The Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Midwest Modern Language Association will take place 4-6 November 1976, at the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis, Missouri. The opening General Session, 4 November, 8:00 p.m., will feature poetry readings by Howard Nemerov, Laurence Lieberman, and Felix Stefanile. In addition to the regular meetings of the MMLA sections, the following forums will convene: “American Indian Literature,” “Are Scholarly Journals Obsolete?,” “Contemporary Missouri Poetry,” “Literature and Revolution in the Bicentennial Year,” “Neo-Medievalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” “Principles of Teaching Composition,” “The American Revolution and the French Enlightenment,” “The Fourteenth-Century Mystics,” “The Historical Study of Style,” “What Is a Genre?,” and “Didactic Science Fiction: Sages, Malcontents, and Nuts.” There will be seminars on Colette, Dante, Robert Frost, and creative writing, as well as a series of debates: “Gertrude Stein: Radical Feminist or Aesthetic Snob?,” “Is Fiction Obsolete?,” and “Is Poetry Obsolete?” And there will be a special Bicentennial lecture by Hugh Kenner of Johns Hopkins University.

The Northeast Modern Language Association had a very productive year. Membership now numbers 1,000 (roughly), and although the strike caused obvious difficulties for members located in Canada, even that “blank” seems now to have regained constituency. Modern Language Studies, the periodical sponsored by the Association and published at the University of Rhode Island, appeared with predictable regularity—a fall issue, a spring issue—under the editorship of Edna Steeves (for English manuscripts) and Armand Chartier (for modern language manuscripts). Happily, the arrangement will continue an additional two years, at least, for the agreement between the University of Rhode Island and NEMLA has been extended through 1978, including a partial subsidy by that University. A faculty member of NEMLA, for $6.00 ($3.00 for graduate students), has received two issues of MLS and the chance to attend the conference, scheduled this year at the University of Vermont, Burlington. (Membership dues will rise to $10.00 for faculty and $5.00 for students this September.)

The seventy-third annual meeting of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast was held in San Jose, California on 28 and 29 November 1975 with 276 members attending. San Jose State University was the host institution with arrangements for the meeting coordinated by the Local Committee of Scott Rice (Chairman), Catherine Blecki, Esther Pereyra-Suarez, John Pollock, and Joachim Stenzel. The conference was distinguished by an unusually invigorating Presidential Address by Eli Sobel entitled “In Symbol of Hope.” At the banquet, President Sobel also honored R. S. Meyerstein with a resolution recognizing his extraordinary dedication to duty and his special service to PAPC during the previous ten years, when he had served as Secretary-Treasurer.

The 1976 convention of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association will be held at the new Peachtree Center Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 4-6 November. Chairmen of several of the eighty special interest and affiliated meetings comprising the convention have designated Bicentennial themes for their programs in keeping with the nation's celebration of her 200th birthday. Convention preregistration and special housing rates on rooms blocked for SAMLA use are restricted to members of the Association, but persons interested in joining SAMLA and receiving full convention information can do so by forwarding annual dues of $7.00 (graduate students, $2.00; joint husband-wife, $9.00) by no later than 1 October to: SAMLA, Box 8410, U. T. Station, Knoxville, Tennessee 37916.

The 1975 SCMLA convention—11-13 December in New Orleans (Fairmont Hotel)—saw the official transfer of the Executive Secretariat office from Rice University to Texas A & M University. James A. Castañeda, who completed an unprecedented three terms (near nine years) in the office, stepped down officially after the SCMLA Executive Committee meeting. The new executive secretary is Richard Hauer Costa, professor of English, Texas A & M University. Costa spoke briefly at the membership meeting luncheon the last full day of the convention. The bid of Texas A & M, which included the selection of Costa for the position of Executive Secretary-Treasurer, was accepted in May of 1975 but was not official until the end of the 1975 meeting.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the site of the 1976 RMMLA Convention. The cochairmen of the local arrangements committee, Margretta LeRoy and Rex Kleitz (Coll. of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, N. M. 87501), promise an exciting meeting influenced by the city's Southwestern charm. Persons interested in attending the event will receive information after sending membership dues ($8.00 regular, $10.00 husband/wife, $5.00 graduate student) to RMMLA, Annex 2056, University of Utah, Salt Lake City 84112.