Georgetown University

Washington, D.C. – Mark McMorris, associate professor in the department of English at Georgetown University, will present his paper on Dec. 30, “Outside the Republic of Literature: The Fate of Writing as Social Practice,” at the Modern Language Association annual convention, held this year in San Francisco.

McMorris examines the model of a world republic of letters proposed by Pascale Casanova, where literary value grows from the attention paid to texts by elite cohorts --publishers, editors, reviewers, prize-giving committees and most importantly, translators -- resident in Western capitals of culture such as Paris and London. “Writing that has been drawn into the cultural networks of these capitals then becomes visible and worthy of further attention from members of the academy concerned with the study and the construction of a formation called World Literature,” says McMorris.

To understand what happens to literature outside this model, McMorris considers the Caine Prize in African Writing, awarded annually in Oxford, England, for the best single short story published by an African writer in English. He seeks to understand writing as social practice as opposed to writing as an index of personal or national prestige and visibility by examining the fate of writing that goes unrecognized by publishers, award committees and the like.

“This prize both illustrates the power of the literary capital and raises the question of the very different future in store for writing that the prize has bypassed or that was never positioned close to the avenues of circulation, which bring texts to the attention of literary judges.”

Mark McMorris has been a member of the Georgetown English Department since 1997. His research and teaching interests include 20th century poetry in English; postcolonial literature and theory; contemporary poetry; and poetry writing. A poet and critic, his work appears widely in periodicals and anthologies in the United States, and he is the author most recently of The Café at Light, a book of lyric dialogue, prose, and verse.

About the Modern Language Association

The Modern Language Association, the largest and one of the oldest American learned societies in the humanities (est. 1883), promotes the advancement of literary and linguistic studies. The 30,000 members of the association come from all fifty states and the District of Columbia, as well as from Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. PMLA, the association’s journal of literary scholarship, has published distinguished scholarly articles for over one hundred years. Approximately 9,500 members of the MLA and its allied and affiliate organizations attend the association’s annual convention each December. The MLA is a constituent of the American Council of Learned Societies and the International Federation for Modern Languages and Literatures.

About Georgetown University

Georgetown University is the oldest and largest Catholic and Jesuit university in America, founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll. Georgetown today is a major student-centered, international, research university offering respected undergraduate, graduate and professional programs in Washington, DC, Doha, Qatar and around the world. For more information about Georgetown University, visit www.georgetown.edu.