What We Publish
Books for Teachers
The MLA publishes peer-reviewed edited collections on teaching individual writers, works, or broad areas of study. They are intended to serve nonspecialists as well as specialists, inexperienced as well as experienced teachers and graduate students. Volumes are broadly representative in the range of their contributors and in the types of schools, students, and courses considered.
On Teaching Individual Authors or Works
The Approaches to Teaching World Literature series is devoted to teaching the works of an individual author or even a single work. Each volume is divided into two parts: “Materials” and “Approaches.” In the first part, the editor or editorial team introduces the subject of the volume and presents a guide to the most helpful available materials related to it (e.g., preferred editions and translations; essential reference works, critical studies, and background materials; and useful teaching resources). Part 2 comprises essays written by instructors, describing their approaches to teaching the subject of the volume. The essays in this part are preceded by an introduction by the editor or editorial team that gives a rationale for the volume, a conceptual framing of its topic, and contexts for the essays.
Published books in the Approaches to Teaching World Literature series
On Teaching Issues and Topics
The wide-ranging series Options for Teaching addresses a broad issue or topic related to teaching language, literature, culture, or rhetoric and writing studies. An Options volume begins with an introduction by the editor or editorial team that gives a rationale for the volume, a conceptual framing of its topic, and contexts for the essays. At the volume’s end there is a section devoted to resources for teachers of the volume’s subject.
Published books in the Options for Teaching series
Books for Students of World Languages and Literatures
The series Texts and Translations provides students and teachers with important texts and high-quality translations of plays, short novels, collections of stories or poems, and, less commonly, nonfiction works. The books in the series are aimed at students in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses—in national literatures in languages other than English, comparative literature, literature in translation, ethnic studies, area studies, and women’s studies. Translations should also aim to be appealing to general readers.
The original-language text and an English translation are published simultaneously, usually in companion volumes or, occasionally, in a single-volume anthology. Series volumes usually include an introduction containing biographical information about the author or authors and a discussion of the work’s major themes, pertinent literary and social contexts, and pedagogical issues; a short selected bibliography of other works of the author or authors (if relevant) and suggestions for further reading; a note on the text; and footnotes to the text only as helpful for instructional use. The translation volume also contains a translator’s note that makes explicit what kind of translation is offered and the translation theory being used.
Published books in the Texts and Translations series
Books for Writers and Researchers
For well over half a century, the Modern Language Association has published a series of definitive guides to writing, research and MLA style—most notably, the MLA Handbook, which sets forth a system for documenting sources in scholarly writing. MLA publications have been widely adopted for classroom instruction and used throughout the world by scholars, journal publishers, and academic and commercial presses. To propose a text on writing or research, contact the office of scholarly communication (scholcomm@mla.org).
Books on the MLA’s Backlist
For decades, the MLA has published highly acclaimed works for teachers, researchers, and students in language and literature, including textbooks geared toward learning older languages (including Old Occitan, Old French, Old English, and Old Irish), the renowned New Variorum Shakespeare series, studies of world literature, and nonseries books on higher education policy and professional issues in the humanities.
Books in Development
The MLA regularly has books in the series above under development. If you’d like to contribute an essay to one, browse the CFPs. Or, find out more about how to propose a volume.