Academics Gone Wild: This MLA Conference Craigslist Ad Is Delightful

The Modern Language Association Conference, an annual gathering of academics from across the country, starts Thursday. Perhaps you are picturing a staid summit of tweedy brainiacs? Wrong! Let this MLA-themed Craigslist personal ad set you straight.

The Daily Dot reports that a man has posted a Craigslist ad in search of a lady who’s down for an “MLA mock-interview make-out session.” (The annual gathering is where many academic job interviews happen.) The conference hotel elevator pitch: “MLA interviews, fraught with tension, can also be thick with eroticism. As a veteran of many (and a current job candidate), I’d like to indulge in a little stress-relief fantasy role-play at this year’s conference.”

Consider my interest piqued! Here’s how it would go:

I will arrive at your MLA hotel room, in my interview suit, ready to discuss my research, my place in my field, my theoretical approaches, my teaching methods, etc.

You ask me the appropriate questions and listen, interrupt, challenge, acting as a typical faculty member of a hiring committee. (You explain that your colleagues are respectively ill in bed and unable to attend because of personal obligations but, yes, you are authorized to advance my candidacy.)

Over the course of the interview we begin to cast flirtatious sidelong glances, adopt inviting body language and inch toward one other. At the right moment one of us makes the bold move of an innocent touch on the shoulder, followed by leaning in for a kiss. We both know it’s wrong, but we’re too titillated to stop.

Fade to… whatever you want to fade to. He’s also willing to play the part of interviewer, and “I am open to all sorts of (female) candidates to partner with here; no particular age or appearance in mind, though an actual interviewee is my hope.” It’s so nice when shop talk can double as pillow talk, isn’t it?

The poster says he’s an assistant professor, married but “not beholden to monogamy when on the road, especially at conferences.” And apparently, hookups are a kind of annual MLA tradition. So are all these academic conferences secret orgies? Wait, no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.