Professional Issues
What Professional-Issues Committees Do
The professional-issues committees have a unique role within the MLA in that they advise the Executive Council on issues facing the constituencies they represent. Rather than primarily advance scholarship in particular fields, they focus on formulating policies that address matters affecting the professional lives of MLA members. While each committee has a unique charge and deals with a specific set of concerns, all professional-issues committees are governed by a common set of expectations in fulfilling their charges.
Each committee, for example, provides an annual report to the MLA Executive Council in which it sets out the work accomplished or undertaken in the prior calendar year. While that work may include organizing sessions at the annual convention, the professional-issues committees should see their primary task as identifying areas in which the MLA could act to promote positive change in the fields it represents. Convention sessions should support such efforts by presenting the results of information gathered by the committees, forwarding proposals or policies for discussion by the membership, or promoting faculty-development initiatives.
Each professional-issues committee should also be in regular contact with the relevant professional-issues delegates elected to the MLA Delegate Assembly and with other scholarly societies and organizations in order to benefit from the expertise of those delegates and memberships and to further the reach of the committee’s advocacy and action-oriented efforts. Likewise, each committee is encouraged to post regular summaries of its work on MLA Commons so that the membership is aware of its ongoing work. In all its activities, each committee is responsible for furthering the overarching diversity and inclusion efforts of the MLA.
In conducting its work, each professional-issues committee is aided by an MLA staff member who will help the committee access and interpret relevant MLA policies and procedures and facilitate connections to other staff members and committees working in cognate areas. In addition, each committee is assigned an Executive Council adviser who serves in an ex officio role. The adviser’s primary task is to facilitate communication between the MLA Executive Council and the committee. The adviser answers questions about Executive Council actions that are relevant to the work of the committee, participates in committee discussions, and reviews the annual report with the committee chair in advance of the Executive Council meeting at which the report is presented.
- Ad Hoc Committee on Antiracism
- Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities
- Committee on Community Colleges
- Committee on Contingent Labor in the Profession
- Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession
- Committee on Information Technology
- Committee on K–16 Alliances
- Committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada
- Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Humanities
- Committee on Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Profession
- MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI