The Loop

 

This electronic gathering place is designed to reveal how recent scholarship has transformed syllabi for undergraduate courses, those that departments of languages and literatures require of their majors as well as those that colleges require of their departments for distribution credit.  Here on the M/MLA web site, anyone teaching in the Midwest is cordially invited to submit for posting a simple syllabus and accompanying handouts in English, specifically from any required undergraduate course whose unfolding weeks have been genuinely impacted by recent scholarly developments.  More than another opportunity to publish ongoing research or to suggest classroom solutions to those who teach, “The Loop” provides a forum for those who are spinning their research into classroom gold by reimagining not just what but how they teach.

Each year, several of those posting their course materials will be invited to contribute brief essays that foreground the intersection of scholarly enterprise and pedagogical responsibility.  Look for these in the fall issue of the M/MLA Journal, where contributors will continue laying the intellectual foundation for undergraduates who have chosen the disciplines we value or who might be encouraged to do so as they decide on a major field.

In more ways than one, it pays to be in the loop, a peculiarly Midwestern term.The downtown loop is Kansas City’s central business district; in St. Louis, the Loop near Washington University is the place where streetcars once turned around. Chicago’s “Loop” is both a highly concentrated business hub and the iron frame of the city’s “el,” first built during the 1890s and even then tracing the turnabout for older cable cars and horse-drawn streetcars heading back to far-flung neighborhoods. So, too, we are drawn by the business we share, the study of languages and literatures, to encourage a steady traffic in texts and ideas.

Kathleen Diffley
Executive Director of the M/MLA

 

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