New on the Web Site

Ratification Vote Deadline Fast Approaching

MLA members have until 5:00 p.m. (EDT) on Friday, 1 June, to vote on the two resolutions that the Delegate Assembly approved at its January 2012 meeting. Since final adoption of the resolutions depends on MLA members’ votes, members in good standing as of 11 April are strongly encouraged to vote before the deadline.

Candidates for 2012 MLA Elections

The 2012 Nominating Committee has nominated Roland Greene, Djelal Kadir, and Lawrence D. Kritzman for second vice president of the MLA and Ginny Carney, Alicia M. de la Torre Falzon, Stacey Lee Donohue, Donald E. Hall, Paula M. Krebs, Maria Maisto, and Miles McCrimmon for the MLA Executive Council. The 2012 Elections Committee has arranged contests to fill seventeen special-interest and thirty-four regional seats in the Delegate Assembly. Background information on the candidates for second vice president and the Executive Council and the names and affiliations of the Delegate Assembly candidates are now available online.To propose an additional candidate for any of these positions, see the procedures for filing petitions described in articles 6.E, 8.A.2, and 10.E of the MLA constitution.

New Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship

The MLA Executive Council has recently approved a revision of the association’s guidelines for evaluating digital scholarship. Guidelines for Evaluating Work in Digital Humanities and Digital Media, composed by the Committee on Information Technology, addresses the changes in scholarly communication and the digital humanities in the nearly twelve years since the original guidelines were introduced.

Member Resources and Links

#Alt-Academy Census

If you have graduate training in the humanities and are working outside higher education teaching, the editors of #Alt-Academy would to like to hear from you. Visit the #Alt-Academy site to be included in #Alt-Academy’s directory and to learn more about its project.

MLA Prize for Independent Scholars

The deadline for the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars has been extended to 23 May. Scholarly books in the field of English or other modern languages and literatures that were published in 2011 are eligible. At the time of publication of the book, the author must have been an independent scholar. Therefore, works by authors who were enrolled in a program leading to an academic degree or who held a tenured, tenure-accruing, or tenure-track position in postsecondary education are not eligible. Works by part-time instructors and adjunct faculty members are eligible. Authors need not be members of the MLA.

To enter a book into the competition, authors or publishers should send six copies and a completed application form to the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars, Modern Language Association, 26 Broadway, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10004-1789. Entries must be received by 23 May 2012. No work may be entered in more than one MLA competition. For further information or to obtain copies of the application form, call or write the office of programs (646 576-5141; awards@mla.org).

MLA Receives Mellon Grant for Scholarly Network

The MLA is pleased to announce that it has been awarded an $83,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support development of the MLA Commons, an online platform for MLA members. As part of the association’s broader project of facilitating more interactive scholarly communication, the MLA Commons will provide a space for members to share research, work collaboratively, and explore new modes of scholarship that exceed the capabilities of traditional forms of publication. The MLA is working with the developers of the City University of New York (CUNY) Academic Commons on the open-source platform, which it will later make available to other scholarly societies. A beta phase of the project will launch in early 2013.