MLA 2025: What I Saw
As everyone reading this has surely heard, the big drama at the MLA this year was the Executive Council's decision not to allow the Delegate Assembly to vote on a BDS resolution (see this long explanation from the MLA regarding why they made this decision). That led at least some people I know to decide not to attend; others attended and participated in various actions, including a hallway 'pop-up' poetry reading on Friday, and protests before and during the delegate assembly meeting on Saturday.
It might also be worth mentioning that there were no less than 28 panels related to Palestinian literature and culture at MLA this year, from Postcolonial / Decolonial literature panels, to Palestine and the Medical Humanities, to representations of Palestine in Medieval Literature.
My own MLA this year was mostly focused on Digital Humanities panels and African American literature panels -- that's mostly where my head has been for the past couple of years -- though I did attend a few other things, including an interesting Queer studies/theory panel with Judith Butler, a panel on "Palestine and Postcolonial Literature," and a panel revisiting the category of the "New Woman," with interesting papers on Pandita Ramabai and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
I also presented myself on a panel on Friday afternoon connected to the “Responsible Datasets in Context” grant project I was on; if you’re interested in learning more about that, please visit our project website.
*
In African American literature, this is a special centenary – it’s the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke’s groundbreaking anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation, which has often been cited as the starting point for the Harlem Renaissance. There were at least three panels that I saw relating to that event; I went to at least some of all three.
Below is a more detailed overview of the specific panels I attended, divided into two sections, 1) African American Literature Panels and the Plenary, and 2) Digital Humanities Panels. *
*
 |
| Dana A. Williams, Jericho Brown, and Jesmyn Ward |
My own MLA this year was mostly focused on Digital Humanities panels and African American literature panels -- that's mostly where my head has been for the past couple of years -- though I did attend a few other things, including an interesting Queer studies/theory panel with Judith Butler, a panel on "Palestine and Postcolonial Literature," and a panel revisiting the category of the "New Woman," with interesting papers on Pandita Ramabai and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
I also presented myself on a panel on Friday afternoon connected to the “Responsible Datasets in Context” grant project I was on; if you’re interested in learning more about that, please visit our project website.
*
In African American literature, this is a special centenary – it’s the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke’s groundbreaking anthology The New Negro: An Interpretation, which has often been cited as the starting point for the Harlem Renaissance. There were at least three panels that I saw relating to that event; I went to at least some of all three.
The non-AI DH panels I went to were a little quieter than I would have expected -- for years it seemed like DH was the "next big thing," and panels would be standing-room only. Last year, it seemed like the Next Big Thing was going to be "Critical AI" (standing-room only; lots of buzz). This year, the tenor of the AI panels was much more critical and skeptical. There certainly were a lot of them though -- the Online Program lists no less than 155 panels tagged as "AI."
I missed the actual panel, but I heard from friends that the most interesting and useful conversations about AI they heard were at the panel with Katherine Elkins, Meredith Martin, Seth Perlow, and Aarthi Vadde that showcased the October 2024 special issue of PMLA on AI. So one place to start if you want to catch up on the AI talk at MLA might be that special issue.
*
As I mentioned, I also went to a thoughtful queer studies panel, responding to the 20th anniversary of Judith Butler’s Giving an Account of Oneself. As with the Critical AI panel I mentioned above, this one consisted of speakers who published essays in a special issue of Differences devoted to the topic. That special issue can be found here. Essentially, the panelists were all inspired by Butler’s work, and some of them found ways to apply her relatively abstract arguments about identity and relationality to specific questions of queer and trans identity. There was also a nice paper by Leigh Gilmore that was more focused on intellectual history – the friendship and correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy.Below is a more detailed overview of the specific panels I attended, divided into two sections, 1) African American Literature Panels and the Plenary, and 2) Digital Humanities Panels. *
Slides for MLA 2025
I'm on session 385 at the MLA this year, with my collaborators on the "Responsible Datasets in Context" grant I received last year. Here are my slides.
385 Educating at the Intersection of Data Science and Humanities through Ethical and Responsible ContextsModernist Studies Association 2024: A few notes
I was recently at the Modernist Studies Association Conference in Chicago. I've been going to the conference on and off for many years (going back to the early 2000s?). Lately, I've been going there to present on materials relevant to my digital projects. If interested, slides from my presentation are here.
I'm not going to try and give a comprehensive account of what I saw and did at MSA, but below are a few highlights. Overall, the vibe was good -- despite the wild week in US politics, everyone seemed eager to talk about their research. Indeed, in a few cases (especially with some of the material related to queer and trans writers), it seemed like there was a more intense relevance in light of the growing anti-trans tendency in public discourse.
Saturday Keynote: Nella Larsen's Passing
It was fun to have the Saturday keynote be a screening of the 2021 Netflix adaptation of Passing, followed by a panel discussing it. The film was great (I hadn't seen it!), and the panel discussion following, with Rafael Walker, Pardis Dabashi, and Cyraina Johnson-Roullier, was lively and enlightening. My main takeaway from the panelists was that the film is a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel, but it's more optimistic about love and less pessimistic about the affect of racism on personal relationships than Larsen's book.
Queer and Trans Writing
Panel attended: Transing modernism/queering modernism
Jaime Harker, University of Mississippi
Chris Coffman, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Aaron Stone, University of Virginia
Mat Fournier, Ithaca College Marquis Bey, Northwestern University
Marquis Bey, Northwestern University
This was a standout panel. Papers on Bryher, Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, and more
The idea of thinking about Bryher as a trans figure seems especially worthwhile. Also, the paper on Orlando mentioned some recent adaptations of the novel, including a film called Orlando: My Political Biography as well as a 2019 opera adaptation by Olga Neuwirth.
There were also a couple of papers that were theoretical / auto-theory interventions on the concept of dysphoria, and the concept of gender itself (memorable phrase: "from gender dysphoria to gender euphoria").
*
At another panel I attended, I saw another paper dealing with trans issues -- Michael Mayne of Denison University. He had rewritten parts of his paper at the last minute to reflect the results of the election. (In recent years, 664 anti-trans bills have been proposed by state legislatures. In the recent election, 41% of the ads for Trump were anti-Trans ads.
The Well of Loneliness is increasingly being read as a trans novel (including by scholars like Jack Halberstam and Leslie Feinberg). Mayne's emphasis was on the idea of transness as abjection in Hall's novel. He also mentioned Julia Serano's idea of "Effemimania" (a term I hadn't heard before), and Susan Stryker's idea of the prospect of trans writers reclaiming the "monster."
*
At another panel, Pamela Caughie gave a presentation on "Bloombsury's Gender Politics," where she alluded to the painter Dora Carrington, who was not quite trans, though she did engage in some transgressive gender play, and who was certainly queer and polyamorous (key line: "How I hate being a girl! Tied with female encumbrances and hanging flesh").
Caughie also mentioned many other writers who were new to me, including Rosamund Lehmann (Dusty Answer, 1927), and Denton Welch (Maiden Voyage, 1943).
Early Postcolonials
For many years, the MSA has been a welcoming place for people doing work on what we might think of as "early postcolonial" literature (1950-1980, roughly). This is the era of people like Naipaul and Lamming, Khushwant Singh, Mulk Raj Anand, C.L.R. James, etc.
*
On the panel where I presented, Ben Fried gave a paper on the relationship between V.S. Naipaul and his publisher, Andre Deutsch. Deutsch was a Jewish immigrant who fled from German-occupied Europe. Deutsch and Diana Athill worked together to form a new publishing house (Allan Wingate), which published Naipaul and many other postcolonial writers. Throughout his early career, Naipaul struggled with the tension of being a highly culturally grounded writer at a time when publishers were looking for "universal" appeal.
*
On another panel, I saw a paper by Rochona Mojumdar of the University of Chicago. She was interested in the dialogue between Mrinal Sen's early 1970s "Calcutta Trilogy" and radical Latin America in the "Third Cinema" movement -- specifically, Fernando Solanas' revolutionary classic, La Hora de Los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces), and Sen's Padatik (1973). There's an interesting moment of borrowing or appropriation in Sen's film -- where he takes the exact footage of police beating protestors that also appears in Solanas' film.
*
I also attended this panel:
R28. Mediating Empire: Comparative Colonialisms, Comparative Media Studies
Chair: Jessica Berman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Daniel Morse, University of Nevada, Reno
Stephen Pasqualina, University of Detroit-Mercy
Abhipsa Chakraborty, SUNY Buffalo
Nasia Anam, University of Nevada, Reno
This was another standout panel, with papers on radio adaptations of Raja Rao's Kanthapura, CLR James' broadcasts on the BBC, and more. Recent scholarship on the BBC's radio broadcasts has really expanded our understanding of how postcolonial literature emerged as a new formation during and after World War II.
*
On Sunday morning, I was in a Digital Humanities Seminar, on "Modernism in/and as Data." It was a fun and productive discussion.
Fall 2024 Teaching: Virginia Woolf (Grad Seminar)
Short Description:
Virginia Woolf is a towering figure of the modern novel. She is also a highly influential and accomplished essayist and philosopher, whose arguments continue to be influential to feminism, queer studies, medical humanities, and critiques of militarism, imperialism, and industrialized capitalism to the present day. This course will do a deep dive into Woolf's fiction and nonfiction, from her early short stories to major novels like Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, and Orlando, as well as long nonfiction essays, including A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. Attention will be paid to Woolf's engagement with major historical events (the two World Wars, the advent of women's suffrage, and colonialism/Empire) as well as her literary milieu (the Bloomsbury movement). Various critical lenses for reading Woolf's writing will be introduced at appropriate moments, including feminist and queer theory, psychoanalysis, and medical humanities scholarship, especially linked to Woolf's representations of mental illness (depression, bipolar disorder).
Virginia Woolf, "Thunder at Wembley" (1924)
Virginia Woolf, "Thunder at Wembley." Published in The Nation and the Athenaeum, June 28, 1924
It is nature that is the ruin of Wembley; yet it is difficult to see what steps Lord Stevenson, Lieut.- General Sir Travers Clarke, and the Duke of Devonshire could have taken to keep her out. They might have eradicated the grass and felled the chestnut trees; even so the thrushes would have got in, and there would always have been the sky. At Earl’s Court and the White City, so far as memory serves, there was little trouble from this source. The area was too small; the light too brilliant. If a single real moth strayed in to dally with the arc lamps he was at once transformed into a dizzy reveller; if a laburnum tree shook her tassels, spangles of limelight floated in the violet and crimson air. Everything was intoxicated and transformed. But at Wembley nothing is changed and nobody is drunk. They say, indeed, that there is a restaurant where each diner is forced to spend a guinea upon his dinner. What vistas of cold ham that statement calls forth! What pyramids of rolls! What gallons of tea and coffee! For it is unthinkable that there should be champagne, plovers’ eggs, or peaches at Wembley. And for six and eightpence two people can buy as much ham and bread as they need. Six and eightpence is not a large sum; but neither is it a small sum. It is a moderate sum, a mediocre sum. It is the prevailing sum at Wembley. You look through an open door at a regiment of motor-cars aligned in avenues. They are not opulent and powerful; they are not flimsy and cheap. Six and eightpence seems to be the price of each of them. It is the same with the machines for crushing gravel. One can imagine better; one can imagine worse. The machine before us is a serviceable type, and costs, inevitably, six and eight-pence. Dress fabrics, rope, table linen, old masters, sugar, wheat, filigree silver, pepper, birds’ nests (edible, and exported to Hong Kong), camphor, bees-wax, rattans, and the rest—why trouble to ask the price? One knows beforehand—six and eightpence. As for the buildings themselves, those vast, smooth, grey palaces, no vulgar riot of ideas tumbled expensively in their architect’s head; equally, cheapness was abhorrent to him, and vulgarity anathema. Per perch, rod, or square foot, however ferro-concrete palaces are sold, they too work out at six and eightpence.
But then, just as one is beginning a little wearily to fumble with those two fine words—democracy, mediocrity—nature asserts herself where one would least look to find her—in clergymen, school children, girls, young men, invalids in bath-chairs. They pass, quietly, silently, in coveys, in groups, sometimes alone. They mount the enormous staircases; they stand in queues to have their spectacles rectified gratis; to have their fountain pens filled gratis; they gaze respectfully into sacks of grain; glance reverently at mowing machines from Canada; now and again stoop to remove some paper bag or banana skin and place it in the receptacles provided for that purpose at frequent intervals along the avenues. But what has happened to our contemporaries? Each is beautiful; each is stately. Can it be that one is seeing human beings for the first time? In streets they hurry; in houses they talk; they are bankers in banks; sell shoes in shops. Here against the enormous background of ferro-concrete Britain, of rosy Burma, at large, unoccupied, they reveal themselves simply as human beings, creatures of leisure, civilization, and dignity; a little languid perhaps, a little attenuated, but a product to be proud of. Indeed, they are the ruin of the Exhibition. The Duke of Devonshire and his colleagues should have kept them out. As you watch them trailing and flowing, dreaming and speculating, admiring this coffee-grinder, that milk and cream separator, the rest of the show becomes insignificant. And what, one asks, is the spell it lays upon them? How, with all this dignity of their own, can they bring themselves to believe in that?
But this cynical reflection, at once so chill and so superior, was made, of course, by the thrush. Down in the Amusement Compound by some grave oversight on the part of the Committee several trees and rhododendron bushes have been allowed to remain; and these, as anybody could have foretold, attract the birds. As you wait your turn to be hoisted into mid-air, it is impossible not to hear the thrush singing. You look up, and discover a whole chestnut tree with its blossoms standing; you look down, and see ordinary grass, scattered with petals, harbouring insects, sprinkled with stray wild flowers. The gramophone does its best; they light a horse-shoe of fairy lamps above the Jack and Jill; a man bangs a bladder and implores you to come and tickle monkeys; boatloads of serious men are poised on the heights of the scenic railway; but all is vain. The cry of ecstasy that should have split the sky as the boat dropped to its doom patters from leaf to leaf, dies, falls flat, while the thrush proceeds with his statement.
And then some woman, in the row of red-brick villas - outside the grounds, comes out and wrings a dish-cloth in her backyard. All this the Duke of Devonshire should have prevented.
The problem of the sky, however, remains. Is it, one wonders, lying back limp but acquiescent in a green deck-chair, part of the Exhibition? Is it lending itself with exquisite tact to show off to the best advantage snowy Palestine, ruddy Burma, sand-coloured Canada, and the minarets and pagodas of our possessions in the East? So quietly it suffers all these domes and palaces to melt into its breast; receives them with such sombre and tender discretion; so exquisitely allows the rare lamps of Jack and Jill and the Monkey-Teasers to bear themselves like stars. But even as we watch and admire what we would fain credit to the forethought of Lieut.- General Sir Travers Clarke, a rushing sound is heard. Is it the wind or is it the British Empire Exhibition?
It is both. The wind is rising and shuffling along the avenues; the Massed Bands of Empire are assembling and marching to the Stadium. Men like pincushions, men like pouter pigeons, men like pillar-boxes pass in procession. Dust swirls after them. Admirably impassive, the bands of Empire march on. Soon they will have entered the fortress; soon the gates will have clanged. But let them hasten! For either the sky has misread her directions or some appalling catastrophe is impending. The sky is livid, lurid, sulphurine. It is in violent commotion. It is whirling water-spouts of cloud into the air; of dust in the Exhibition. Dust swirls down the avenues, hisses and hurries like erected cobras round the corners. Pagodas are dissolving in dust. Ferro-concrete is fallible. Colonies are perishing and dispersing in spray of inconceivable beauty and terror which some malignant power illuminates. Ash and violet are the colours of its decay. From every quarter human beings come flying—clergymen, school children, invalids in bath-chairs. They fly with outstretched arms, and a vast sound of wailing rolls before them, but there is neither confusion nor dismay. Humanity is rushing to destruction, but humanity is accepting its doom. Canada opens a frail tent of shelter. Clergymen and school children gain its portals. Out in the open, under a cloud of electric silver, the bands of Empire strike up. The bagpipes neigh. Clergy, school children, and invalids group themselves round the Prince of Wales in butter. Cracks like the white roots of trees spread themselves across the firmament. The Empire is perishing; the bands are playing; the Exhibition is in ruins, For that is what comes of letting in the sky.
It is nature that is the ruin of Wembley; yet it is difficult to see what steps Lord Stevenson, Lieut.- General Sir Travers Clarke, and the Duke of Devonshire could have taken to keep her out. They might have eradicated the grass and felled the chestnut trees; even so the thrushes would have got in, and there would always have been the sky. At Earl’s Court and the White City, so far as memory serves, there was little trouble from this source. The area was too small; the light too brilliant. If a single real moth strayed in to dally with the arc lamps he was at once transformed into a dizzy reveller; if a laburnum tree shook her tassels, spangles of limelight floated in the violet and crimson air. Everything was intoxicated and transformed. But at Wembley nothing is changed and nobody is drunk. They say, indeed, that there is a restaurant where each diner is forced to spend a guinea upon his dinner. What vistas of cold ham that statement calls forth! What pyramids of rolls! What gallons of tea and coffee! For it is unthinkable that there should be champagne, plovers’ eggs, or peaches at Wembley. And for six and eightpence two people can buy as much ham and bread as they need. Six and eightpence is not a large sum; but neither is it a small sum. It is a moderate sum, a mediocre sum. It is the prevailing sum at Wembley. You look through an open door at a regiment of motor-cars aligned in avenues. They are not opulent and powerful; they are not flimsy and cheap. Six and eightpence seems to be the price of each of them. It is the same with the machines for crushing gravel. One can imagine better; one can imagine worse. The machine before us is a serviceable type, and costs, inevitably, six and eight-pence. Dress fabrics, rope, table linen, old masters, sugar, wheat, filigree silver, pepper, birds’ nests (edible, and exported to Hong Kong), camphor, bees-wax, rattans, and the rest—why trouble to ask the price? One knows beforehand—six and eightpence. As for the buildings themselves, those vast, smooth, grey palaces, no vulgar riot of ideas tumbled expensively in their architect’s head; equally, cheapness was abhorrent to him, and vulgarity anathema. Per perch, rod, or square foot, however ferro-concrete palaces are sold, they too work out at six and eightpence.
But then, just as one is beginning a little wearily to fumble with those two fine words—democracy, mediocrity—nature asserts herself where one would least look to find her—in clergymen, school children, girls, young men, invalids in bath-chairs. They pass, quietly, silently, in coveys, in groups, sometimes alone. They mount the enormous staircases; they stand in queues to have their spectacles rectified gratis; to have their fountain pens filled gratis; they gaze respectfully into sacks of grain; glance reverently at mowing machines from Canada; now and again stoop to remove some paper bag or banana skin and place it in the receptacles provided for that purpose at frequent intervals along the avenues. But what has happened to our contemporaries? Each is beautiful; each is stately. Can it be that one is seeing human beings for the first time? In streets they hurry; in houses they talk; they are bankers in banks; sell shoes in shops. Here against the enormous background of ferro-concrete Britain, of rosy Burma, at large, unoccupied, they reveal themselves simply as human beings, creatures of leisure, civilization, and dignity; a little languid perhaps, a little attenuated, but a product to be proud of. Indeed, they are the ruin of the Exhibition. The Duke of Devonshire and his colleagues should have kept them out. As you watch them trailing and flowing, dreaming and speculating, admiring this coffee-grinder, that milk and cream separator, the rest of the show becomes insignificant. And what, one asks, is the spell it lays upon them? How, with all this dignity of their own, can they bring themselves to believe in that?
But this cynical reflection, at once so chill and so superior, was made, of course, by the thrush. Down in the Amusement Compound by some grave oversight on the part of the Committee several trees and rhododendron bushes have been allowed to remain; and these, as anybody could have foretold, attract the birds. As you wait your turn to be hoisted into mid-air, it is impossible not to hear the thrush singing. You look up, and discover a whole chestnut tree with its blossoms standing; you look down, and see ordinary grass, scattered with petals, harbouring insects, sprinkled with stray wild flowers. The gramophone does its best; they light a horse-shoe of fairy lamps above the Jack and Jill; a man bangs a bladder and implores you to come and tickle monkeys; boatloads of serious men are poised on the heights of the scenic railway; but all is vain. The cry of ecstasy that should have split the sky as the boat dropped to its doom patters from leaf to leaf, dies, falls flat, while the thrush proceeds with his statement.
And then some woman, in the row of red-brick villas - outside the grounds, comes out and wrings a dish-cloth in her backyard. All this the Duke of Devonshire should have prevented.
The problem of the sky, however, remains. Is it, one wonders, lying back limp but acquiescent in a green deck-chair, part of the Exhibition? Is it lending itself with exquisite tact to show off to the best advantage snowy Palestine, ruddy Burma, sand-coloured Canada, and the minarets and pagodas of our possessions in the East? So quietly it suffers all these domes and palaces to melt into its breast; receives them with such sombre and tender discretion; so exquisitely allows the rare lamps of Jack and Jill and the Monkey-Teasers to bear themselves like stars. But even as we watch and admire what we would fain credit to the forethought of Lieut.- General Sir Travers Clarke, a rushing sound is heard. Is it the wind or is it the British Empire Exhibition?
It is both. The wind is rising and shuffling along the avenues; the Massed Bands of Empire are assembling and marching to the Stadium. Men like pincushions, men like pouter pigeons, men like pillar-boxes pass in procession. Dust swirls after them. Admirably impassive, the bands of Empire march on. Soon they will have entered the fortress; soon the gates will have clanged. But let them hasten! For either the sky has misread her directions or some appalling catastrophe is impending. The sky is livid, lurid, sulphurine. It is in violent commotion. It is whirling water-spouts of cloud into the air; of dust in the Exhibition. Dust swirls down the avenues, hisses and hurries like erected cobras round the corners. Pagodas are dissolving in dust. Ferro-concrete is fallible. Colonies are perishing and dispersing in spray of inconceivable beauty and terror which some malignant power illuminates. Ash and violet are the colours of its decay. From every quarter human beings come flying—clergymen, school children, invalids in bath-chairs. They fly with outstretched arms, and a vast sound of wailing rolls before them, but there is neither confusion nor dismay. Humanity is rushing to destruction, but humanity is accepting its doom. Canada opens a frail tent of shelter. Clergymen and school children gain its portals. Out in the open, under a cloud of electric silver, the bands of Empire strike up. The bagpipes neigh. Clergy, school children, and invalids group themselves round the Prince of Wales in butter. Cracks like the white roots of trees spread themselves across the firmament. The Empire is perishing; the bands are playing; the Exhibition is in ruins, For that is what comes of letting in the sky.
Slides for #DH Conference (George Mason University, 8/7/24)
I'm presenting at the DH conference in Washington, DC, with the same group I have been working with on the "Responsible Datasets in Context" grant this past year.
New Article: "The Modernist Archive Gap: Black Writers and Canonicity in the Digital Era"
I have a new article out -- making points I have made in various ways before ("Beyond the Archive Gap"), but here designed for inclusion in a volume focusing overwhelmingly on Anglo-American modernism.
"The Modernist Archive Gap: Black Writers and Canonicity in the Digital Era" Published in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives, July 2024.
Introduction:Modernist studies has been moving deeper into the archives, with much recent scholarship drawing on artifacts connected to the lives of early 20th-century authors. Primary documents, including personal papers, manuscripts, and paratextual elements have become essential to modernist studies scholarship, evidence of what, in the proposal for the current volume, is referred to as ‘a growing interest in fresh types of archival sources and evidence that can recontextualize modernist writing and artistic practices.’ Unfortunately, the archival turn has not necessarily helped to advance the process of making modernist studies more geographically inclusive or more racially diverse, a goal associated with the advent of the “new modernist studies” in the 1990s, and continuing with the interventions of Susan Stanford Friedman and many others in the 2000s. Rather, at times, the archival turn has reified the existing white Anglo-American modernist canon, though this apparent conservatism with respect to coverage might be an artifact of availability rather than intentional retrenchment: there are vast stores of archival material catalogued and available for many established modernist writers, and typically less material available for Black writers from the period or writers who were (or are) colonial subjects. In some cases, archival material for Black writers exists, but was neglected by collectors and librarians for many years. An example along these lines might be the Anne Spencer (1882-1975) papers, which remained essentially uncatalogued after the author’s death at her residence in Lynchburg, Virginia until 2008, when the collection was acquired by the University of Virginia. The thirty-three year gap between the death of a major Harlem Renaissance poet and the acquisition of her papers by a major research library might be telling. That said, with many other authors, no significant archival material has been preserved. These various gaps and omissions constitute a phenomenon I have elsewhere referred to as the ‘Archive Gap.’ The Archive Gap remains an issue both with print and digital archives, though the latter concern might be the more pressing one as it is being reproduced in the present moment.
Here, the aim is to begin by describing the digital archive gap as it exists in the field of modernist studies, with an emphasis on how African American writers in particular have been absent from digital archive projects and left out of many important emerging conversations about genre and canonicity. Secondly, I will argue for a series of concrete steps that might be taken to mitigate the archive gap going forward, in a range of projects created for different constituencies. Of particular importance is the construction of annotated digital collections to make writings by a broad range of authors accessible to the next generation of readers, particularly in high school and college classrooms. Such projects might go a long way towards correcting the imbalance in the syllabi of modernist literature courses, a correction that would be the starting point for any real and sustained revisioning of the modernist canon. Secondarily, the creation of rich, scholarly digital editions dedicated to both established Black authors like Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, and to lesser-known figures, might be of value. Finally, the creation of corpora dedicated to Black writers and writers from the colonial world could also be seen as part of this project: the creation of new digital archives specifically for quantitative textual analysis.
Teaching Woolf in an Age of Distant Reading (Slides for Woolf Society Conference, June 2024)
I'm speaking at the International Virginia Woolf Society Conference in Fresno, California, on Saturday 6/8. Here are my slides for the talk.
New Article: "Catachresis at the Origin": Names and Power in Toni Morrison's Fiction
I have a new article on Toni Morrison out in South Central Review, a peer-reviewed journal connected to the SCMLA branch of the MLA. It's part of a special issue on Morrison.
The article is here.
The abstract for the essay is as follows:
Toni Morrison’s fiction is replete with characters who carry nicknames, who rename themselves, or are renamed by others. Some misnamings carry the stories of histories of marginalization and oppression—as with the “drunken yankee” responsible for the naming of Macon Dead in Song of Solomon. Morrison’s characters also rename themselves to resist the legacy of American slavery and institutionalized racism. What ties Morrison’s namings, misnamings, and renamings together is the sense that there is no path to the recovery of true names for many African American people. The consequence is not powerlessness; rather, the “catachresis at the origin” that Gayatri Spivak refers to is intuited organically by many Morrison characters, who embrace misnaming and rename themselves as a mode of claiming self-ownership. Catachresis may begin as rhetorical violence imposed from without, but in Toni Morrison’s fiction, it can end as an opportunity to assert power, autonomy, and a boundless creativity.
If you would like to read this article, but don't have access to this journal on Project Muse, please let me know and I can send you the PDF.
African American Periodical Poetry 1900-1928: a Dataset
Presentation at the University of Washington, May 20, 2024
Spring 2024 Teaching: New Course on AI, Science Fiction w/ a hands-on element
English 386: Spring 2024
Black Mirrors: Science Fiction, AI, and Ethics
Instructor: Professor Amardeep Singh (“Deep”)
Mondays and Wednesdays, 12:10-1:25 (Drown 019)
This course will survey 20th- and 21st-century science fiction and film with an emphasis on representations of Artificial Intelligence. Though many think of this as a topic especially relevant to the present moment, in fact, writers and filmmakers have been considering AI in various ways since the late 1800s. For the present course, we will focus on contemporary science fiction representations of AI by writers like Martha Wells, Kazuo Ishiguro, Sean Michaels, and Jeanette Winterson. We'll also look closely at how AIs have been represented in contemporary media, in shows like Black Mirror and films like Her and Ex Machina. What are the ethical issues surrounding the creation and use of AIs? What tools do scientists, philosophers, and social theorists offer us to help make sense of the rapidly changing landscape regarding AI? What are some likely benefits of new AIs based on Large Language Models, and what might be some of the dangers?
Required books
Death of an Author (Kindle ebook novella. Not available in paperback.)
Martha Wells, Murderbot Chronicles 1: All Systems Red
Martha Wells, Murderbot Chronicles 2: Artificial Condition
Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born? (2023)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021)
Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein (2019)
Short stories, poetry, and select non-fiction reading
I Am Code: An Artificial Intelligence Speaks. Poems by code-davinci-002
Ted Chiang, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”
Joy Buolamwini, “Unamasking AI” (excerpts)
Meredith Broussard, “Artificial Unintelligence: How Machines Misunderstand the
World”
Emily Bender, “On the Danger of Stochastic Parrots” (2021)
Lee et al. “Do Language Models Plagiarize?” (2022)
Films and Media
Black Mirror (selected episodes dealing with AI)
Her (2013)
Ex Machina (2019)
M3GAN (2022)
Goals and Outcomes:
Students will read and analyze a body of contemporary fiction that engages with themes of AI and ethics directly. Students will also watch a certain number of films and television show episodes on this theme. These texts and films help us imagine how we might use AI in our everyday lives, how our lives might be changed by it, and what some of the dangers are.
Students will gain familiarity with contemporary conversations about artificial intelligence, including especially generative AI. A particular area of interest is the ethics entailed in the construction of large language models (which frequently use large volumes of copyrighted materials), and the possible dangers entailed in the misuse of AI, especially for women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color.
Students will consider how people in the humanities, including scholars of literature as well as creative writers, might use generative AI productively and affirmatively, and in ways that assist the labor of thinking and writing – not replace it.
Students will gain hands-on experience using various new generative AI models based on accounts given by successful published writers who have used generative AI in their writing process. An additional possible outcome: we will attempt to create fine-tuned versions of open-source chatbots that are trained on limited corpora that we create. (We may get help from folks outside of the English department to do this last one.)
Scholarly Activities: 2023 in Review
1. I was on a grant. Last year, the most interesting news for me was probably the grant I am a part of, "Responsible Datasets in Context."
The grant is split between five different universities and is funded by the Mozilla Foundation. The total grant award is $150,000, of which Lehigh University will be getting around $25,000. The lead PI on the grant is Melanie Walsh of the University of Washington. We'll be working on the grant outputs this coming spring (2024), so expect to hear more about it soon.
2. I wrote a new article. I also wrote an article for a journal that was accepted for publication after peer review. The article will be appearing in spring 2024. The article is called "Catachresis at the Origin: Names and Power in Toni Morrison's Fiction." The article will be appearing in South Central Review. This will be my first ever published article on Toni Morrison's fiction.
I'm hoping it will be part of a book project -- perhaps my next book will be called Catachresis: Names and Power. The idea is to take this concept of Spivak's and deploy it as a helpful way of thinking about naming, renaming, and misnaming in postcolonial and decolonial contexts. It's a "Spivakian" book, but not necessarily a book about Spivak per se. Other chapters from it might include an earlier piece I wrote for South Asian Review on Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, and a chapter on Mahasweta Devi's stories.
3. Article #2. I wrote a chapter called, "The Modernist Archive Gap: Black Writers and Canonicity in the Digital Era" for the Bloomsbury Handbook of Modernist Archives. This chapter builds on earlier work I've been doing for several years around a phenomenon I call the "Archive Gap" (see my earlier article, "Beyond the Archive Gap"). In my digital projects, I am strongly invested in addressing and attempting to rectify the archive gap; here, the focus is specifically on how that plays out for modernist studies and early 20th century African American writing.
3. At the MSA conference.
I gave a talk at the Modernist Studies Association in Brooklyn in November. I was on a panel honoring the late, great University of Wisconsin professor Susan Stanford Friedman; my brief remarks for that roundtable are here. Overall, I had a great time at this year's MSA -- the conference continues to be incredibly vibrant and rich.
4. At the MLA convention. It was part of 2024, but I just gave a talk at the MLA, as part of a Banned Books roundtable. My brief remarks for that roundtable are here.
5. Guest lecture on Claude McKay. I did a guest lecture at Germantown Friends School on Claude McKay. The focus was on McKay as an African diasporic writer and as a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. I also talked a little about his novel Romance in Marseille, which was finally published in 2021. The slides for that talk are here.
6. I did a guest lecture on Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! at Viola Lasmano's film class at Rutgers University in New Brunswick in October 2023. The slides for that guest lecture are here.
7. In the spring I co-taught a graduate course on "Theories of Literature and Social Justice." As part of that, I wrote up a fairly comprehensive 'explainer' on Gayatri Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" That explainer has been read more than 1500 times on my blog, and a PDF version of it has been read 700 times on Academia.edu.
Ongoing projects
I continued to work on a large digital project, African American Poetry: a Digital Anthology. I had a small internal grant on the project (FRG), which I used to hire a graduate research assistant, Miranda Alvarez, to work with me over the summer. Miranda mainly worked on the Arthur Schomburg author page on the site. Schomburg is an especially interesting figure -- someone who was an Afro-Puerto Rican immigrant in New York who would come to be at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. He is a key figure in African American literary history, who also remained interested in race and politics in the Hispanophone Caribbean throughout his career, as his various writings show.
More generally, the "Anthology" continues to grow -- it now features more than 90 full-text books of poetry, digital editions of several poetry anthologies, and a considerable collection of periodical poetry as well.
One important new facet of the site is the introduction of some quantitative analysis -- I've begun to assemble datasets to quantify African American poetry published during the period in question. An overview of that new quantitative element is here.
In the late summer, I submitted the project as a whole to Modnets for peer-review and indexing. The peer review led to some helpful feedback, and I am working on revisions that are still in progress.
The usage of the site is quite good -- my Analytics tracker suggests that the site has about 13,000 visitors a month during the school year (September-May), with a spike during Black History Month.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)