Fordham English Faculty in Texas!

Literature faculty from around the country and the world gathered from January 7-10 in Austin, Texas for the annual convention of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Fordham English was very well represented at the conference this year. Indeed, you could have had a very full and rewarding conference if you only attended panels with Fordham English faculty members on them!

• Professor Corey McEleney presented a paper titled “How to Live Together at Grey Gardens,” on a panel titled “Queer Proximities."  
• Professor and acting chair Christopher GoGwilt spoke on a roundtable discussion on “Comparative Literature and Global Studies,” at which panelists discussed “a range of perspectives of the institutional and curricular relations between comparative literature and global studies, specifically the effects of global studies on comparative literature and the ways in which comparative literature is shaping localized versions of global studies. How can we work together as allies and partners rather than as adversaries?” 
• Professor Rebecca Sanchez spoke on a panel titled “Alternative Mobilities.” Her topic was "Embodied Impersonality: ASL Poetics and the Materiality of Language. " 
• On a panel on “Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Women Writers as Public Intellectuals,” chaired by Fordham English faculty member Cornelius Collins, Professor Anne Fernald presented a paper titled "Looking Again at Spain: Rukeyser, Warner, Woolf. “ 
• Professor Stuart Sherman participated in a roundtable discussion on “The Intermedial Eighteenth Century: Stage to Page, Print to Manuscript, Writing to Speech, and Back,” at which “Panelists aim to refine our understanding of the relations of rivalry and remediation that connect the book and the stage, print and manuscript, and writing and orality in the later eighteenth century.” 
• Presiding over a panel on “The Lore and Lure of the Academic Job Market” was Professor Leonard Cassuto. There panelists considered “how discipline-specific ‘lore’ continually lures graduate students and contingent and full-time faculty members into an already overcrowded job market. Instead of providing advice about getting a job, participants evaluate that advice and generate discussion about how it upholds common practices in graduate programs and academic departments.”  
• Professor Cassuto also participated in a roundtable discussion “On the Emergence of a Teaching-Intensive Faculty Tier.” “The off-tenure-track faculty workforce, once considered temporary, is now permanent. The growth of this tier affects the educational goals of institutions and the professional identity of professors—and attention must be paid. Panelists address the professionalization of teaching-intensive tracks from perspectives centering on graduate students, faculty members, and institutions.” 
• Professor Jordan Stein asked “Is Activist History Also Disciplinary History?” on a panel about “New Disciplinary Histories.” Sunday 10 January, 1:45-3pm.

In addition to all this scholarly activity, a group of Fordham English faculty members interviewed twelve extraordinarily accomplished candidates for our open position in “Literatures of the African Diaspora.” Job talks for that position, as well as the other open tenure-track position in "Fiction Writing and the Practices of Publishing," should be announced soon. 

It was a busy week for faculty, even though the students weren't yet back from break!