Oursituationjars with our ideal. We are caught in a changing world. Economists tell us that we are in a period of transition from one socioeconomic system to another. And the transition is not merely socioeconomic; it is literariosocioeconomico. The period is marked by depletion of natural resources; by the population explosion; by overproduction and underconsumption, in our country at least; by crop limitation, with subsidies for underproduction; by automation; by the displacement of manpower, the rise of cooperative or gang enterprises, and the obsolescence of private or solitary labor; and by unemployment, or the dwindling of opportunities for able men and women to find market-supported jobs.

Can the giant of 1980 continue to wear the clothes, however stretched and patched, of the pygmy of 1883? Can any association thus organized and thus steadily expanding continue without taking a fresh look at the pattern of its activities? The problem is not peculiar to the Modern Language Association; it is common to other national organizations of a scholarly, professional, or scientific kind. […]

The forty-second annual convention of the Midwest Modern Language Association will be held at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, 2-4 November 2000. Approximately 140 sessions are planned on a wide range of scholarly and professional topics. The informal theme of the convention is “Crossroads 2000: Reading, Pedagogy, Academic Labor.” Plenary sessions tentatively include “Looking Forward/Looking Back” by Linda Hutcheon, Michael Bérubé, and Daryl Ogden. A special performance by Judith Roof and Katherine Burkman of two one-act plays by Samuel Beckett is also planned.

The Northeast Modern Language Association celebrates its thirty-second year and will hold its annual convention in Hartford, Connecticut, 30-31 March 2001, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. NEMLA remains the sole regional MLA to hold its convention in the spring. Central Connecticut State University will be the host institution, and Gilbert Gigliotti will chair the local arrangements committee. The keynote speech will be delivered by Joan Hendrick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her talk, “The Politics of Literary Realism,” will examine the gendered nature of the realist movement.

Any current NEMLA member may submit a panel proposal for the convention by completing a proposal form, available at our Web site. The convention committee reviews proposals received by 10 May and decides on acceptance. The 2001 Hartford convention offers eleven sessions with eighteen panels in each session. The call for papers will be shipped in late June to all current members and will be posted on our Web site. Abstracts or papers are sent directly to the session chairs for panel consideration and must be postmarked no later than 15 September; chairs must send their completed panels to the executive director no later than 1 October. By reciprocal agreement, PAMLA and NEMLA members may participate in the meetings of both associations.