Date:         Tue, 9 Jul 2002 15:29:25 +0100
From: John Lavagnino <John.Lavagnino@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject:      MLA report

Every year the ACH runs two sessions at the Modern Language
Association convention in December; we get to do this because we're an
"affiliated organization".  The sessions have to be organized a year
in advance, because the MLA itself takes that long to put the
convention's program together.

The ACH has sought to use these sessions to promote the kind of work
we do to people in the world of modern languages generally.  We've
tried to vary the topics and personnel a good deal; as organizer of
this activity I've most often just found someone with an idea for a
session and sent them off to arrange everything about it.

In the December 2001 convention in New Orleans our two sessions were:

--- "Computer Games, Narrative, and Special Effects", organized by
    Andrew Mactavish and Geoffrey Rockwell of McMaster University.
    As far as I know this was the first ACH session devoted to
    computer games, and possibly the first MLA session of the kind:
    I'm not aware of another such session in the period from 1996 to
    the present.

--- "Seeking the Soul of the Machine: Interrogating Human-Computer
    Relations in Literature, Composition, and Art", organized by Donna
    Reiss of Tidewater Community College.  This session tried to mix
    the subjects of teaching and actual thought about literature,
    more often kept separate.

The details about speakers and papers are at

  http://www.ach.org/mla01/

I also compiled a list of all sessions with anything computer-related,
and that's at

  http://www.ach.org/mla01/guide.html

We now have such lists going back to 1996, and even over this short
term they can give you a pretty good picture of changing interests.

For the December 2002 convention in New York we've got these two
sessions lined up:

--- "Practice, Theory, and Profession: English Studies and New
    Technologies", organized by my colleague Michael Hanrahan, here at
    King's College London.  More thoughts about teaching and computers.

--- "The New Apprenticeship: Navigating Collaboration in Digital
    Studies", with Susan Schreibman of the University of Maryland
    presiding.  This is the session initially proposed under the title
    "Why Graduate Education in English Sucks" by Martha Nell Smith and
    John Unsworth.  Regrettably, the subject has changed somewhat, but
    there is the advantage that we no longer need to ask the MLA to
    schedule this session in Yankee Stadium or some equally large
    venue.

As always, I'm interested to hear proposals for future sessions.

John