Presidential Address 2005: On Rooted Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

DOMNA C. STANTON, Distinguished Pro fessor of French at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, is the author of the forthcoming The Monarchy, the Nation, and Its Others. She is complet ing Women Writ, Women Writing: Essays on Gendered Discourse and Differences in Seventeenth-Century France and coediting two volumes, one on the seventeenth century philosopher Gabrielle Suchon, the other on seventeenth-century French fairy tales by women. Stanton is coedit ing with Judith Butler the papers from the joint MLA-CUNY Conference on Hu man Rights and the Humanities {PMLA, Oct. 2006) and chairing the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Ten ure and Promotion (report to be pub lished in the 2006 issue of Profession). GOOD EVENING; KALISPERA; BON SOIR; BUENASTARDES; GUTEN abend; buona sera; dobry vyecher; wan shang hao; masaa al-khair. I am pleased to be with you this evening, which marks the sym bolic end of the Modern Language Association presidency each year. Unlike other presidencies, such as those inaugurated in this capital city, the presidency of the MLA is not the performance of an imperial authority. A democratic and collaborative enterprise, the MLA is a beehive of busy bodies?the officers, the Executive Council, the in dispensable grassroots Delegate Assembly, the forty-eight committees and commissions, the division and discussion group executive com mittees, the honorary fellows and honorary members, the trustees, and last, and most important of all, the ninety-member staff, without whom the hive that is the MLA could not survive, much less thrive. To the colleagues on the Executive Council with whom I have served these past three years, my deep-felt thanks for the work we did together and the work you will go on doing next year, on a number of new initiatives, including a broad review of the annual convention, a permanent structure for long-range planning for the future of the association, and the task force on criteria for tenure and promotion, which I was pleased to chair and which will publish its report before the end of 2006. Above all, I want to thank the unparalleled staff of the MLA, all of whom I regard as colleagues in promoting the work of the association, some of whom I have known since the late 1970s and con sider friends for life. I want to acknowledge the members of the staff present this evening: my newest friend and colleague, Rosemary Feal, whom I thank for being the most supportive and enthusiastic compa gnon de route that any MLA president could ask for; Judy Goulding,