Without prejudice concerning what qualifies as literature,” Marshall Brown (1992: 18) writes, literary history “reminds us that the life after texts is, finally, the life within them.” Apt and brief, Marshall neither minces nor wastes words. For years his clarity set the tone and mission for MLQ as a serious venue for what we gathered in Seattle in January 2020 to celebrate: the project of literary history. A disciplinary project, to be sure, perhaps even a subdisciplinary one, but in practice a broad-gauged editorial remit that has sponsored timely and innovative work, always in accord with the decisive seven words quoted at the top of this page. Two conversations led to my joining the MLA roundtable, and I am grateful for both. First, in 2010 Colleen Lye proposed that we find a way to think, talk, and write together about...