Gearing up for MLA

As the year draws to a close and I celebrate the successful (I hope; still haven’t seen my student evals) completion of my first semester as an assistant professor, I’m getting ready for the Modern Language Association convention in Boston, and getting excited.

I’m participating in two sessions this year, both on Thursday January 3. First (at 8am!) will be the Digital Pedagogy Unconference organized by Brian Croxall and Adeline Koh, where I have proposed a session on the interplay between classroom and academic uses of online services like Twitter and the kinds of knowledge production that take place in the internet’s more, well, informal sectors. I’ve learned a lot from using digital tools extensively in my classes this semester, and I’m hoping to leave the unconference (where there are so many great session ideas proposed already, I’m not even sure I want to attend my own) with many new ideas about how to develop and streamline my digital pedagogic practice.

I’m also participating in a roundtable on Thursday at 1.45pm on Speculative Turns in Culture and Critique, with Jayna Brown, Aimee Bahng, and Tavia Nyong’o. Sadly, Shelley Streeby, who was to be our presider, can’t make it, but Andrea Hairston has agreed to step in at the last minute. Although it hasn’t taken place yet, I’ve already had amazing collaborative experiences working with my fellow panelists; I can’t imagine a more exciting group of people to talk about speculative fiction and the speculative with.

I am certain that there will be more MLA posts to follow; I haven’t even looked at the rest of the pr0gram yet. I just wanted my last blog post of the year to be looking forward to the new one.

• ← #transformDH at #ASA2012. Marginal Digital Knowledges: A Workshop on Technology, Transformation, and Resistance
• #MLA13: The Dark Side of Digital Humanities →