This working group will meet at the 2021 MLA Convention to explore the concept of vividness and to develop its potential as a critical tool for the literary humanities. Scholars from different fields will interrogate the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of vivid language. Enargeia, or “vividness”—words’ ability to make us see images “as if they are present”—played a larger role in ancient poetics and rhetoric than it does today. Jumping off from these classical theories, this working group expands our understanding of the power and peril of vivid language by exploring it in new contexts.