Judith Brown

Candidate statement

After a year of pandemic isolation, I’m very much interested in serving the MSA as 2nd vice president, contributing to the current board’s efforts to diversify its membership, and reducing or eliminating any obstacles to participation. Ongoing challenges face the MSA in addition to the zoom-fatigue created by covid-19, including the precarious nature of academic employment for graduate students and those with NTT positions. The executive team must find effective ways to hear from its constituencies, continue to strategize ways to mitigate their challenges, and to foster an innovative range of intellectual work. I’m committed to building on the MSA’s programming (such as the On or About series), and promoting an even stronger sense of inclusion and connection among its members. To that end, my priorities include developing a wider network of mentorship at all levels of the profession; ensuring material support for research and collaboration, especially for the MSA’s newest members; and empowering new and diverse voices in the organization through a campaign of personal messages and direct invitation. I’ve learned a great deal about management and recruitment since I first organized an MSA panel (2004), and in my 18 years at Indiana University, Bloomington, where I’ve served in a number of administrative roles, mentored graduate students, directed our undergraduate program, and organized an international symposium in India. I’ve also served as a reviewer for university presses, journals, and national fellowship organizations in both Canada and the US.

My current interdisciplinary scholarship on global modernism has required me to cross borders, humble myself, and listen to unfamiliar voices. It engages colonial and postcolonial scholarship, in addition to the visual culture, aesthetic theory, and gender and sexuality studies that informed my first book. My essays have appeared in journals such as Modernism/modernity, PMLA, ELH, Modernist Cultures, and collections such as A Handbook of Modernism Studies (ed. Rabaté) and A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism (eds. Walkowitz and Hayot). My c.v. is attached.