Louise Hornby

Candidate statement

If elected to be Second Vice-President, I would take the opportunity to devise ways that the MSA might reshape its work in the wake of catastrophe. I propose we think seriously about the following questions: whom does the organization serve and for whom is it useful? What good might the MSA do for scholars inside and outside the academy? How might the MSA attract scholars working in literatures not written in English or disciplines other than literary studies? These questions all point to the same answer: money. The MSA needs to become a public source of scholarly funding. Given the bleak realities of the academic job market and the dearth of jobs in modernist studies, we have to call into question the presumed instrumental role of the professional organization in forging networks and shaping the field. Rather than authorizing academic hierarchies, the MSA might reorient itself to follow and support the work of its members, present and future. After all, you don’t need a scholarly association to work on modernism, but you do need financial support (for research, symposia, and conference participation) in order to impact and diversify the field. Many scholars do not have access to university-based funding, which means that much important work remains unheard or undone. By providing significant funding for new scholars and new avenues of study, the MSA could come closer to meeting its long-standing goals of increasing diversity, interdisciplinarity, and international participation. My primary commitment to the association will be to work to raise these funds. I have been a member of the MSA since I was in graduate school, and I have participated in and organized panels and seminars for the annual conference, which has provided a critical sounding-board for my own work. My goal is to ensure that the MSA can serve its members similarly, no matter their work status, scholarly tradition, national literature field, or interdisciplinary archive.

https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/hornby-louise/

Relevant Publications: “On the Verge of Tears,” Modernism/modernity Print Plus Visualities Forum, Volume 5, Cycle 1 (2020); “Downwrong: The Pose of Tiredness,” Modern Fiction Studies Special Issue on Modernism and Disability, 65, no. 1 (2019), pp. 207-227; “Film’s Atmospheric Setting,” Modernism/modernity Print Plus Cluster on Modernist Setting, vol. 3, cycle 1, (2018);
Still Modernism: Photography, Literature, Film (Oxford University Press, 2017)