How do I style names of headers or titled sections that I refer to in my prose?

Note: This post relates to content in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook. For up-to-date guidance, see the ninth edition of the MLA Handbook.

When you refer to the names of headers or titled sections in a work, you may style them with or without quotation marks as long as you are consistent:

In part 1 of Approaches to Teaching Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, the editors discuss different versions of the novel in the section “Editions and Translations” and various aspects of the author’s life and times in the sections “The Novel and the Author” and “Historical and Political Background.”

In the January 2017 issue of PMLA, the section Theories and Methodologies contains essays about Homi Bhabha’s work, and the section Little-Known Documents focuses on an article by Gertrude Stein.