[John Charles Hawley]

I’m honored to be one of two nominees for election to the executive committee of this newly formalized group.  I’ve served on three other MLA executive committees (Religion and Literature; Lit in English other than British and American; Postcolonial Studies), and have have a delegate to the assembly.  The titles of the last two of those committees, and of several other organizations to which I belong (e.g., Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) reinscribes the difficult task of choosing a focus in this area of our discipline.  I’m very supportive of this emphasis on a global “south”, with its bold encouragement of new and interdisciplinary conversations that hope to break from euro/American-centric imaginaries.  I’m a bit concerned that this group seems to have only ten members, whereas the exploratory group had 69 signees.  I’m hoping we can raise our profile and attract many new people–the rather bewildering list of new fora and the restriction that one can only join five of them may be the first hurdle we need to clear.  –John

[Author]

Posts