Candidates: 2019 MSA Election

Standing for: Second Vice President

    • Madelyn Detloff, Professor/Chair, English, Miami University
    • Name: Madelyn Detloff Professor/Chair English Miami University
    • Candidate Statement:
      I have been a member of MSA since its inception and have attended 19 of 20 MSA conferences since the first MSA conference at Penn State in 1999. My work is interdisciplinary, with a cultural studies focus on modernist literary and cultural production. My engagement with modernism has been consistent over my career, even when I have delved into feminist, queer, and crip theoretical intellectual work. My publications include The Persistence of Modernism: Loss and Mourning in the 20th Century (Cambridge UP 2009), The Value of Woolf (Cambridge UP 2016), Queer Bloomsbury, co-edited with Brenda Helt (Edinburgh UP 2016), and several essays in venues such as Modernism/modernity (print and print+), Feminist Modernist Studies, ELN, and Hypatia. I co-organized the 17th Annual Conference on Virginia Woolf at Miami University in 2007, and two regional Race, Class, Gender, Sexuality Symposia for Miami University. I have administrative experience as former Director of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and current Chair of English at Miami University. I am a former co-Chair of the H.D. International Society, former Vice President of the International Virginia Woolf Society, and former executive board member for the MLA Forum on Women’s and Gender Studies in Language and Literature.
    • Janine Utell, Professor/Chair, English, Widener University
    • Name: Janine Utell Professor/Chair English Widener University
    • Candidate Statement:
      I am Distinguished University Professor/Chair of English at Widener University, teaching modernist, late modernist, and contemporary British fiction and narrative theory. I have just completed “Literary Couples and 20th Century Life Writing,” which studies the ethics of multimodal/relational narrative read through affect theory. An edited collection, “Options for Teaching Modernist Women’s Writing” is heading into production; I have begun work on a new book: “Women and Bullshit: Rhetorics of Anger in Interwar Women’s Writing.” These evince my stance as a feminist scholar as well as my prioritizing of pedagogy. I am Editor of The Space Between, and bring to my work there a commitment to less-studied areas, interdisciplinarity, a desire to mentor others. I have attended MSA since graduate school, leading seminars, presenting papers, chairing panels. I served as facilitator for a workshop on journal publishing (for The Space Between and NeMLA as well, and have just completed a term as Mentoring Coordinator for the CELJ). I am engaged in mentoring others at all career levels. As Second VP I would continue creating inclusive opportunities where all can benefit from mentoring in teaching, research, and publishing; and I would advocate for and ensure openness to new areas and voices.

Standing for: Treasurer

    • Tim Wientzen, Assistant Professor, Skidmore College
    • Name: Tim Wientzen Assistant Professor Skidmore College
    • Candidate Statement:
      My desire to serve as Treasurer stems from my abiding respect for MSA, an organization that has always been the center of my professional endeavors. I have been a member of MSA since 2007, when I was in my second year of graduate school, and since then I have attended the conference nine times. My scholarly interests are firmly rooted in modernist studies, including issues of science, technology, politics, and (increasingly) the environment. I am currently completing my first book, called Automatic: Literary Modernism and the Politics of Reflex, which I expect to have submitted to a publisher by this coming summer. I have published work from this and other projects in Modern Fiction Studies, Genre, Novel, and PrintPlus. As a former editor at Novel and organizer of the first meeting of the Society for Novel Studies, I oversaw a wide range of organizational tasks, and I would be excited to bring the skills I developed in those positions to the job of Treasurer.
    • Lisa Mendelman, Assistant Professor of English, Menlo College
    • Name: Lisa Mendelman Assistant Professor of English Menlo College
    • Candidate Statement:
      I’ve been a member of MSA since 2012 and have attended six MSA conferences since then. My research examines US modernist literature within transnational histories of science, affect, gender, and race. My cross-disciplinary approach to modernist studies combines traditional and quantitative research methods and has inspired additional mixed-methods collaborations with scholars in digital media studies and anthropology. My service at a liberal-arts-based business school has likewise prepared me for an organizational role that synthesizes quantitative and qualitative responsibilities. I’ve served as Menlo’s English assessment lead for the past 2.5 years. In this capacity, I devise annual evaluation plans in accordance with our departmental budget, develop and maintain records in Excel and Qualtrics, and prepare written and oral reports based on these analytics. I also oversee activities budgets and coordinate expenditures in my work as a Resident Fellow and in spearheading campus efforts related to mental health awareness. I believe that our research and teaching are enhanced by transparent and diverse modes of accounting for the work that we do. If elected, I will work to communicate MSA’s financial underpinnings to current and prospective members, as well as seek out creative ways to enhance our international, interdisciplinary, and institutional ties.