Modern Language Association

10/12/2026

"But what do we mean when we talk about minimalism? Minimalist fiction is characterized by direct, highly compressed, densely allusive language. Much is left unstated, requiring the reader to decipher character motivations."

The art of saying more with less, by Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Frederick Barthelme, Jayne Anne Phillips, Mary Robison, and Ann Beattie.

10/11/2026

"Merriam-Webster, the venerable dictionary that traces its roots to a time before looksmaxxing and yacht rock, has added those words along with chili crisp, shapewear and cuffing season, to its comprehensive accounting of the English language."

Now you have no excuse for not knowing the meaning of “cuffing season,” “shish*to” or “glow-up.”

10/10/2026

"Novelist Dana Czapnik recalls how The Catcher in the Rye 'changed each time' she read it at different ages. Reacting in her early twenties against her teenaged identification with Holden, she came back around in her late thirties to appreciate the subtleties of Salinger’s craft from a writer’s perspective."

The rebellious teen narrating J.D. Salinger’s classic novel of arrested development still speaks to us. But should we be listening?

10/09/2026

10/08/2026

The Modern Language Association is pleased to announce that Michael Shaughnessy will become the sixteenth executive director of the association in February 2027. Shaughnessy, who is stepping down as executive director of the American Association of Teachers of German - AATG, will succeed Paula Krebs, the MLA’s executive director since 2017. “It is an extraordinary honor to join the Modern Language Association and to serve a vibrant community of scholars, teachers, and students dedicated to the vital work of the humanities,” said Shaughnessy. Read the full announcement at https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Executive-Director-Search

10/08/2026

"That tactile difference is a reminder that book history does not end at publication. Books are opened, carried, shelved, read, rebound, and conserved. Their materials continue to change long after the publishers release them."

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden opens with the Salinas Valley, a landscape shaped by its weather, its plants and animals, and by the people who call it home. This post explores the novel’s publication history alongside earlier California books, preserved specimens, and images that reveal how lands...

10/06/2026

“This is one of the earliest known mentions of a machine that could be considered as a computer in literature, more than a hundred years prior to the first calculating engine designs by Charles Babbage,” writes Chris Garcia at the web site of the Computer History Museum.

The printing press was invented in the middle of the fifteenth century, and it's been downhill for the written word ever since. Even before then, arguments that the volume of writing being done far outstripped the value of that writing surely weren't unheard of.

10/05/2026

“'Why can’t I go in and read a book? It comes back to that, the simplicity of it all,' says Tony Bounds, an archivist and institutional historian at Tougaloo College. The response to this question at the time was, 'Well, you have a Black library across town,' he adds. But the Tougaloo Nine had done their homework. They’d specifically requested texts that weren’t available at the Black library."

Known as the Tougaloo Nine, the demonstrators staged a sit-in that helped the NAACP push for the desegregation of public spaces in Mississippi's capital

10/04/2026

"These librarians want you to know that they don’t sit around reading all day. They want you to know about book bans and budget cuts, but also about career counseling and crafting groups and pop-up medical clinics. They want you to worry, the way they worry, about artificial intelligence, looming legislation and harassment of their staff. But most of all, they want you to know what the library really is: a safe place for people to gather around books, ideas and one another."

We asked dozens of them about America’s libraries — what they provide, what they need to survive. Here’s what they told us.

10/03/2026

"Learning another language can deepen cultural understanding, improve interpersonal communication and encourage people to empathize with other people’s perspectives and experiences. It can also connect people with others from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, creating opportunities for conversation and friendship."

Learning another language is not a miracle cure for aging, and it cannot guarantee protection against Alzheimer’s disease. But it does have various other benefits.