Modern Language Association

Abstract

This project enables the MLA to scale out the work of its Mellon-funded summer institutes for reading-writing pedagogy at Access-Oriented Institutions (AOIs). The pandemic prevented us from holding institutes in the summer of 2020, and the ones we held in summer 2021 were virtual. Therefore we have not been able to build as we had intended on the institutes to create the national network of training programs to strengthen the teaching of reading and writing at AOIs, which serve primarily students of color, first-generation college students, and Pell Grant recipients. This grant would enable us to bring to the MLA convention in January 2023 pairs of institutions from across the country to develop their own versions of the reading-writing pedagogy institute, with MLA staff support. This training program would replace the follow-up work we were unable to do because of the pandemic. Each in-person institute had been intended to spawn continuing regional programs for connecting AOIs with English doctoral programs, and this convention-based programming would very much enable us to see that aspect of the program through. Our original funding for staffing will run out after this coming summer’s institutes (which we intend to hold in person), so SSRC funding would enable us to create and staff a series of workshops at the MLA convention in 2023 that would allow five more pairs of institutions to develop their own partnerships for strengthening reading-writing pedagogy for students at AOIs. We could continue to employ the staff members who have been funded by the Mellon grant, to do the administration for the workshops; in addition, the SSRC grant would fund the instructors for the workshops–the facilitators we have been using for the institutes themselves.