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Four UMass PhD students, Caroline Heafey, Maria Ishikawa, Saumya Lal, and John Yargo, presented at the Modern Language Association conference. Originally slated to take place in Toronto, the entire conference was conducted virtually. The conference theme was “Persistence.”

Saumya Lal presented an excerpt of a dissertation project, “Precarious Happiness and the Nation in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Caroline Heafey participated in a roundtable on “Teaching and Training in Irish Studies in a World of Hybrid Humanities: Where to Next?,” and Maria Ishikawa participated in the roundtable on the persistence of Emily Dickinson’s poetry in non-literary art forms. 

Ishikawa also presented a portion of her dissertation in the “Revisiting Poe’s Poetry” panel. The title of her talk was “Lyric Present, Cosmic Past.” Yargo delivered a talk on “The Erotics of Salvage,” in a panel that he organized on “New Approaches to Eco-Catastrophism.”

Despite the format, MLA 2021 provided an opportunity for junior scholars to develop community and share their research.

Saumya Lal said of the experience, "I had a wonderful experience at MLA this year — I learned from my co-panelists’ talks, and I’m looking forward to the collaborative project that the panel organizers are developing based on our conversations."