Between Christmas and New Year, thousands of scholars working in the field of language and literature met at the annual
Modern Language Association's conference in the United States. With 767 different panels, each offering up to four presentations, this year’s conference in Philadelphia was no exception to the spectacular dimensions of the MLA. As a proud David facing the English, Spanish and Chinese Goliaths, Dutch Studies was represented by the Discussion Group on Netherlandic Language and Literature. This year’s theme, "Collaboration and Resistance in Netherlandic Literature", organized by Peter J. Schwartz (Boston University), drew considerable attention, particularly by colleagues from German Studies.
Honorable mention
Besides its successful panel, Dutch Studies has another reason to look back upon the 2009 MLA conference with satisfaction. Dutch Crossing, the leading English academic journal in Low Countries Studies, received an honorable mention in the Phoenix Award for Significant Editorial Achievement. Published since 1977, Dutch Crossing is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal devoted to all aspects of Low Countries Studies: Dutch language and literature, history and art history of the Low Countries, the social sciences and cultural studies, and Dutch as a foreign language. Coverage includes both the Netherlands and Flanders, as well as other places where Dutch historically had or continues to have an impact, including parts of the Americas, South Africa and Southeast Asia. A special focus of Dutch Crossing concerns relations between the Low Countries and the English-speaking world. The journal’s editor Ulrich Tiedau (University College London, UK) traveled to Philadelphia to personally receive the prestigious award by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. The award is a well-deserved tribute to both the editorial and publishing team’s work to produce a journal that has increased considerably its academic importance since it is managed by Maney Publishing.
Send abstracts
The next MLA Conference will be in early January 2011 in Los Angeles. Scholars who are interested to represent their university at the world’s biggest conference in the field of language and literature, can send abstracts about any topic related to Netherlandic and Netherlandophone Language and Literature to Bettina Brandt (Montclair State University), organizer of the 2011 Discussion Group on Netherlandic Language and Literature: brandtb@mail.montclair.edu.
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