The Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association hosts an annual convention attended by more than four hundred scholars and teaching professionals. The 1999 convention in Santa Fe, New Mexico, included over one hundred regular, special-topic, and conjoint sessions on a wide variety of subjects.

Established in 1947, the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association is a nonprofit membership organization that promotes the study and teaching of language, literature, and culture. The RMMLA is one of six regional but independent branches of the Modern Language Association of America.

SAMLA's seventieth annual convention will be held in Birmingham at the Sheraton Civic Center from 10 to 12 November. William C. Calin will present the keynote address; George Ella Lyon will give the creative address; and French, German, and Spanish plenary addresses will also be featured. Sonia Sanchez will make a special appearance, and other sessions will focus on Birmingham and Alabama writers, gender and race studies, and human rights in literature and culture. Last year's highly successful reading by contemporary writers, sponsored by the literary magazine Five Points, will be repeated. Graduate students will host a poets' circle, and a special performance of Hemingway stories will take place. Among the twenty special sessions are African Influence on Western Literatures; The Holocaust in Literature and Film; Rhetorics, Rhetoricians, and the Teaching of Rhetoric; Early Modern Women of Spain; and Epics and Literature at the Millennium. During the varied program (over 140 sessions), the convention will feature issues of technology, pedagogy, and professional concerns and will offer a number of opportunities to meet and socialize. Cash bars will be held for faculty members in two-year colleges, Feministas Unidas, and gay and lesbian studies. Side trips are planned to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Birmingham Museum of Art. A full copy of the program will be available on the SAMLA Web site in July.

The 2000 SCMLA meeting will be held 9-11 November at the historic Gunter Hotel in San Antonio. Our Lady of the Lake University, Saint Mary's University, Trinity University, the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the University of Incarnate Word will host the convention, with Richard Pressman (Saint Mary's Univ.) acting as local arrangements chair and Marita Nummikoski (Univ. of Texas, San Antonio) serving as treasurer. This year's theme is Teaching Languages and Literatures: Histories, Practices, Speculations. Highlights will include plenary speaker Nicolás Kanellos, founder and director of Arte Público Press, and a reading by Latina writer Carmen Tafolla. Various special events will highlight and celebrate our work as teachers; a breakfast roundtable devoted to visual arts in the language and literature classroom will be held in conjunction with a specially arranged tour of the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art.

SCMLA membership remains strong, with approximately 1,800 dues-paying members. Publications received by 2000 members include four issues of the South Central Review, summer and winter newsletters, and the San Antonio convention packet. To join SCMLA, write to Ede Hilton-Lowe, SCMLA, Dept. of English, Texas A&M Univ., College Station 77843-4227, or download a membership form from our Web site (http://www-english.tamu.edu/scmla/). Dues for joint members are $35; full professors, $30; associate and assistant professors, $25; instructors, retired professors, and graduate students, $20. The Web site features our online newsletter, which includes calls for papers, deadline and grant application information, and information on upcoming conferences.

Although the items printed in this section are meant to serve the professional interests of the membership, the editor does not solicit the items and cannot vouch for their reliability. Members should therefore exercise reasonable judgment in responding to them.

In General, the Modern Language Association offers no grants or fellowships of any kind. Current graduate students, however, may qualify for financial assistance to attend the annual convention. For details, see A Concise Guide to Activities and Services, in this issue. The following list provides an overview of fellowship and grant programs; potential applicants should write to the foundations for complete information on procedures and requirements. The list omits prize contests and a number of purely literary fellowships. Larger, more inclusive lists include Annual Register of Grant Support (Wilmette: Natl. Register); Directory of Research Grants (Phoenix: Oryx); Financial Aid for Minorities in Education (Garrett Park: Garrett Park); The Foundation Directory (New York: Foundation Center); The Foundation Grants Index (New York: Foundation Center); Fulbright and Other Grants for Graduate Study Abroad (New York: Inst. of Intl. Educ); Directory of Graduate Programs, Vol. B: Arts and Humanities (New York: Warner); Virginia P. White, Grants: How to Find Out about Them and What to Do Next (New York: Plenum); The Grants Register (New York: St. Martin's); Scholarships, Fellowships, and Loans (Detroit: Gale); Study Abroad (Lanham: Unipub); and Teaching Abroad (New York: Inst. of Intl. Educ). The Linguistic Society of America (1325 18th St., NW, Suite 211, Washington, DC 20036-6501; 202 835-1714) publishes the Guide to Grants and Fellowships in Linguistics. Information on philanthropic foundations, books on fellowships and grants, and periodicals such as Foundation Grants to Individuals (a biannual) and the Foundation Grants Index Quarterly may be obtained by writing or calling the Foundation Center, 79 5th Ave., New York, NY 10003-3076 (212 620-4230).

Although the items printed in this section are meant to serve the professional interests of the membership, the editor does not solicit the items and cannot vouch for their reliability. Members should therefore exercise reasonable judgment in responding to them. Contributors may send items by e-mail to pnc@mla.org.

Utopian Writing For Children. Contributors are sought for a collection of essays about aspects of utopia in children's literature. Works by writers as diverse as Frank Baum, George MacDonald, Katherine Paterson, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Gurney, Monica Hughes, Madeleine L'Engle, and Lois Lowry portray Utopias and dystopias and raise issues fundamental to utopian studies, such as the nature of government and societal organizations. Both children's and utopian literatures have educational and social agendas, and both delight in the use of the imagination. Critical attention on how these two growing fields intersect is long overdue. Suggested topics include fantasy and utopia, dystopias in children's literature, ethics of utopia, fairy tales and utopia, environmental-ecological depictions of utopia, issues of self-governance and governing, fantasies of control, questions of nationalism and children's literature (including propaganda), nineteenth-century treatments of utopia, feminist utopias in children's literature, secret worlds, uses of magic, portrayals of the past as utopia, the utopian home, school as utopia/dystopia, utopia as a picnic (food in children's literature), and topsy-turvyism in children's literature. Send 2-page, double-spaced abstracts of proposed essays, along with a brief c.v., by 1 November 2000 to either Carrie Hintz, Dept. of English, Queens Coll., City Univ. of New York, Flushing 11367 (carriehintz@hotmail.com), or Elaine Ostry, Dept. of English, Champlain Valley Hall, State Univ. of New York, 101 Broad St., Plattsburgh 12901 (eostry@hotmail.com).