MLA Launches Public Humanities Series

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has long been known for its annual convention, the largest meeting for humanities scholars. Now the MLA is launching a conversation series that aims to reach out to new communities, including K–12 teachers, professionals outside academia with humanities backgrounds, education advocates, and others.

The conversation series will include MLA Community Conversations, intimate discussion groups that draw on the expertise of outside groups and generate strategies to promote humanities education, and MLA Public Conversations, events that will bring advanced humanities research to a broader audience.

MLA Community Conversations will reach out to nonmembers—from K–12 teachers to STEM researchers—to develop new projects and new ways of thinking about the humanities. This fall, the MLA will convene a group of English, foreign language, and writing teachers to discuss ways to innovate in secondary-school teaching. Another event, to be held in the MLA’s New York offices, will center on a discussion and demonstration of how augmented reality can influence humanities education.

The MLA Public Conversations series will share advanced research in the humanities with new audiences through talks with leading scholars. To reach the widest possible audience, these events will be free and open to the public and will take place in cities around the United States. At the first event, a public session at the MLA Annual Convention in Chicago in early January, a group of researchers will discuss how online fan communities write back to authors and shape literature.

More details about these events will be announced as they become available. Stay tuned to the MLA Web site, or sign up for the MLA’s mailing list and be the first to hear about events near you!

Support for these events is provided by the MLA’s Paving the Way campaign, which funds projects that promote workplace fairness and advocate on behalf of the humanities.