About Membership
As a member you’ll receive five issues of PMLA, discounted registration for the MLA Annual Convention, and more. View a full list of membership benefits.
What Your Dues Support
Members’ support enables the association to undertake projects, like the MLA Language Map, that serve the broader public and to advocate for members of the profession through collaboration with the Coalition on the Academic Workforce, which works to improve conditions for adjunct and part-time teachers. Your dues allow the MLA to open special convention events to the public and sustain the association’s distinguished scholarly communication and publishing programs, including MLA Commons, the online publication platform and member-to-member network; the Texts and Translations series, which produces otherwise unavailable works in affordable editions for classroom use; the MLA International Bibliography; and the association’s flagship journal, PMLA.
Membership Categories
Visit the MLA website for the membership dues schedule.
Graduate students engaged in courses of study leading to degrees in the fields of modern languages and literatures may for a maximum of seven years become student members at a $30 annual dues rate. Undergraduates are not eligible for the student dues rate.
Group memberships for graduate students are available for graduate students who have never been MLA members. Learn more about how to purchase group memberships.
Joint membership is open to two individuals sharing the same household. This category is not open to student members.
Life membership is available to retired members of more than thirty years’ standing and to all members who have paid membership dues for fifty years. Members may also become life members by making a single payment of $5,000 less $1,000 for each decade of membership. Life members pay no further dues to the association.
Regular members, including new and reinstating members, should establish their dues category according to the graduated schedule.
Departments may purchase group memberships for part-time faculty members and receive a discount of up to 20% off the regular rates.
MLA Forums
The membership of the association is organized into forums, each representing an area of scholarly and professional concern. To participate fully in the activities of the association, members should join the forums in which they have major scholarly or professional interests.
MLA Commons
The MLA invites members to participate in MLA Commons, the online scholarly communication platform where members can connect with fellow members, collaborate on convention sessions, share research, and explore new modes of scholarship. Although many areas of the site are open to the public, full participation, including the ability to create a blog and to participate in division and discussion group forums, is a benefit of membership.