Literary Matters - Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

The President’s Column (continued from page 2)We have had other adjustments. Needing to convertour quarterly newsletter Literary Matters to a moreeconomical on-line publication, we have been pleasedby the several new advantages that this transformationhas enabled: color photographs and graphics, enhancedcapacity for content, archiving at our website, availabilityto on-line searches, and easy portability for forwardingto friends, family, colleagues, and prospective members.Leslie Harkema, its editor, has brought skill, discipline,fun and intelligent purpose to this new formation. Thoughthis transformation was born of financial necessity, itsevolution might be now regarded as inspired prescience—-necessity is the mother of this invention, too. We’ve hada wealth of essays, reports, reviews, poetry and profilesacross the year, including our new essay-contest forsecondary school students, with our first prize essay soonto appear.This contest reflects our increasing concern withliterary study in secondary schools. Forum 4, whichyou should all have by now, is our contribution to thisdiscussion. Distributed to our membership, to the press,and to the councils for the humanities in all 50 states,this report reflects the expert research, synthesis,analysis, and forceful polemics by Sandra Stotskyabout the troubling degradation of literary study. TheAssociation is not just submitting a report of concernbut is using this publication to spark future colloquia. Wehave also conveyed letters on behalf of the Associationto a number of state boards of education, advocating forthe development, refinement, sophistication of literarystudy in the high schools—not only as important to liberaleducation and analytical skill, but as the resource fromwhich a thoughtful, inquisitive, capably informed, literatecitizenry emerges.Our annual conference, as you may have notedfrom our several previews, has also evolved. Becauseconferences in the foreseeable future must now beself-financing, we have turned our planning towardsaffordable venues in academia. Our facilities at PrincetonUniversity will cost less than 10% of what we used tohave to pay for a downtown hotel venue. Our hotel roomcostis about 60% of the cost at previous conferences.Our banquets have doubled in quantity (two this year),and the tickets cost 50-75% less than before. Thesereductions in price have been made possible by generousco-sponsorship from various departments and programsat Princeton University (mostly from the magic touch ofMichael Wood), from local but internationally renownedspeakers who are happy to appear without honoraria orexpense-reimbursement (Paul Muldoon, Joyce CarolOates, and C.K. Williams), from donations by our bookexhibitorsto the conference budget, and from membersto our fund for our staff and intern expenses. Our entireconference budget is about 15-20% of past budgets,but with no compromise on quality. So while this, too,is a transformation born of necessity, it has producedhappy developments with distinct advantages to ourmembership. The entire program is a marvel, in nosmall part from the imaginative work of David Mikics inassembling exciting panels and seminars.Another development, to which I have been pleasurablydevoted, is our alliances with other associations whoshare our values, our commitments, and our membership.Joining with the Comparative Literature Association andthe Modern Language Association of America, we havesuccessfully supported the continuation of the graduateprogram in Comparative Literature at Louisiana StateUniversity at Baton Rouge, and are supporting the protestagainst the termination of the Comparative Literatureprogram at the University of Toronto. A number of ourmembers who are members of the other associations(Adelaide Russo, Michael Wood, David Damrosch,Marshall Brown, Rosemary Feal) are already conversingabout forums at various association conferences in thecoming years about “the future of comparative literature”:MLA in Seattle or Boston, for instance, with perhaps apartnership at one of the ALSCW conferences.I’m very excited by these new alliances, and pleasedto have launched an experimental venture or two duringmy presidential year. One is a landmark issue on thesonnet for Literary Imagination, reflecting severalhappy alliances: you’ll find a wealth of sonnets, fromestablished, emerging, and new poets, as well as classyfleet of critical essays developed from the rich resourcesof sessions at the 2009 ALSCW conference (chaired byDavid Mikics) and at the MLA in 2009, which I chaired.Publishers of relevant critical studies and anthologieshave come on board, too, with paid advertisements. Thisissue is a rich intersection of our devotions and spheresof activity. Literary Imagination continues to be admired,with contributions by major figures in the world of criticismand writing, and fresh interest with every issue.Alliances have been my initiative across this pastyear: we allied with the Keats-Shelley Association ofAmerica for a showing of Jane Campion’s Bright Starfollowed by a panel discussion including Associationmembers; we allied with the Philoctetes Society for anevening colloquium on “the sonnet.” I have developedan alliance with MLA, at which three conversations thatwill begin in our Princeton conference (on close-reading,on Pride and Prejudice, and on common professionalconcerns) will continue two months later in Los Angelesat the MLA convention. All participants in this two-phaseconversation are members of both the ALSCW and theMLA, as are many of our new members.Local meetings have brought in new members andnew interests, too. Adelaide Russo organized a widecommunity of students, professors, local artists and(continued on page 16)LITERARY MATTERS | VOLUME 3.4 | YEAR-END 2010 13