professional topics

This roundtable session will discuss practical strategies for implementing techniques of mindfulness in the writing and literature classroom, considering the advantages and disadvantages of such techniques. Participants are especially welcome to discuss how mindfulness techniques can be utilized in online spaces, especially for in-person classes that have suddenly become remotely taught online as of the Spring 2020 semester.

Call for proposals for a roundtable session at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) convention to be held in a hybrid/virtual platform from Philadelphia, PA March 11 - 14, 2021

Reluctantly Remote or All in Online: COVID-19 Changed the Way I Teach for Good - Roundtable

Chair: Mary Ann Tobin, PhD, The Pennsylvania State University

Critical Thinking and Writing in the Age of Pandemics

Double Helix invites Reports from the Field and scholarly Notes related to the effects of coronavirus—campus closures, social distancing, courses moved online, etc.—on pedagogy related to critical thinking and writing.

*Reports from the Field (2,500 to 5,000 words) focus more exclusively on specific pedagogical practices and are less invested in theory than Research Articles. They address institutional programs and initiatives, course and assignment design, assessment, instructor response, and readings of student work. Their modest length provides readers with an opportunity to learn quickly about a new practice and its implementation.

Friday 12th March 2021 - Saturday 13th March 2021

Lisbon, Portugal

This is an open call for essays on the topic of “quantum intelligence” for compilation in a collection essays for general publication early next year.

 Call for Papers

Fan Studies Network North America Virtual Conference 2020

October 13-17, 2020

For this year, we have decided to host the virtual-only Fan Studies Network North America over five days in October to encourage participation and access, and to limit Zoom mental overload. The conference will combine synchronous and asynchronous conversations. Rather than traditional papers, we will have virtual workshops, salons, and posters.

This session invites those who have experience in research, course development and/or teaching with partners from another discipline to share how to (and perhaps how not to!) build and sustain those relationships. We are interested in hearing about triumphs as well as learning from less successful attempts. The organizers (a mathematician and a humanist) will discuss their own roller coaster experiences co-leading Humanistic STEM, a major, highly interdisciplinary, project at their university and invite participants to share their own stories.

Full Abstract of Panel:  “Solidarity”, an abstract, almost unattainable ideal in higher education, often parades around as a tangible intention, as if it were an easily attainable concept. Wear a solidarity pin! Put a union sticker on your car! John W. Curtis, Director of Research and Public Policy for the American Association of University Professors, states that, “Change does require commitment and shared activism." This panel aims to explore tangible strategies at achieving and fostering solidarity and to offer insight into what commitment to shared activism could potentially look like, particularly in representing women’s, gender, and LGBTQ experiences.

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically if not irrevocably altered our world in ways that we are only now beginning to realize. Academia has been one of the areas profoundly impacted by this global disaster. Hiring freezes instituted at universities, structural retrenchment, and newly arisen budget crunches have ensured that the academic job market will be beset by uncertainty for the foreseeable future. Even before the onset of this crisis, the academic job market was precarious at best and non-existent at worst.

Building off GSC’s successful 2019 session, “Bridging the Praxis Gap,” which largely addressed pedagogical issues, this session aims to address an even wider variety of gaps in what is taught in graduate school and the critical skills needed to survive in academia and professional life beyond. We are particularly interested in ways to bridge traditional notions of graduate school with active leadership training frameworks that seek to develop engaged graduate students who could take the reins and influence positive change in various contexts in and out of academia.

One immediate side-effect of the current ominous economic climate and general uncertainty of our times has been a downturn in traditional publishing. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, consolidation of publishing houses, the closure of brick-and-mortar bookshops, and the supremacy of Amazon had begun to permanently alter the way creative writing is published. At the same time, creative content on the internet has never been so abundant, with poetry, film, and fiction being shared and streamed in ways that create a flourishing if generally nonremunerative cultural climate. This panel looks at options available to creative writers in the wake of the decline of traditional publishing options.

This roundtable at NeMLA (Northeast MLA, Philadelphia 2021) will explore humanities courses that incorporate service learning as a way to respond to climate change. Given the exigency of global warming and the stress it places on our local communities, it becomes increasingly vital to leverage the humanities through focused civic engagement.

Submissions Information: We seek papers for a panel titled "Critical Approaches to Tradition and Innovation in Graduate Humanities Education" to be held at the Northeast Modern Language Association's 52nd annual convention in Philadelphia, PA, March 11-14, 2021. Please submit abstracts of 300 words here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18735. For questions or concerns, please contact Jo Grim at jcg314@lehigh.edu or Sam Sorensen at sms416@lehigh.edu. We look forward to reviewing your proposals!  

52nd Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

March 11-14, 2021 / Philadelphia, PA