Megan Minarich

Candidate statement

I have been a member of MSA since 2008. I have participated in six of the annual MSA conferences since that time through both the seminar and traditional panel formats. My training is as an Americanist, although I have also published on Arnold Bennett and British modernism. Disciplinarily, I work in both English and film studies; my scholarship centers around American modernist literature, visual culture, and early through classical Hollywood cinema. My current in-progress book manuscript focuses on representations of women’s reproductive choice in Hollywood cinema between 1915 and 1968: I examine how film’s visual rhetoric shapes and is shaped by narrative theory as well as legal, scientific, and feminist discourses. I also have an article on the film Leave Her to Heaven’s censorship history under review with Feminist Media Histories. Beyond my individual scholarship, my ability to work with colleagues from other institutions is demonstrated by my current collaborative, multi-institutional research study on STEM tutor metacognition as well as my service to the Southeastern Writing Center Association as At-Large Representative and Awards Chair. In addition to these credentials, I am an active modernist scholar and educator who has never been on the tenure track. Since obtaining my doctoral degree in 2014, I have held the positions of lecturer, Mellon postdoctoral fellow, and writing and tutoring center assistant director, none of which are tenure track faculty positions. Yet, during this time, I have forwarded an active scholarly agenda relative to both my disciplinary training as well as my peer learning research. As Contingent Faculty Representative, my goals are threefold: 1) Act as a voice for my fellow contingent, non-TT modernists: I will represent other contingent scholars from 2- and 4-year institutions and relay their needs and concerns to MSA leadership. I will focus on helping the MSA be inclusive of these unique viewpoints. 2) Increase awareness of non-TT scholars and their work: I have found too often that colleagues erroneously assume those with non-TT positions do not actively work to further their own scholarship via conferences and publications. I challenge this view, and I will work to make non-TT modernists’ disciplinary work and teaching more visible. 3) Increase support for non-TT scholars and their work: While visibility is crucial for contingent and non-TT colleagues, we need support, both structural and financial, to continue our work as modernists. I personally benefitted from the MSA’s travel grant in 2018; this grant helped offset personal out-of-pocket conference expenses. I will advocate for more avenues of support. I believe that when the MSA is actively inclusive of contingent and non-TT faculty, especially during this time of widespread precarity, this inclusivity benefits not only these members of the MSA, but all members and our field as a whole.
“Arnold Bennett’s Moving Pictures: Early Filmic Vision in Anna of the Five Towns.” Studies in the Novel (Fall 2019: Vol. 51, No. 3). “#DistractinglySexy: The ‘Trouble with Girls’ in Men in White (1934) and the Need for Narrative Possibility” Feminist Modernist Studies (October 2019: Vol. 2, No. 3). Part of Special Conference Cluster: Modernist #MeToo and the Working Woman essay cluster. “Coding Abortion: The Production Code Administration, Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and the Visual Rhetoric of Choice.” (Under Review with Feminist Media Histories, selected for special issue on Embodiment)