MLA 2007 Report

We had our usual two sessions at the MLA convention in December: "Digital Medievalism and the Single Scholar", organized by Dot Porter (who has organized a similar session at DH2007 though with a different lineup of speakers), and "Editing's Cultural Work: Building the Electronic New Variorum Shakespeare", organized by Alan Galey. I wasn't there but what I heard about these sessions was favorable.

For 2007 I've asked Arno Bosse of the University of Chicago and Rita Raley of the University of California at Santa Barbara to arrange sessions; they've completed the work of lining up panelists and we've submitted the details to the MLA.

The MLA was also in touch with Steve Ramsey and me about a third session for 2008: they want to encourage more "collaborative" sessions organized together by multiple committees or groups, and asked Steve in his capacity as member of the MLA Discussion Group on Computers and me as ACH representative. Neither of us felt a third session organized along these lines would be dramatically different from what we'd do separately--- but otherwise it seemed like a good thing. Steve is following up some ideas about promising young scholars who might be invited to organize this session.

For some time I've published a yearly list of MLA sessions with digital-humanities interest. Although the MLA now has a sort of web publication of the programme its utility is limited (there's no full-text search, for example), and my list is in any case a selection that would be hard to assemble except by reading through the program. I've been thinking about publishing this list in iCalendar form as well as via a web page, and would like to hear from anyone interested in this.

John Lavagnino