Profession
Profession is the MLA’s journal on issues that affect members in their professional capacities as teachers, advisers, administrators, and advocates. Starting in 2026, the journal is an annual supplemental issue of PMLA, freely available on Cambridge Core. Past issues of the journal are available at profession.mla.org.
Editor: Paula M. Krebs
2026 Profession Advisory Committee
Genelle Gertz (Washington and Lee University), Anne Lambright (Carnegie Mellon University), and Jonathan Stone (Franklin and Marshall College)
Forthcoming Issue: Precarity and Resilience
Deadline for abstracts: 15 April 2026
Deadline for submissions: 15 July 2026
Precarity has been an overwhelming theme of the 2020s. Contemporary academia is beset by contingency, liminality, vulnerability, and instability. Yet precarity also breeds resilience. These two tandem concepts both confront transience and indeterminacy by gesturing towards a future that will differ greatly from the status quo of the present.
The advisory committee welcomes submissions—theoretical, personal, or practical—on the theme of precarity and resilience that address any aspect of the topic, including workforce concerns; the rise of AI and emerging technologies; the defunding of the humanities; attacks on and defenses of DEI; retention, promotion, and tenure policies; online and in-person instruction; and the importance of what we do now, at a time when it may feel like a luxury.
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words, and submissions should be between 4,500 and 6,000 words and prepared in accordance to the citation guidelines in the latest edition of the MLA Handbook. Contributors to the journal must be current members of the MLA. Please send abstracts and submissions to profession@mla.org.
