Writing: Professional Organizations

ATTW is an active organization of teachers, researchers, and teacher-practitioners of technical communication across a range of academic and professional institutions. Members of ATTW work in graduate and undergraduate programs in technical communication, media, engineering, rhetoric, writing studies, and English, among other complementary research programs.

AWP amplifies the voices of writers and the academic programs and organizations that serve them while championing diversity and excellence in creative writing.

Since 1938, the College English Association has been a vibrant, growing professional organization of scholar-teachers who regard teaching college students, undergraduate and graduate, as the proper focus of the profession.

The International Society for the History of Rhetoric promotes the study of both the theory and practice of rhetoric in all periods and languages and the relationship of rhetoric to poetics, literary theory and criticism, philosophy, politics, religion, law and other aspects of the cultural context.

The Modern Language Association promotes the study and teaching of languages and literatures through its programs, publications, annual convention, and advocacy work.

The National Council of Teachers of English is devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education.

NeMLA was officially recognized after growing out of a New York-Pennsylvania association of faculty organized by William A. Wehmeyer (St. Bonaventure University) at the 1967 Modern Language Association (MLA). He and other MLA members were interested in continuing scholarly discourse at annual conventions smaller than those hosted by the MLA. With F. M. Burelbach as the editor of the NeMLA Newsletter (later Modern Language Studies), Wehmeyer organized conferences in April 1968 and in April 1969 at St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan Catholic university in Allegany, Cattaraugus County, within the Diocese of Buffalo, New York. In 1969, the organization moved to wider regional membership, election of officers, formal affiliation with MLA, and adoption of its present name