Paula Krebs, Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, definitely did not expect insurrectionists to storm the US Capitol the day before the 2021 MLA Annual Convention. However, when she re-recorded her introductory video to reflect the societal temperature, she found that her most salient points remained—whether in crisis or not, the Humanities help us sift through and make sense of the nonsensical. “I wanted to let them know that the convention was a place that’s in the culture, not separate from the culture … and only after and with the kind of informed critical analysis of the Humanities can any kind of change happen.”

In this third episode, Paula unpacks how the Humanities have been affected and possibly invigorated by new and enduring crises like the coronavirus pandemic and a fraught political climate. Paula also digs into the inequitable effects COVID-19 has had on higher education, as well as encouraging changes in accessibility spurred by our current digital learning environment.

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