[Last week was
one of the busiest of my professional career, featuring a series of great
Boston events, culminating in the 51st Northeast
MLA convention. So this week I’ll recap that convention and those other
events, leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how
you can get involved!]
I had the chance
to attend a number of great panels at NeMLA—here are takeaways from three
particularly excellent ones:
1)
A Space of One’s Own: I went to this panel on
“articulating the scope of the female in American lit” in order to support my
friend Katie
Daily, whose wonderful first book won the
NeMLA Book Prize a few years back and who presented on part of her next project
(on 21C women’s combat memoirs). But Katie’s turned out to be the fourth of
four compelling and compellingly interconnected papers, from Kait Tonti’s on 18th
century commonplace books and political and social protest, to Vicki
Vanbrocklin’s evolving concept of “lost womanhood” (an antidote to “true
womanhood”), to Skye
Anicca’s reading of late 20th century immigrant novels as
intersectional alternatives to the bildungsroman. One of the most multi-layered
conversations I’ve ever encountered in a panel, each distinct yet building on
each other very powerfully.
2)
Gothic Domesticity: One real benefit of being
the NeMLA
American Area (now renamed to the US, Transnational, and Diaspora Area)
Director is the chance to watch panels develop from their initial proposal
through the submission of abstracts and the choice of presenters up through
their final form as the conference panels themselves. I felt that particularly
strongly at this conference with Danielle
Cofer and Caitlin Duffy’s
Gothic Domesticity sessions, which began as one proposal and transformed into a
two-parter after receiving so many great abstracts. I had a conflict with the
first part, but got to see the great second half, featuring Beth
Sherman on Shirley Jackson’s We Have
Always Lived in the Castle, Kelly Suprenant
on Jackson’s novel alongside Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, and Molly
McCullough on the gothic orphan in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. I don’t want to speak for Danielle and Caitlin, but
to me this session truly embodied the diverse and rich conversations their
wonderful initial idea was intended to bring together and amplify.
3)
Black Men, White Publishers: Another reason I
love the chance to attend so many panels at NeMLA (which is really due to my
role and my desire to support the American Area sessions) is that I learn so,
so much in the process. I attended this panel to support my longtime fellow
Board member and friend Don Ramon, who
gave a great paper on Damon
Young and the tradition of fight scenes in African American men’s memoirs. Ben Fried gave an equally
great talk on the original New
Yorker publication of and
contexts for James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (later expanded
as part of Notes
of a Native Son). While I had some sense of both of those subjects, I
knew precisely nothing about the topic of Emanuela
Kucik’s talk: the memoir
of Hans Massoquoi, the longtime Ebony
magazine editor who grew up in Nazi Germany (the son of a Liberian father
and German mother) and for a time in his early teenage years sought desperately
to become a member of the Hitler Youth. That I had never heard of this striking
figure and his stunning life and book offers one more example of why NeMLA is
such a vital contributor not just to my communal and personal experiences, but
to my knowledge and career.
Last recap
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. If you were
at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!
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