Instructions for Establishing New Forums

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The new forums that have been preauthorized by the Executive Council (in orange in the full list of forums) do not yet exist. For these new forums to come into being, interested members must begin by organizing on MLA Commons. New Commons groups corresponding to each of these prospective forums have been created and are linked below. Each group contains a discussion area (identified as a “forum”), which has been prepopulated with a petition thread. Members are invited to join the groups that correspond to their intellectual interests, to sign the petition by adding their names as comments in that thread, to volunteer for a leadership role in the new forum, and to participate in the discussion about the forum.

Please note: members may sign no more than five new forum petitions during the 2014 membership year. Signing more than five petitions may result in the disqualification of all your signatures.

Beginning 15 June 2014, we will select those groups that show evidence of sufficient participation, including at least thirty-five signatures and at least five leadership volunteers. We will appoint a four-member founding executive committee, whose terms will have staggered end dates. That founding executive committee will be invited to prepare and submit a formal proposal for consideration by the Program Committee.

The proposal will consist of a letter of application of at least two but no more than five pages, including a justification of the need for the forum and a history of the development of the forum, such as any relevant past convention sessions and other meetings that show evidence of interest. The first round of proposals will be due 1 September 2014 and will be reviewed by the Program Committee at its fall 2014 meeting. Those forums that are approved will be invited to participate in the 2016 convention.

Groups that were not selected to submit a formal proposal in this first round may be invited in subsequent rounds. The Program Committee will not accept proposals for any new forums other than those preauthorized by the Executive Council until fall 2016.

If you have any questions about the new forums, please e-mail forums@mla.org. For questions about using the Commons, please e-mail commons@mla.org.

Prospective Forums:

LLC African Diasporic
LLC Latina and Latino
LLC Pre-14th-Century Chinese
LLC Ming and Qing Chinese
LLC Modern and Contemporary Chinese
LLC Galician
LLC Japanese to 1900
LLC Japanese since 1900
LLC Korean
CLCS Atlantic
CLCS Caribbean
CLCS Global Arab and Arab American
CLCS Global Hispanophone
CLCS Global South
CLCS Hemispheric American
CLCS Indian Ocean
CLCS Pacific
RCWS Creative Writing
RCWS Literacy Studies
LSL American Sign Language
LSL Heritage Language Teaching and Learning
LSL Vernaculars and Creoles
TM Literary and Cultural Theory
TM Manuscript Culture and Textual Studies
TC Animal Studies
TC Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities
TC Geography and Literature
TC History and Literature
TC Indigenous Studies
TC Medical Humanities and Health Studies
TC Memory Studies
HEP Activism, Advocacy, Public Humanities
HEP Graduate Student Issues
HEP The Humanities Workforce
HEP Program Administration

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