This visualization explores thematic content of sessions at Modern Language Association (MLA) conferences. Three views provide different perspectives on how topics are distributed across sessions and how session titles relate to the topics of individual papers within them.
Topics are extracted from session and paper titles using keyword dictionaries covering 4 categories: themes (15), literary figures, genres (9), and historical periods (7). Each title may match multiple topics.
Treemap: Hierarchical area chart showing topic frequency. Click any cell to see the list of sessions containing that topic.
Timeline: Each year shows its sessions as colored segments. Color indicates the dominant topic (themes prioritized over genres over periods).
Session Topics: Sortable, filterable table listing every session with its topic assignments. Filter by year or topic, search by title or presenter name. Click a row to expand presenter details.