To take on the task of presiding over a professional society like the American Comparative Literature Association at a time like the present is to find oneself facing down specters. In recent years, my predecessors have had to respond to a global pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the civil disobedience it ignited, the genocide in Gaza, a direct assault on universities in the United States that took particular aim at internationally-minded humanists like ourselves, and finally, a brand new phase in U.S. foreign military adventurism. A new war broke out last month in the very middle of the 2026 conference of the American Comparative Literature Association. Some participants in the conference were stranded by airport closures caused by the war. Many more have been trying to help family members across the region displaced by the violence since we left Montreal.
At such moments, to sit with students in a classroom and use human minds to analyze a poem and evince its complexity feels simultaneously like a radical act and like something not nearly radical enough. At this year’s vice-presidential plenary, I was lucky to listen to eight brilliant colleagues grapple with that conundrum. Four presented before the first bombs were dropped and four after. Their presentations have stuck with me since the conference, as I have continued to ponder the question of critical thinking in an era of intellectual crassness. History has moved so fast recently that a simplistic viewer could be excused for thinking that world events have overtaken a humanistic approach to comparative study. It is important that we resist such a simplistic view. We must maintain our critical perspective on historical change, and at least in part, that must mean insisting on the values of producing knowledge in a systematic, if urgent, way.
For that reason, I hope to build on the advances in the ACLA’s practices that previous presidents, officers, and members have put forward. (I generally do not think of myself as someone drawn to self-promotion, but even if I were, that would seem like a particularly unfortunate use of the presidency at this moment.) The ACLA will continue to incorporate an increasingly diverse set of international perspectives—including by welcoming scholars coming from international locations whenever the increasingly Kafkaesque process of legally allowing them to be with us does not prevent as much. The importance of translation and the study of translation to our professional practice has been and must continue to be a point of emphasis for us, with the added piece that defending translation as a human practice now takes on a new significance, pushing it to the center of humanistic study. Of course, the challenges facing the university and the general degrading of the working conditions of humanistic scholars at North American universities must continue to be top of mind for all of us. We have all been forced into a subspecialty in the history and political economy of our institutions with the result that the next generation of comparative literature scholars will be required to be able to both apply hermeneutical tools to a complicated poem and explain to students, parents, administrators, and the general public issues like the rise of contingency and the legal weaponization of white, male, hetero privilege.
My main goal over the next year will be to make space for the amazing human resources that make up the ACLA’s membership to flourish. I wish to thank Karyn Ball for her excellent guidance during the past year—one of the more challenging of the series of anni horribles—and to the presidents who have preceded her and set an example that makes my leadership task feel much less daunting. Thanks also to ACLA’s excellent administrative team of Danielle Marie and Brigid Kennedy, who made the Montreal conference a success, handling both long-term planning and last minute emergencies deftly. I am excited to work with an engaged Executive Committee of prominent scholars willing to commit spare time they do not have to making the organization flourish: Secretary-Treasurer Dina Al-Kassim, 1st Vice-President Huda Fakhreddine, and 2nd VP S. Shankar. The ACLA also runs on the energy of its tireless, visionary board members, who somehow keep the organization, its programs and its conference strong, although they are all equally bereft of spare time.
I am particularly grateful to the ACLA’s membership in all its diversity for keeping comparative literature vital and dynamic. It is imperative that the ACLA listen to this membership and continue to improve in its ability to follow their lead over the coming year and beyond.
Respectfully,
Hosam M. Aboul-Ela