[Next week, a
new semester begins; so this week, I’ll preview five classes and other aspects
of that semester, this time through the lens of teaching and working in the age
of Trump. Leading up to a special weekend post on book talks and plans!]
On one thing I
know we’ll talk about in Baltimore in March, and one I very much hope we will.
I’ve been
writing about the 2017
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference in Baltimore since
just
after my 2016 conference in Hartford ended, and looking forward to it for
even longer than that. The current NeMLA President, my
friend Hilda Chacón; our NeMLA Executive Director, my
friend Carine Mardorossian; the current 1st Vice President, my friend Maria DiFrancesco;
and the whole NeMLA
Board have helped put together an extremely impressive schedule (not yet
released, but watch this space!) of panels, special sessions and events, and local
opportunities, and as usual I’m very excited to attend the conference from
start to finish (which I’ve really only done for NeMLA conferences for many
years now, and which I’m genuinely excited to do—something, as any academic can
tell you, that certainly isn’t always the case with conferences).
Working with our
collaborating colleagues and departments at Johns Hopkins University, and using
her own scholarly and personal expertise and experiences as guides, Hilda has
come up with a conference
theme that couldn’t be more timely and vital: “Translingual and
Transcultural Competence: Toward a Multilingual Future in the Global Era.” (She
also invited me to contribute a short essay on that theme for an upcoming issue
of NeMLA’s journal
Modern Language Studies; again,
watch this space!) I think it’s fair to say that both multilingualism and
globalism are likely to be threatened concepts in Trump’s America (other than
when it comes to, y’know, Russia), although indeed both have been under siege
for some time from many American voices and communities (during the 2008
presidential campaign Mitt Romney critiqued Barack Obama for suggesting that
Americans should learn multiple languages, noting, “Barack Obama looks to
Europe for many of his ideas; John McCain wants America to stay America”). Talking
about them at academic conferences won’t be nearly enough to resist and challenge
those threats, of course—but talking can undoubtedly help us strategize about
ways to support languages and multicultural and global initiatives, in education,
politics, and society overall.
Academics
themselves are also likely to face new threats in the age of Trump, perhaps
overall but certainly in two specific categories: those who work at public
institutions (as I do); and, especially, those in contingent and adjunct
faculty positions. During my time on the NeMLA Board, and culminating in the
planning for my own 2016 conference, I’ve worked with NeMLA’s CAITY
Caucus (and especially its former President
Emily Lauer) to organize a
number of sessions and conversations about, and ways
to support, adjunct and contingent faculty members and related efforts and issues.
I mean that the 2016 conference represented an individual culmination of those
efforts of mine, but not at all that our collective conversations should or
will end with those 2016 sessions. Quite the opposite, I think it’ll be vitally
important for the 2017 conference—and indeed for every academic gathering in
the age of Trump—to engage directly with the issues facing these most
vulnerable of our colleagues and communities, and to talk together about both
how we as an organization (and as individuals) can support them and how we can
work to make clear to all Americans the need for such shared support and
solidarity.
Special post
this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Spring plans you’d highlight or share?
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