Susan Rosenbaum wins MLA Prize

The Modern Language Association of America announced the winner of the thirteenth Modern Language Association Prize for Collaborative, Bibliographical, or Archival Scholarship. Among the two two winning projects is Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde, created by Susan Rosenbaum, associate professor of English at UGA, along with colleagues at Davidson College and Duquesne University.  

The born-digital, open access scholarly website Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde has been supported by the Willson Center's Digital Humanities Lab, the English Department, and the UGA Libraries, and won a $75k Digital Humanities Advancement Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2017. Last year this project earned an honorable mention for the American Studies Association’s Garfinkel Prize in Digital Humanities.

MLA is the largest, most prestigious organization for literary studies, with 23,000 members from around the world.

Artist, poet, feminist, entrepreneur, inventor, and world traveler, Mina Loy consorted with nearly every avant-garde movement, including Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism, but was contained by none. Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde documents her avant-garde affiliations, pursuing new modes of textual and visual expression in order to invite a closer, more informed engagement with her work.

"The Mina Loy website, co-created by scholars, students, and staff at the University of Georgia, Davidson College (NC), and Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA), is the multi-media equivalent of a scholarly book, a status signaled by the fact that we share this year’s MLA prize with Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein’s influential book Data Feminism (MIT Press)," Rosenbaum said. "Nevertheless, our project moves beyond the material limits of a book to reimagine humanities scholarship as a collaborative, interactive, and public-facing enterprise. Faculty, staff, undergraduate and graduate students at UGA contributed vital research, writing, and technical design featured on this platform. I’m thrilled that this Digital Humanities project supported by UGA has received national and even international recognition: its success demonstrates the value of innovative, collaborative, public-facing humanities scholarship."

"On behalf of everyone in our department, I congratulate Susan Rosenbaum on winning this major national prize for her digital humanities scholarship," said Cody Marrs, professor and head of the department of English. "Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde is highly inventive and impactful work, and the coveted MLA Prize for Collaborative, Bibliographical, or Archival Scholarship represents a  momentous and much-deserved achievement."