Candidates for MSA Executive Board positions (2016)
CELIA MARSHIK
Professor and Chair, English Department, Stony Brook University
Position sought: 2nd Vice President
Candidacy statement:
I have attended every MSA conference since 2001 and, along the way, participated in many panels, roundtables and seminars. I am, in short, an MSA junkie. My qualifications for 2nd VP include my commitment to the association; a high degree of organization; a demonstrated track-record of leading with transparency and openness; and a diplomatic approach to interpersonal relationships when things get sticky. I have an award from Stony Brook for Excellence in Service by a Graduate Program Director in recognition of my ability to run a program with efficiency and warmth. I served as an officer in a smaller society (I was the bibliographer for the International Virginia Woolf Society) and would enjoy the opportunity to repeat the experience on a larger scale.
Selected publications:
At the Mercy of Their Clothes: Modernism, Middlebrow, and British Garment Culture. New York: Columbia University Press (forthcoming).
The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Culture. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
British Modernism and Censorship. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
“The Modernist Mackintosh.” Modernism/modernity 19.1 (2012): 43-71.
BILL MAXWELL
Professor of English and African and African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis
Position sought: 2nd Vice President
Candidacy statement:
There at the beginning, if not at the creation, I attended the first MSA conference in 1999. In the seventeen years since, I’ve watched and learned as the New Modernism has flourished at conferences from Tulsa to Brighton, and I will serve on the Program Committee for the 2016 meeting in Pasadena. My long-term participation in the MSA reflects my parallel interest in expanding modernist studies beyond the canons and capitals of Euro-American formalism. Yet my special interest in the dialogue between US modernisms and those of the African diaspora leads me to hope for enhanced organizational outreach to scholars of Négritude, the Harlem Renaissance, and other ethnic avant-gardes. The MSA has enjoyed great success in extending the definitional axes of modernism, but we have not yet met similar success in diversifying our membership. Without diminishing other, equally valuable forms of inclusivity—international and interdisciplinary—I’d like to work to change this dynamic. I’ll do so by drawing on my track record of intellectual and professional bridge-building: for example, my service on the MLA executive committees on both 20th-century American and African American literatures, and my editorial positions at both African American Review and American Literary History.
Selected publications:
F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover’s Ghostreaders Framed African American Literature. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015.
“The Harlem Renaissance and the New Modernist Studies” [questionnaire response]. Modernism/Modernity 20.3 (Sept. 2013): 446-49.
Editor and annotator of Claude McKay, Complete Poems. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004; 2008; 2013.
New Negro, Old Left: African American Writing and Communism between the Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
ALLAN HEPBURN
James McGill Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, McGill University
Position sought: Chair, Finance (Treasurer)
Candidacy statement:
In 2009, I co-organized MSA conference in Montreal. I was chiefly responsible for budgetary matters, such as collecting registration fees in conjunction with JHUP, negotiating with the conference hotel, hiring an a/v company, and keeping the budget on track. I have held numerous administrative positions inside and outside my home institution. From 2009-2014, I was an elected member of the MLA Twentieth-Century Literature Division. From 2008-2011, I served on the board of the Space Between Society. At McGill University, I was Chair of the Department of English from 2011-2014. My major publications include Intrigue: Espionage and Culture (2005) and Enchanted Objects: Visual Art in Contemporary Literature (2010). In addition, I have edited three volumes of previously ungathered materials by Elizabeth Bowen: short stories, essays, and broadcasts. A fourth volume, dedicated to Bowen’s uncollected book reviews, is in press and forthcoming at Northwestern University Press. Recently, I edited a collection of essays, entitled Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Rights, which will appear in June 2016 with McGill-Queen’s University Press; this volume features essays by major scholars working on modern and contemporary literature.
Selected publications:
Enchanted Objects: Visual Art in Contemporary Fiction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Intrigue: Espionage and Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.
The Weight of a World of Feeling: Reviews by Elizabeth Bowen. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, (forthcoming).
Around 1945: Literature, Citizenship, Rights. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.
DAVID RANDO
Associate Professor of English, Trinity University
Position sought: Chair, Finance (Treasurer)
Candidacy statement:
I seek the chair of Finance position in order to help support and grow the MSA, of which I’ve been a member since 2007. Through experience managing personal investments and co-owning a small LLC, I can offer strong accounting and organizational skills, and I would be honored by the opportunity to put these skills and my time at the MSA’s disposal. As someone whose work touches the intersections of modernism, critical theory, media, and technology, I would be dedicated to supporting the MSA’s interdisciplinary commitment and to increasing and diversifying its membership base.
Selected publications:
Hope and Wish Image in Music Technology (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
Modernist Fiction and News: Representing Experience in the Early Twentieth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
“Storytelling and Alienated Labor: Joyce, Benjamin, and the Narrative Wording Class.” Journal of Modern Literature 38.2 (Winter 2015): 29-44.
“The Music of Wish Images: Walter Benjamin, Filesharing, and Utopia.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 26.2 (June 2014): 321-345.