[This past
weekend was the 2018
Northeast MLA convention in Pittsburgh. It was a great time as usual, and
this week I’ll highlight some standout moments and conversations. Leading up to
a weekend post on how you can get involved in this great organization!]
On two
categories of reasons why I’ve rejoined the NeMLA Board.
As longtime
readers of this blog know, much of my last half-dozen years has been spent as
part of the NeMLA
Executive Board, leading up to my year as President
presiding over the 2016
convention in Hartford. That service ended with the 2017 convention in
Baltimore, the conclusion of my year as the organization’s Past President. While
I knew that I’d want to stay connected to this organization that has meant so
much to me, not only for these recent years but for well more than a decade of
conferences and experiences, I was quite sure my time as part of the NeMLA
leadership had ended. Yet this fall I found myself running for the position of
American Literature Director (to succeed my friend and colleague John
Casey, who has done exceptional work with this position and area since 2015),
and a couple months ago I was fortunate enough to win that election and as of
this past weekend am now the next NeMLA American Lit Director.
Despite my
passive voice “found myself” construction above, this was of course a choice of
mine, and not one I made lightly given my general schedule craziness. If I’m
being honest, the constellation of motivations at the top of the list are relatively
selfish ones: NeMLA and the NeMLA Board are two of my all-time favorite
academic communities, and I was genuinely sad to be leaving them and jumped at
the chance to rejoin. As I wrote in this
goodbye post (which now reads like a statement from one of those musicians
who “retire” from touring only to be back out on the road a year later, but so
it goes!), it’s rare to find such a professional community, and I would
encourage everyone who does so to work hard to remain connected to it. To that
end, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that whatever the time
and schedule commitments and obligations, keeping that connection with the NeMLA
Board going would offer me far more benefits than challenges. That’s my number
one question about any schedule additions, now and going forward, and when I
find ones that definitively contribute more than they take, I’m very likely to
choose to pursue them.
There’s another
big category of motivations behind this choice, though, and I’d classify them
generally as “unfinished business.” During my years on the Board, I worked hard
to bring a number of issues more fully into NeMLA’s conventions and
conversations: adjunct faculty and issues of labor in higher ed; public scholarship
and what organizations like NeMLA can and should do in our society; connections
between academic conversations and public education; and relationships of
academic conferences to local communities, among others. While the American
Literature Director position has a number of specific responsibilities that
will be my primary focus for each year’s convention—overseeing the selection of
panels and roundtables within this area; finding Special Events speakers;
connecting to historic and cultural sites in our host cities—I fully intend to
find ways to continue those earlier efforts through this new role. I don’t wish
I knew how to quit NeMLA (no more than Jake really wanted to quit
Heath), and I’m very excited to see where this next chapter in the
connection takes me.
Next recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. NeMLA
responses or thoughts? Other organizations or conferences you’d highlight?
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