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Presidential Address 2016: Literature and Its Publics: Past, Present, and Future

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Roland Greene
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Extract

Some Things Don't Change Much. One Hundred and Fourteen years ago, at an MLA conference in Champaign, Illinois, the president of the Central Division, the Germanist James Taft Hatfield of Northwestern University, delivered an address on “the relation of scholarship to the commonwealth,” which I recognize as a version of this year's theme, Literature and Its Publics. When the address was published later in PMLA, the account of it went as follows: “the remarks of the President were clear, incisive, sparkling, and proved an excellent introduction to one of the most interesting meetings” of the association. (The minutes go on to share the secretary's concern that the conference has too many papers, which run too long, and to record the balance in the Central Division's funds: $1.33 [“Proceedings” lxxv].)

Type
Other
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 594 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

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References

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