A Kinder, Gentler MLA
One of the holiday season’s hallowed traditions has abruptly shifted this year: the annual convention of the 30,000-member Modern Language Association (MLA) moved from its time-honored slot of horror right between Christmas and New Years (December 27–30) to the newly civilized and more family-friendly first week in January—this year, January 6–9. Another American ritual has grown up around the MLA Convention—namely, public press ridicule of the ostensibly very silly work that’s done at the annual meeting. In 1991, NYU American Studies professor Andrew Ross’s yellow Comme Des Garçons blazer was the talk of the New York Times. Another shopworn strategy for journalists on tight deadlines is simply to comb the 150+-page program for an outrageous-sounding title, then mock it: the gold standard here would have to be the late Eve Sedgwick’s 1989 MLA convention talk, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl.” Nick Gillespie describes the phenomenon pithily, and perfectly: “No academic conference draws more smirks and bitch-slaps than the annual Modern Language Association convention.”
Unless I’m doing something wrong searching the web site, the print edition of our hometown Los Angeles Times simply refused to give this year’s conference any coverage, despite the fact that more than 8,000 of us gobbled up most every available hotel room in downtown LA for four days. One item did make it into the online edition of the Times, on its “Jacket Copy” blog; in that piece the author, Carolyn Kellogg, took a familiar page from the Mock-an-Academic Style Book, and listed “13 MLA Panels We Missed.” For pity’s sake, people: these articles freakin’ write themselves.
The piece moves in and out of the program with predictably fatuous amusement, citing both “Bootleg Paratextuality and Aesthetics: Decay and Distortion in the Borat DVD” and such apparent howlers as “Metonymic Machines: Books and Literary Histories.” The academy’s rapproachment with popular culture over the past—what, four decades?!—is apparently still proof positive that American anti-intellectualism holds the higher ground; I am genuinely puzzled, though, as to why a journalist finds it funny that she doesn’t know what metonymy is, or at least assumes that you won’t—and that you’ll sneer at the very mention. (Wasn’t there a recent Charlie Kaufman film whose title played with this very same linguistic capital—Synecdoche, New York?) And this year, in a flagrant Bronx cheer to the Left Coast, the New York Times ignored us completely. Preferable, probably, to the kind of coverage we usually get.
But I suspect that even had media coverage of this year’s convention been better, the traditional media would have missed the real story of this year’s conference. Can you feel it—can you see that I’m teasing you here? Tune in tomorrow, gentle reader, to hear of the kinder, gentler—more humane—face of this year’s MLA. For there’s a warm, beating heart at the center of this clutch of geeks I call my colleagues and friends.
Thanks for this post, Kevin. I should do due diligence by pointing out that some members find the new dates less friendly: kids are in school, and some parents, too (quarter system; Canadian institutions). I should also note that Larry Gordon of the LA Times did write a story centered on the job search:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mla-20110108,0,2711986.story
Can’t wait for tomorrow’s installment! Bet it’s about the Fun Run. Or the reception following the Presidential Address.
Rosemary Feal
Executive Director
MLA
There was one article on the economy and the job market, http://lat.ms/hkIlRB