This guide describes the policies of MLA divisions and discussion groups—their purpose and function, their structure and formation, and their governance. It also describes MLA policies regarding allied and affiliate organizations. All correspondence concerning these policies should be sent to the MLA convention office. The e-mail address for the convention office is convention@mla.org.

Definition. The MLA divisions encompass the primary scholarly and professional concerns of the association, with each division representing a major area of membership interest. The divisions are not autonomous organizations but are an integral part of the MLA; they have no corporate identity beyond that afforded by the MLA, and they may not use the name of the association for any project or program unless specifically authorized to do so by the MLA Executive Council.

Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth documents a twenty-nine-year-old debutante's disinheritance—from money, family, power, love, and social position. On a more profound level, however, the novel pursues the opposite end. Although Lily Bart is plainly vulnerable to the whims of what Charlotte Perkins Gilman called the “sexuo-economic relation,” she is nonetheless dramatically resistant to the attritional ravages of racial disintegration. This paper argues that race in The House of Mirth is an essentialist—if deeply problematic—answer to the cultural slippages of class and gender. By locating the novel within the diverse range of cultural phenomena that contributed to its racialized logic, this essay connects Wharton's fears of class mobility, mass production, immigration, and “race suicide” to the taxidermic aesthetic of racialized stasis. Part of a rare and endangered species, Lily becomes Wharton's decadent specimen of racial permanence.

Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) and Carolyn Chute's The Beans of Egypt, Maine (1985) feature white working-class women negotiating class hierarchies in rural communities. Despite present-day critics' putative concern with class and demonstrated interest in Hurston's other works, particularly Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), both novels have been largely ignored by the critical establishment, in part because readers lind it difficult to identify with the main characters. Comparing the critical receptions of Seraph, The Beans, and Their Eyes reveals that the mechanism by which readers identify with imaginary characters is constituted by middle-class reading practices. While a sympathetic audience emerged for Their Eyes, one is not likely to appear for the other two novels, which expose the class-bound roots of the literary construction of identity, meaning, and reality. In addition, Seraph and The Beans point, however obliquely, toward a vernacular notion of home that resists middle-class commodification.

I. Name. The name of this association shall be The Modern Language Association of America.

II. Purpose. The object of the association shall be to promote study, criticism, and research in the more and less commonly taught modern languages and their literatures and to further the common interests of teachers of these subjects.

III. Membership. There shall be four categories of membership: regular members, student members, life members, and honorary members and fellows. The dues structure within each category shall be determined by the Delegate Assembly subject to confirmation by the Executive Council.

Mit dieser Ankündigung zogen sich im neunzehnten Jahrhundert Prosawerke in die Länge. Unterm Strich boten Journale und Wochenblätter Platz. Der Fortsetzungsroman stand in Blüte. Während in rascher Folge Kapitel nach Kapitel schwarz auf weiß gedruckt wurden, war der Mittelteil der Erzählung gerade erst handschriftlich zu Papier gekommen, der Schlußteil noch nicht ausgedacht. Doch hielten nicht nur triviale Schauergeschichten und herzergreifende Passionen den Leser in Bann. Etliche Dickens-Romane sind so, in Häppchen, erschienen. Tolstois “Anna Karenina” war ein Fortsetzungsroman. Balzacs Zeit als fleißiger Zulieferer für fortgesetzte Massenware mag ihn, noch namenlos, die Technik erhöhter Spannung, knapp vor dem Abbruch der Spalte, gelehrt haben. Und auch fast alle Fontane-Romane sind zuerst in Zeitungen und Zeitschriften abgedruckt und fortgesetzt worden, zum Beispiel “Irrungen, Wirrungen”, auf daß der Besitzer der “Vossischen Zeitung” empört ausrief: “Will denn diese Hurengeschichte nicht endlich aufhören!”

Faced with the question “whom are you writing for?” I would have to say, no specific audience. But I do not want to create an audience either, a goal that for a scholar-critic would be unachievable anyway. I have neither written a textbook for students nor promulgated any partisan interest, for I have no political agenda. Furthermore, I have always painstakingly avoided playing up to fashion. Do I then write for my peers only? If not, what is the purpose of my scholarly engagement? There is no doubt that one would like to have readers. However. does an intended readership set the guidelines, or does one want to communicate something to potential readers? Audience-related writing is to a large extent conditioned by what one assumes to be adequate, beneficial, opportune, necessary, advantageous, and also enlightening for those whom one addresses. This holds true even if the appeal is critical because, more often than not, criticism is meant to make the audience aware of what they can do to improve their situation. Thus audience-related writing is basically affirmative, and affirmation presupposes an indisputable knowledge to be transmitted. I am not one of those critics who set out to provide corroborative evidence for special causes, such as nowadays often motivate politically inspired audiences.

The Committee on Amendments to the Constitution received four proposals for amendments this year, one from the Delegate Assembly and three from the Executive Council.

At its December 1999 meeting, the Delegate Assembly approved a motion, submitted on behalf of the Graduate Student Caucus, that called for a constitutional amendment to provide for representation on the Nominating Committee of three groups of MLA members: regular members, graduate student members, and life members. By approving the motion, the assembly formally proposed the amendment contained in the motion. This amendment consists in the addition of a phrase to the penultimate sentence in article 11.A of the constitution.

I. Purpose. The Delegate Assembly was created in 1970 as a successor to the former annual Business Meeting of the Modern Language Association. Within the governance structure of the Modern Language Association, the Delegate Assembly is intended to function as the voice of the membership, the forum at which issues of professional concern are to be debated and policies formulated.

Representation on the Delegate Assembly is designed to provide the MLA with comprehensive perspectives representing the study and teaching of languages and literatures, the conditions under which they are carried out, and the circumstances of the members professing these activities.