing, nearness, seclusion; relationalities, withdrawal, fusion; transpecies, human; bonds and bonding, intimacy, attachment/detachment. 250-word abstracts, CVs by 23 February 2015 to Scott Herring (tsherrin@indiana.edu) and Carla Freccero (freccero@ucsc.edu).
What’s at stake in naming this period “long” (1660-1830), “short” (1715-1789), early modern, Enlightenment (etc.)? What’s its role in the new MLA forum structure? 300-word abstracts by 15 March 2015 to Dustin D. Stewart and Joshua Swidzinski.
I am seeking speakers for a panel at the next meeting of the Modern Language Association in Austin TX, 7-10 January 2015. Successful panelists will present short critical papers (20 mins; 6 double spaced pages single sided; this is a firm limit) that discuss C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia…
When I speak about virtues, ethics and leadership, people ask, sometimes in jest, whether I am a scientist or a humanist. When this happens, I reflect on what we want our students to strive to become and answer: both. In The Conversation‘s Science 2.0 blog, physicist Todd Martin argues that the distinction between STEM and…
Achieve the Core, for example, an organization founded by the lead writers of the standards, explicitly encourages schools to teach students to “extract” information so they can “note and assess patterns of writing” without relying on “any particular background information” or “students having other experiences or knowledge.” This emphasis on…
Material culture—the production, possession, display, gifting and consumption of material goods and the built environment—plays an active role in the construction and reception of socially determined meanings. We measure core cultural values such as authenticity, tradition and progress in part through our relationship with things and spaces in all their…
Faced with some of life’s most painful moments poetry can reassure us that we are not alone – others have suffered too. But a great poem also allows us to make sense of feelings that might otherwise be a searing amorphous mass somewhere deep inside us. Great poetry makes us…
This session is particularly interested in (but not limited to) papers that explore the primacy of written language as instruction compared to oral, traditional, on-site lecture/discussion; ways that written discussion in online forums enhance rhetorical practices; and papers that answer questions, not limited to: Is there a correlation between time…
3–5 July 2015, Stirling, Scotland This 2015 conference aims to promote inter-disciplinary scholarly engagement with Cunninghame Graham and his time, with particular emphasis on issues of globalisation, empire, colonialism and postcolonialism, democracy, civil rights and social justice. We also invite papers on other Scottish writers and intellectuals who engaged with…
Describing the first bartering activity between his crew members and native peoples in his letter to Luis de Santangel (1493), Columbus was quick to formulate the economic logic that, no doubt in his view and the Spanish crown’s, justified European presence in the Indies: the natives were to “give us…