We will take advantage of our much-awaited annual gathering to think and rethink in person our practices of care, intellectual and otherwise, and reframe these in light of our new or renewed priorities. We understand care as the practice of interdependency, admitting our vulnerabilities as humans, animals, and other living organisms of the pre- and post-pandemic Anthropocene. Whether it is through cultural, visual, or literary representations, the NeMLA theme of care will embrace but will not be limited to questions of migration, representation, media, the environment, and identity.
In 2022, we return to Baltimore, MD, five years after the memorable and successful 48th NeMLA Annual Convention that took place there in 2017. Our members will appreciate Baltimore, otherwise known as “the Charm City,” for its rich literary traditions. Its well-established ties to Edgar Allan Poe, who died and spent the most time in Baltimore, are well known. John Quincy Adams’s “Monumental City” has also been a temporary home to writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zora Neale Hurston, and John Dos Passos. For Frederick Douglass, the gifted author and speaker of the Civil War era who led the abolitionist movement, “going to live at Baltimore laid the foundation, and opened the gateway, to all my subsequent prosperity.” We invite you to walk in Douglass’ footsteps in Fell’s Point, Baltimore’s National Historic District, and celebrate his legacy at Baltimore’s African American and cultural institutions including the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture.
The city also boasts a rich academic, artistic, and museum culture, with museums such as The Walters, The Baltimore Museum of Art, The American Visionary Art Museum and 13 colleges and universities including NeMLA’s local host–and my home institution–The Johns Hopkins University. We are particularly grateful for the collaboration between the Center for Advanced Media Study, and the Alexander Grass Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins and NeMLA’s administrative host, the University at Buffalo, which helped secured our Special Events speakers for 2022: Our keynote event with Professor Judith Butler, renowned philosopher and expert in feminist and queer theory, has already inspired a large number of submitted sessions devoted to her work and tide-turning interventions in cultural life, and our opening address with writer Valeria Luiselli will be based on her beautiful novel Lost Children Archive. For all of these reasons, we are so happy to invite you to Baltimore for our 2022 conference, as it represents the perfect location for the kind of critical thinking and lively intellectual conversations for which NeMLA is known.
NeMLA is a community who peers whose leadership is democratically elected. Its annual convention is made possible every year thanks to the tirelessness of its Board of Directors, Graduate Fellows, Officers, and Staff. Our thanks go to each and every one of them, and we would like to encourage each and every one of you to participate in the running of our professional organization by nominating yourself for a board position as these open up on a rotational basis. For more information about board nominations and elections, please go to http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/about/governance.html
We look forward to seeing you all March 10-13, 2022.