The time has come for our annual PAMLA elections for new officers of our Executive Committee. If you are current with your PAMLA membership, you should have received an emailed ballot (it will say “Survey,” but click on it–it is your ballot) to vote for new officers. Your PAMLA Executive Committee is the body that makes major decisions regarding PAMLA on a day-to-day basis. They help to plan the association’s future so that we may continue to serve our members’ needs. We require your assistance in choosing the best officers possible. Happily, the Nominating Committee, led by its chair Katherine Kinney, has come up with an impressive slate of potential officers. Please take a moment to read through the candidates’ statements and then cast your vote. You may vote for one candidate for Second Vice President, and two for Executive Committee member. The Second Vice President moves up automatically to First Vice President and then to President in consecutive years. And the two Executive Committee members who receive the most votes will each serve three-year terms.

If you haven’t received a ballot, but think you should have, please email Russell McDermott ([email protected]). Voting will conclude on October 31, so do please vote soon!

Happy voting,

Craig Svonkin, PAMLA Executive Director

Candidates for Second Vice President:

Karin Bauer is professor of German Studies and director of graduate studies at McGill University. She has been a member of PAMLA since 1990, when she was a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington. Maintaining strong professional and personal ties to the US and Canadian West Coast, Karin has served as president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers of German (2002-04). At McGill, she chaired the Department of German Studies (2000-11) and the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (2011-14). She was editor of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies (2011-17). Her publications include Adorno’s Nietzschean Narratives: Critiques of Ideology, Readings of Wagner (SUNY Press, 1999), Everybody Talks About the Weather: We don’t… (Seven Stories, 2008), Tout le monde parle de la pluie et du beau temps: pas nous (les éditions du remue-ménage, 2018), and Cultural Topographies of the New Berlin (Berghahn Publisher 2018), She has edited and co-edited special journal issues on Herta Müller, the Red Army Faction, Berlin (co-edited with Jennifer Hosek), and Surveillance (co-edited with Andrea Gogröf). She has published articles in the areas of critical theory, Nietzsche, and contemporary German literature and culture. Much of her scholarship since the early 1990s has focused on the work of Herta Müller, addressing questions of aesthetics, gender, identity, and, more recently, notions of authorship and the intersecting discourses of memory and democracy. Her research has been supported by grants from the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. Currently, she is working on a project on actual and virtual literary publics.

Personal statement: PAMLA has profoundly influenced how I understand my role as a scholar, teacher, graduate supervisor, administrator, colleague, and advocate of the humanities. Some of my most respected and beloved mentors were members of PAMLA; I have collaborated on various projects with PAMLA colleagues and friends and found that their supportive and inquisitive questions have encouraged and challenged me to reflect and rethink not only my own scholarly work, but also issues concerning our profession. As a graduate student, PAMLA taught me to value substance over appearance, collegiality over competition, and commitment to the profession over careerist isolationism. Now I am proud to bring into this supportive community of scholars some of my own graduate students. As a member of the executive board for the past three years, I had the privilege to work more closely with a dedicated team of colleagues from across the disciplines to address shared professional concerns. At a time when the humanities are shrinking, PAMLA keeps thriving and growing stronger every year. I am committed to PAMLA’s continuing advocacy of language, literature, film, and culture programs, and to fair professional practices. Should I have the honor of serving this term, I would hope to contribute in productive ways to its mission to recruit new members, increase participation in the conference, and provide support for graduate students. As we face ever new challenges, PAMLA is uniquely positioned to address the urgent concerns of our profession while promoting equity, diversity, and justice.p

Yolanda A. Doub received her Ph.D. in Spanish from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2005, with a specialization in 20th and 21st Century Spanish American Narrative. She is Associate Professor of Spanish at California State University, Fresno, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the Spanish American Bildungsroman, Borges, Mexican culture, the Spanish American “Boom,” and major Hispanic novelists. Her scholarship focuses on coming-of-age stories in Latin American and Latinx literature and film, as well as Southern Cone and Mexican literature, adaptation studies, and film studies. Her published academic work includes Journeys of Formation: The Spanish American Bildungsroman (Peter Lang, 2010), essays on Bernice Zamora and Luis Alberto Urrea in Latinos: Great Lives from History (Salem, 2012), and articles in Hispanic Review and Symposium.

Personal Statement: Since my first PAMLA conference in 2010, PAMLA has been, without a doubt, my favorite organization. I quickly became hooked on this stimulating and welcoming group, participating actively each year as a presenter as well as moderator and/or presiding officer. In 2013, I proposed Adaptation Studies as a special session, and helped it develop into a standing session by 2016. From 2015 to 2018, I had the pleasure of serving a three-year term on the PAMLA Executive Committee, which deepened my appreciation and understanding of our organization. On the Executive Committee, I also served on the PAMLA Graduate Student Scholarship Committee in 2017, helping to award scholarships to thirty-six graduate students to defray their costs to attend the conference in Hawaii that year, and in 2018 I served as a member/reader on the first-ever Pacific Coast Philology Outstanding Article Award Committee. Through these activities, I’ve seen how our annual convention attracts participants from all over the world by combining rigorous standards with a collegial, consistently welcoming atmosphere that encourages intellectual exploration and thoughtful feedback. The breadth and depth of topics at PAMLA conferences and in Pacific Coast Philology highlight our lively community of scholars as well as the growing appeal of our group to established and emerging scholars alike. We are a vibrant, collegial, diverse, and intellectually-stimulating group, and in the midst of all that—or perhaps because of it—we are also fun. It is this unique blend of qualities that makes PAMLA special, a standout among the many professional organizations in our respective areas of expertise.

Should I be elected, I would like to see our organization continue to grow in a manner that preserves these strengths: keeping our numbers up, even as an increasing amount of institutions are eliminating funding for conferences, by growing areas that are established, and reaching out to areas that need us. For example, Asian languages, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Armenian, Hmong, Hawaiian language and literature are but some of the areas that merit the support and camaraderie of PAMLA. I am committed to working hard to cultivate strong language, linguistics, and foreign literatures sessions at the annual PAMLA conference. Similarly, I would like to see us build on our existing success at welcoming and professionalizing graduate students and junior faculty, while continuing to offer independent scholars, artists, faculty from schools with heavy teaching loads, and researchers from Tier 1 institutions a venue to share their research interests and engage with each other. PAMLA has established itself as an outstanding place for scholarship, mentoring, professionalization, and camaraderie across disciplines, and I hope to be able to further contribute to the growth of our wonderful organization as Second Vice President.

Executive Committee Members (you may vote for up to two members)

Joi Carr is a Professor of English and Film Studies at Pepperdine University and serves as the director of Film Studies at Seaver College and as an Academic Director for the Institute for Entertainment, Media, Sports, and Culture for the university. She is the author of two monographs: Boyz N the Hood: Shifting Hollywood Terrain (2018), which explores John Singleton’s artistic voice and his critically acclaimed film, and Encountering Texts: The Multicultural Theatre Project and “Minority” Literature (2015), which examines Carr’s trans-disciplinary, arts-based, critical pedagogical approach to literature and historical texts and its centrality as a high impact practice. In addition, Carr is a singer-songwriter, actor, and playwright actively engaged with SAG-AFTRA as a National Convention Delegate, as an alternate on the SAG-AFTRA National and Los Angeles Boards, and as a member of the National and Local EEOC and Women’s Committees.

Personal Statement: PAMLA has been a critical space for me as a scholar over the last decade. I have benefited from presenting papers, offering special sessions, serving as session chair and as presiding officer over the years. The PAMLA scholastic community and the critical dialogue in the conference setting has been a crucial aspect of my maturation as a scholar. I want to participate in paying this important work forward. We have observed a significant shift in higher education, especially in the liberal arts. The shifting landscape, though subtle, has nonetheless made a tremendous impact on higher education and its need to be adaptive. We—scholars in languages and literatures—are interdisciplinary and understand the significance of this critical work that explores the human condition. We should perceive the shifting landscape as a context rich for opportunity. I consider this potential service on the PAMLA Executive Committee an honor and look forward to contributing to creating space for dialogue, innovation, problem solving, and personal scholarly development for all.

Juan Delgado is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at California State University, San Bernardino, where, in addition to his professorial duties, he chaired the English and Communication Studies Departments and served as the university’s interim provost. His collections of poetry include Green Web (1994), published by the University of Georgia Press and selected by poet Dara Weir for the Contemporary Poetry Prize; El Campo (1998),a collaboration with the Chicano painter Simon Silva and published by Capra Press; and Rush of Hands (2003), published by the University of Arizona Press. His most recent book, Vital Signs (2013),was a collaboration with photographer Thomas McGovern and won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. In recent years, he has presented his photopoetics and signage throughout southern California in museum exhibitions such as Más Allá del los Fencesat the Peppers Gallery in Redlands, 2017. Manos, Espaldas y Blossoms, a collaborative art project with Thomas McGovern featured their artwork and poetry in the groves of the California Citrus State Historical Park, 2018 (http://sweet-sour-citrus.org/projects/manos/). Sign Language, a mixed media exhibition at the CSUN Art Galleries, featured the collaborative work of McGovern and Delgado, and the artwork of Amando Lerma and Carlos Ramirez, aka “The Date Farmers” (https://www.csun.edu/mike-curb-arts-media-communication/art-galleries/events/sign-language).

Personal Statement: I’ve had the pleasure of attending multiple PAMLA conferences, presenting the Creative Artist Spotlight Address with Thomas McGovern at the 2014 PAMLA conference in Riverside, California; participating in the PAMLA “General Session: Creative Writers Spotlight” at the 2018 PAMLA conference at Western Washington University, in Bellingham, Washington; and presenting in the “Playing Our Part: Social Hierarchy and the Performance of Class in Literature” panel. At this year’s PAMLA conference in San Diego, I’m excited to be hosting a workshop on “The Art of Teaching Creative Writing in Our Communities”; interviewing Gordon Lee Johnson, author of Fast Cars and Frybread, Rez Dogs Eat Beans, and Bird Songs Don’t Lie: Writings from the Rez;and presenting “The Murals that Burst Beyond their Streets.” I’m proud to have published my essay, “Nuestra América Blurs,” in the fall 2018 issue of PAMLA’s journal, Pacific Coast Philology. Icommend PAMLA for being such a welcoming, thoughtful, and progressive organization. Its conference and other scholarly and creative activities offer so many of us a place to have meaningful interactions and be introduced to the exciting work of emerging and established scholars. It would be a great honor to serve on the Executive Committee and support the on-going dialogues among PAMLA scholars who have such a wide range of interests. I have experience with educational organizations at the local, national, and international levels. For instance, I am a board member for the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, whose founder and president, Ernest H. Siva (Cahuilla/Serrano), is a Tribal leader with a distinguished record of service to Tribal communities. For several years, I have been the co-director of Native Voices: Poetry Festival, which celebrates native writers and artists and provides literary and artistic workshops for children and teens from the Morongo Reservation and local communities. It would be an honor to contribute to PAMLA as a board member.

Petra S. Fiero holds a doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures (German) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which she received in 1994. She is a Professor of German at Western Washington University in Bellingham where she has been teaching since 1995. Her research focuses on German-Jewish literature of post-war Germany and Austria. She is the author of Schreiben gegen Schweigen. Grenzerfahrungen in Jean Amérys autobiographischem Werk (Hildesheim, Olms, 1997) and Zwischen Enthüllen und Verstecken. Eine Analyse von Barbara Honigmanns Prosawerk (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 2008). She is currently working on a monograph on Austrian author Vladimir Vertlib’s work. Her most recent publication is “Transnationale Erinnerungen in Vladimir Vertlibs Stück ÜBERALL NIRGENDS lauert die Zukunft (2016)” (Journal of Austrian Studies, 2019), which is the result of an expanded version of a presentation she gave at the PAMLA 2017 conference at Chaminade University in Honolulu. 

Personal Statement: I have attended PAMLA Conferences for several years now as a presenter and session chair, and have found a collegial, supportive, and welcoming academic home there. I was on the organizing team of our most recent conference in Bellingham and was amazed not only at the great variety and intellectual depth of the presentations I was able to witness but at the accompanying events such as poetry readings as well. It would be an honor for me to serve on the Executive Committee and assist PAMLA to foster dialogue among scholars across languages and literatures during these times when the humanities are endangered. It is especially important for me to encourage younger colleagues at the beginning of their careers to present at our annual conferences and benefit from the intellectual exchange among colleagues.

Carole-Anne Tyler is an Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she has been a faculty member for thirty years. Her advanced degrees are from Brown University: a Ph.D. in English and a M.A. (M.F.A. equivalent) in Creative Writing. Her research and teaching interests include literary and cultural theory, gender and sexuality, film and visual culture, postmodernism, modernism, and fiction. She co-founded and chaired for many years UCR’s Film and Visual Culture program, now the Department of Media and Cultural Studies, and co-founded the minor in LGBT studies, now offered under the auspices of the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies (she also was an active cooperating faculty member when the latter was the Department of Women’s Studies). She has one book, Female Impersonation (Routledge 2003), and is at work on a second on the gaze, the voice, and the ethics of sexual difference that will focus on identity and representation, with special attention to film theory and film studies, gender and sexuality, and psychoanalysis.

Personal Statement: I have been involved as a presenter at PAMLA irregularly for many years, since I first came to UCR, and in the last few years I have been a regular participant, so I have some “institutional memory” that way. Like many other members, I am concerned about the decline in literature majors of the last several years as part of a broader picture of declining support for the humanities in the U.S. I am dedicated to encouraging the spirit of critical reflection about culture gained through the humanities and the role of education as something more than vocational training that those of us in the humanities and arts strive to foster. I would like to help support our organization’s efforts to step up work with the MLA on these issues and to encourage some collaborations with other regional MLA groups on them too, as well as to help with the work for our annual conference and the journal, which have a crucial role regionally and, for junior scholars in particular, nationally.