The digital humanities is well represented at this weekend’s 130th annual Modern Language Association Convention (Vancouver, BC; January 8-11). A simple keyword search of the 2015 Program displays 43 sessions that match the criteria “All text: digital humanities”; 6 sessions match “All text: DH,” and 32 sessions are listed under the program’s Subject heading:

General Literature–Electronic Technology (Teaching, Research, and Theory).

Because it reminded me of Chris’s thoughtful (and provoking) post on Desmond Schmidt’s article two days ago, I wanted to first bring attention, and share the link, to a session held yesterday: 204. Text Tools in the (Digital) Humanities (Friday, 9). Here’s a case being made by David Hoover for “plain text” alternatives to XML, which also focuses on inter-operability, and shares some of the concerns in Schmidt’s article that Chris discussed Thursday. Abstracts of all 3 papers for session 204 are posted at 204 Abstracts. The top-most abstract is Hoover’s paper, titled “The Promise of the Plain: Plain Text and Plain Tools in the Digital Humanities.”

I won’t even try to briefly touch on all 43 sessions, but another that caught my attention, and I wanted to share because it looked interesting, was this morning’s roundtable: 448. Disrupting the Digital Humanities (Saturday, 10). Last night while browsing the program, I paused at this one in particular, because I saw that participants included Sean Michael Morris (presiding) and Jessie Stommel (final speaker), who are co-directors of Hybrid Pedagogy, an online blog/ peer-reviewed journal that I follow. According to the program’s session description:

All too often, defining a discipline becomes more an exercise of exclusion than inclusion. This roundtable rethinks how we map disciplinary terrain by directly confronting the gatekeeping impulse of many academic disciplines. Participants investigate the edges and open the digital humanities more fully to its fringes and outliers.

For papers featured at this morning’s roundtable discussion, go here: DisruptingDH.

Sessions, abstracts, and (some) papers from DH-related events at this year’s MLA can be found through links in the Full Program. Relative to other methodologies and content areas, the digital humanities remains the annual mega-conference’s MVP (Most Visible Player)-as Pannapacker called it, “The Thing”-five years running. The 204 and 408 sessions give a good idea of the kinds of wide-ranging approaches being taken, moreover. DH at this year’s MLA–from textual analysis and close reading to LOL cats and critical queer theory–is thriving, and scholars in languages and literature are doing some pretty meaningful work across diverse areas of research.