Saturday, January 17, 2015

January 17-18, 2015: Spring 2015 Previews: The NeMLA Conference

[With the start of a new semester comes all the new opportunities and possibilities provided by a fresh group of courses. In this week’s series I’ll highlight a few of those semester plans, among a couple other things on my Spring 2015 radar. I’d love to hear about your spring plans and goals in comments!]
On three additional reasons—besides the always-stimulating program of panels, roundtables, seminars, and talks—why I’m looking forward to NeMLA’s 2015 Conference in Toronto.
1)      A Ground-breaking Keynote: NeMLA’s current President, Daniela Antonucci, has arranged for a truly innovative keynote address for Toronto. Christopher Innes and Brigitte Bogar will present “Multi Modal Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet: A Performative Analysis,” featuring both a lecture component and accompanying musical and dance performances. The talk exemplifies Daniela’s commitment to bringing interdisciplinarity to NeMLA, not just as an element of scholars’ work but as a primary goal and methodology for the organization. I couldn’t agree more, and look forward to this keynote as a next step in that direction!
2)      Welcoming New Board Members: We’ve completed our annual election, and have a number of new Board members who will be joining us in Toronto and for the next few years beyond: new 2nd Vice President Maria DiFrancesco; American Area Director John Casey; Comp Lit and Languages Area Director Richard Schumaker; Culture and Media Studies Area Director Lisa Perdigao; and Member-at-Large for Professional Development Angela Fulk. I’m very excited to work with all of these new folks as well as all our returning Board members, not least because of…
3)      The Start of My Presidency Year: As of the membership brunch on Sunday, the transition to the 2015-2016 year—the year for which I’ll be NeMLA’s President—will be underway. In recent months I’ve really begun to feel that the movement toward the 2016 conference in Hartford has commenced, including securing two great University of Connecticut graduate students to be our local representatives and working with the wonderful Dean Shirley Roe and Dr. Cathy Schlund-Vials at UConn to help plan many aspects of the conference. But I’m still very interested in getting any and all thoughts on my two personal goals for the conference: helping NeMLA better connect to and serve adjunct and contingent faculty; and linking the conference to the Hartford community, and specifically the city’s public schools, in one way or another. I’d love to hear your takes on either or both of those ideas!
MLK-inspired series starts Monday,
Ben

PS. What do you think? Spring plans you’d share?

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