V21 at MLA! 3rd annual happy hour; Bruce Robbins book party; panels!

If anything is to survive the 21st century, collective agency will be paramount.  Come practice togetherness at the 3rd annual V21 MLA happy hour! Thursday 4 January, 5pm-7pm, at Faces And Names, 159 W 54th St, just neighboring the Sheraton.

We’ll be raising a special glass to Bruce Robbins, in celebration of his new book The Beneficiary (Duke UP), material from which featured in the keynote at our inaugural symposium. We are thrilled about its fruition!

Before and after socializing: build theory, debate method, and explore reading in affiliate panels:

THURSDAY
27. Queer Borders
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Concourse A, Hilton
Program arranged by the forum TC Sexuality Studies. Presiding: Karma Lochrie, Indiana U, Bloomington
1. “Getting the Queer Drift of Firbank,” Ellis Hanson, Cornell U
2. “Reimagining Borders through Queer Post- imperial Melancholia in Turkey,” Rustem Ertug Altinay, U of Vienna
3. “The History of Sexuality; or, How Is the East Erotic?” Madhavi Menon, Ashoka U

35. Material Matters: Securing Archives and Other Library Resources
12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., New York Ballroom East, Sheraton
Program arranged by the forum TM Book His- tory, Print Cultures, Lexicography
1. “Novices in the Archives: Restoring, Preserving, and Modernizing an African Archive,” Sue E. Houchins, Bates C
2. “Secure Material Archives in Insecure Sites: Mexican Archives as a Case Study,” Angelica Alicia Duran, Purdue U, West Lafayette
3. “he Invention of Archives: Book History and Publishing in India,” Priya Joshi, Temple U, Philadelphia
Respondent: Eleanor F. Shevlin, West Chester U
84. Anthropocene Reading
3:30–4:45 p.m., Regent, Hilton
A special session. Presiding: Tobias Coyote Menely, U of California, Davis
Speakers: Jeffrey Cohen, George Washington U; Anne-Lise François, U of California, Berkeley; Matt Hooley, Clemson U; Dana Luciano, George- town U; Jesse Oak Taylor, U of Washington, Seattle; Derek Woods, Dartmouth C
This session considers how different practices of critical reading—symptomatic and surface, formalist and materialist, philological and computational—facilitate approaches to literary studies in the Anthropocene.

118. Organicisms: Organizations
3:30–4:45 p.m., New York, Hilton
Program arranged by the forum CLCS Romantic and 19th-Century. Presiding: Stefani Engelstein, Duke U
1. “Life in the Hunterian: Plaster, Chalk, Glass, Flesh,” Dahlia J. Porter, U of Glasgow
2. “Musical Form, Organicism, and the Question of Program,” Adrian Daub, Stanford U
3. “The Physiology of the Multitude,” David Womble, U of Chicago
4. “The Birth of Bio-politics: From Race War to the Imperial Nation-State,” Nasser Mufti, U of Illinois, Chicago

FRIDAY
211. Theorizing the Refugee
8:30-9:45a.m., Hilton Murray Hill East
Speakers seek to theorize the political figure of our time: the refugee who, though stateless, remains imbricated in the hypernationalism of militarized borders. Speakers generate discussion concerning a conceptual framework for the humanities that can address the crisis of coercive mass migration, symbolic figures of fear, and reducing of refugees to bare life.
Aamir Mufti, Rashmi Dube Bhatnagar, Surabhi Dalal, Paul Anthony Bové, Bruce W. Robbins

321. The Victorians after Freud
1:45–3:00 p.m., Central Park East, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Ben Parker, Brown U
1. “Klein before Freud,” Zachary Samalin, U of Chicago
2. “Dickens and Winnicott on Reality,” Ben Parker
3. “George Eliot and Psychoanalytic Thinking,” Alicia Christof, Amherst C

327. Organicisms: Organisms
1:45–3:00 p.m., New York, Hilton
Program arranged by the forum CLCS Romantic and 19th-Century. Presiding: Tilottama Rajan,
U of Western Ontario
1. “Degeneration: Inversions of Teleology,” Joan Steigerwald, York U
2. “Emerson, Embryogenesis, and the Ontology of Style,” Benjamin Barasch, Columbia U
3. “Reorganizing Darwin: Anti-organic Natural- ism and the Ecology of Form,” Devin Griffiths,
U of Southern California

337. Capitalism and the Unconscious
1:45–3:00 p.m., Concourse D, Hilton
A special session. Presiding: Calvin Thomas, Georgia State U
1. “Capitalism’s Responsibility for Fascism,” Todd McGowan, U of Vermont
2. “The Psychoanalytic Critique of Political Economy,” Anna Kornbluh, U of Illinois, Chicago
3. “Writing Underdevelopment: he Postcolonial Fetish and Its Novelistic Form,” Simon E. Gikandi, Princeton U

338. The Novel and the Poor
1:45–3:00 p.m., Concourse E, Hilton
A special session
Speakers: David S. Kurnick, Rutgers U, New Brunswick; Carolyn Lesjak, Simon Fraser U; Tina Lupton, U of Warwick; Bruce W. Robbins, Columbia U
Panelists discuss a felt need on the part of recent critics to view the novel from the outside, socially as well as geographically, in terms of inequality of access, the constraints of daily habit, and the precarity of the life of its readers as well as of its characters. he word poverty imposes itself anew not because the more technical vocabulary of class has been discredited (as modern and European) but because poverty is the more universal and neutral term.

389. Literature and Science in the Age of “Alternative Fact”: he Example of Bruno Latour
3:30–4:45 p.m., Gramercy West, Hilton
A special session. Presiding: Steven J. Meyer, Washington U in St. Louis
Speakers: James J. Bono, U at Buffalo, State U of New York; Adam J. Frank, U of British Columbia; Devin Griffiths, U of Southern California; Joan T. Richardson, Graduate Center, City U of New York; C. P. Haun Saussy, U of Chicago
Bruno Latour’s landmark essay “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” (2004) acquired much of its topicality from his surprise at how climate change deniers were (already) appropriating the discourse of critique. Participants address present controversies regarding facts and alternative facts in the light of Latour’s Giford lectures, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (2017).

407. Historical Time Machines: Time Criticalities of Nineteenth-Century Media
5:15–6:30 p.m., Sugar Hill, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Roger Whitson, Pull- man, WA
1. “Big Time: London’s Big Ben, Deep Time, and Time-Criticality Studies,” Andrew Burkett, Union C
2. “Babbage and Blake, Lovelace and Byron: he Algorithmic Condition of Nineteenth-Century Poetics,” Roger Whitson
3. “New Grub Street on Paper,” Richard Menke, U of Georgia
Respondent: Crystal Lake, Wright State U

415. “Aca-Fandom” and Digital Scholarship: Rethinking Research and Fan Production
5:15–6:30 p.m., Murray Hill, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Rachel O’Connell, U of Sussex
1. “Like Dumbledore’s Army Except Hermione Is In Charge: Podcasting, Feminist Fandom, and the Public Academic,” Marcelle Kosman, U of Alberta; Hannah McGregor, Simon Fraser U
2. “Queer Geek Methodologies: Social Justice Fandom as a Transformative Digital Humanities,” Alexis Lothian, U of Maryland, College Park
3. “ ‘Maybe Willam . . . ’: Writing Fandom, Intimacy, and Queer Femininities,” Rachel O’Connell

SATURDAY
468. Strategic Presentism
8:30–9:45 a.m., Nassau West, Hilton
Program arranged by the forum TM Literary Criticism. Presiding: Caroline E. Levine, Cornell U
Speakers: Michael W. Clune, Case Western Re- serve U; Abigail Droge, Stanford U; Alexander Galloway, New York U; Anna Kornbluh, U of Illinois, Chicago; Cynthia Nazarian, Northwest- ern U; Ragini haroor Srinivasan, U of Nevada, Reno; Jeffrey Wilson, Harvard U
Presentism has often been the name for an intellectual mistake, but intervening in the present has also been one of the most urgent aims of a political criticism. How might we perform a historical literary studies for the present? Participants from different fields, including Renaissance French, new media, and postcolonial studies, briefly introduce a keyword or phrase. Active audience participation follows.

480. Dickens and Resistance
8:30–9:45 a.m., Chelsea, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Dickens Society. Presiding: Diana C. Archibald, U of Massachusetts, Lowell
1. “A Blot in the heater: Dickens, Macready, and the Quest to ‘Revive the Drama,’” James Arm- strong, Graduate Center, City U of New York
2. “Dickens and Government Resistance: he Battle to Save Epping Forest,” Sophie Christman- Lavin, Stony Brook U, State U of New York
3. “Dickens and Gender Resistance,” Jolene Zigarovich, U of Northern Iowa
4. “ ‘Innumerable Goroos Interspersed’: Awkwardness as Resistance in Dickens’s Prose,” Jonathan Farina, Seton Hall U

482. What Tenured Professors Can Do about Adjunctification
8:30–9:45 a.m., Mercury Ballroom, Hilton
A special session. Presiding: Carolyn Jane Betensky, U of Rhode Island
Speakers: Jennifer Ashton, U of Illinois, Chicago; Michael Bérubé, Penn State U, University Park; Peter D. G. Brown, State U of New York, New Paltz; Janet Galligani Casey, Skidmore C; Seth Kahn, West Chester U; Jennifer Ruth, Portland State U; John Warner, C of Charleston
How have some tenured faculty members succeeded in reshaping their departments and institutions into more equitable places of employment? What strategies might encourage more tenured faculty members to act forcefully, from positions of relative security, to help ensure a sustainable future for our students and the profession?

641. Desire and Domestic Fiction after Thirty Years
3:30–4:45 p.m., Central Park East, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: John M. G. Plotz, Brandeis U
Speakers: Rachel Ablow, U at Buffalo, State U of New York; Jonathan Arac, U of Pittsburgh; Nancy Armstrong, Duke U; Ian Duncan, U of California, Berkeley; Deidre Lynch, Harvard U; Jesse Rosenthal, Johns Hopkins U, MD
This session shows that Nancy Armstrong’s first book, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political His- tory of the Novel (1987), continues to inspire work on the history of the novel, the history of feelings, and the ways we understand our institutions for study of the novel.

645. Word and Image in British Romanticism
3:30–4:45 p.m., Riverside Ballroom, Sheraton
Program arranged by the Wordsworth-Coleridge Association. Presiding: Jonathan Farina, Seton Hall U
1. “Antislavery Satire before Abolitionism: Two New Images,” Deirdre Patricia Coleman, U of Melbourne
2. “Blake’s Wollstonecraft’s Girls,” Elizabeth Fay, U of Massachusetts, Boston
3. “Hebrew Micrography in the Works of William Blake,” Sarah Stein, Arkansas Tech U
4. “The Game of Human Life: Late Romantic Amusement, Social Class, and Illustration,” Rosetta Young, U of California, Berkeley

SUNDAY
732. Imperial Publics
8:30–9:45 a.m., Riverside Suite, Sheraton
A special session. Presiding: Tanya Agathocleous, Hunter C, City U of New York
Speakers: Alexander Bubb, U of Roehampton; Jameel Haque, Minnesota State U, Mankato; James
Mulholland, North Carolina State U; Cara Mur- ray, Queensborough Community C, City U of New York; Gregory Vargo, New York U; Kathleen Wilson, Stony Brook U, State U of New York; Hyo Woo, Nanyang Technological U
It is time to rethink public sphere theory and the idea of counterpublics by examining imperial his- tory and the global circulation of texts along imperial circuits from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. What methodological problems does the concept of an imperial public sphere raise? How might we classify the various overlapping, competing, and agonistic publics (colonial, semicolonial, metropolitan) that made up that larger space?

775. The Afterlives of Forms
10:15–11:30 a.m., Central Park West, Sheraton
A special session
Speakers: Mike Goode, Syracuse U; David S. Kur- nick, Rutgers U, New Brunswick; Joseph Lavery, U of California, Berkeley; Caroline E. Levine, Cornell U; Kent Puckett, U of California, Berkeley; Arielle Zibrak, U of Wyoming
Many aesthetic and social forms continue to exist be- yond their period of origins, intended use, and con- text. Caroline Levine’s Forms considers cases where forms unsettle each other, but how do forms stay in place? Why do they endure after their time? Participants address the afterlives of social, cultural, institutional, and aesthetic forms, responding to recent debates in strategic formalism and new formalism.