The American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association comprises scholars, teachers, and students of American literature and culture. The section sponsors the journal American Literature and the annual volume American Literary Scholarship, sponsors two plenary sessions and a cash bar at the annual MLA meeting, and is linked to the MLA's American Literature divisions. Membership is open to any member of the MLA. Correspondence regarding the section and its work should be directed to its executive coordinator, Sarah Robbins.

Benefits of Membership

• One-year subscription to American Literature (four issues)
• The annual hardbound American Literary Scholarship volume
• Electronic access to current issues of American Literature through HighWire Press, as well as electronic access to American Literary Scholarship, beginning with the 1998 edition, through HighWire Press.
• Electronic access to back volumes of American Literature through JSTOR


Activities of the American Literature Section

The ALS-MLA carries out its mission in several ways:

American Literature
The American Literature Section elects the editorial board of American Literature and approves the appointment of the editor, who is always a member of the faculty of Duke University. American Literature is beyond question the flagship journal in American literature. It has won numerous prizes, including an award for the Best Special Issue of 1998 from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Its editors and contributors have included some of the most distinguished scholars in American literature. The current editor is Priscilla Wald.

American Literary Scholarship
American Literary Scholarship reviews and evaluates the vast amount of scholarly work on American literature each year. Experts on the major American authors and on the various periods of American writing report on the scholarly work in each field.

Committee on Scholarly Editions
The Committee on Scholarly Editions, the successor of the advisory board of the Center for Editions of American Authors, inspects and certifies the accuracy of newly edited editions of major authors. The need for a way to certify the accuracy of scholarly editions was first recognized by Americanists within the MLA, and the Committee on Scholarly Editions grew out of the American Literature Section. Its work, however, has broadened considerably, and the committee now inspects the texts of scholarly editions of works from any nation, period, or language. Editions that display the committee’s emblem represent the highest level of textual editing. Most recently, the committee has focused on the electronic publication of scholarly texts.

Hubbell Award
For more than thirty years, the American Literature Section has presented a medal to a scholar whose lifetime of scholarly work has significantly advanced the study of American literature. Recipients of the Hubbell Award, named for Jay B. Hubbell, the founding editor of American Literature, include Willard Thorp, Henry Nash Smith, Gay Wilson Allen, Cleanth Brooks, Malcolm Cowly, Robert Penn Warren, Alfred Kazin, R. W . B. Lewis, Leon Edel, Richard Poirier, Leslie Fiedler, Houston A. Baker Jr., Nina Baym, Paul Lauter, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. The 2007 recipient was Lawrence Buell of Harvard University.

Foerster Prize
The ALS also presents the Norman Foerster Prize for the best essay published annually in American Literature. The 2007 winner was Birgit Brander Rasmussen, "Negotiating Peace, Negotiating Literacies: A French-Iroquois Encounter and the Making of Early American Literature" (79:3, September).

Don D. Walker Prize
Laura Lomas's essay "'The War Cut Out My Tongue': Domestic Violence, Foreign Wars, and Translation in Demetria Martínez" (78:2, June) was a finalist for the 2006 Don D. Walker Prize, awarded annually to the best essay published on western American literature.

MLA Convention Sessions
At each convention of the Modern Language Association, the American Literature Section sponsors two sessions, which are invariably among the best-attended and influential meetings at the convention. At the 2007 convention in Chicago, the ALS sessions were "Languages: America's and Americanists' Languages and Discourses" and "Networks: Interrelationships Characterizing the Subjects We Study and Our Methods of Studying Them," both chaired by Sandra Abelson Zagarell, Oberlin College.

Coordination of MLA American Literature Divisions
The American Literature Section also coordinates the work of the seven MLA divisions that study American literature: American Literature to 1800; Nineteenth-Century American Literature; Late-Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century American Literature; Twentieth-Century American Literature; Black American Literature and Culture; American Indian Literature; and Asian American Literature.

Editorial Board, American Literature:
Priscilla Wald (Duke University), Editor
Leslie Bow (University of Wisconsin, Madison), 2008
Alan Golding (University of Louisville), 2008
Samuel Otter (University of California, Berkeley), 2008
David Leverenz (University of Florida), 2008
Shawn Michelle Smith (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), 2008
James Dawes (Macalester College), 2009
Laura Doyle (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), 2009
Pier Gabrielle Foreman (Occidental College), 2009
Steven J. Mailloux (University of California, Irvine), 2009
Brook Thomas (University of California, Irvine), 2009
Daphne A. Brooks (Princeton University), 2010
Gavin Jones (Stanford University), 2010
Melani McAlister (George Washington University), 2010
Gretchen Murphy (University of Texas, Austin), 2010
Siobhan B. Somerville (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), 2010

Organization and Officers
The American Literature Section is presided over by an advisory council. Six of its members are elected directly by the members of the section, two each year for staggered three-year terms. One of the elected council members in the last year of his or her term is elected chair of the section each year. The advisory council also includes the executive coordinator, who is elected by the section (the post is now held jointly by two people); the chairs of the seven MLA American literature divisions, who are elected through the MLA's annual ballot; and, ex officio, the editor of American Literature. The advisory council must approve the selection of the editor of American Literature, who serves a five-year term, and appoints, with the approval by ballot of the section as a whole, five members each year to the American Literature editorial board. (The board members serve staggered three-year terms.) The chair appoints, for various term s, the members of the Hubbell Award and Foerster Prize committees, as well as the members of the advisory council's nominating subcommittee and any ad hoc committees that may be needed to carry out the section's work.

Related links:


American Literature
American Literary Scholarship
American Literature Section Web site

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