Octavio González

Candidate statement

As Second Vice President, I would support the ongoing efforts to diversify the Modernist Studies Association, at the level of programming, membership, and annual conference. For example, I support current 2nd VP Amy Clukey’s development, with Jonathan Goldman, of the stream dedicated to decolonizing modernist teaching (“Teaching Modernism and Activism in an Age of White Supremacy”). I’m also dedicated to continuing efforts to diversify the membership and conference, in terms of affordability and accessibility. One way to do this is to expand our dialogue with other leading associations, such as American Studies, to better align our programming schedules with theirs. Such coordination would allow scholars from more diverse fields to attend MSA’s conference, and also allow current members to be “brand ambassadors” of Modernism to those allied conferences.

Another important effort I support is affordability for the annual conference, which the Pandemic has shown can be programmed in less carbon-intensive ways, such as teleconference opportunities. In order to support the ongoing decolonization and increased relevance of modernist studies, the Association must continue to expand access for graduate students, members of other Associations, and to scholars of color who may not consider the climate of modernist studies warm enough or diverse enough to make them feel welcome.

In short, I will double the efforts of the Executive Board to advance the plans to expand and mobilize our Association, to do greater work to enable modernist studies to evolve and re-center itself on the diverse constituencies that make up the future of our field.

My CV is available at https://wellesley.academia.edu/OctavioGonzalez/CurriculumVitae and publications are available at https://octaviogonzalez.academia.edu/