THE 2003 BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE ASSOCIATION
The ACLA Bulletin appears once a year in the Summer Issue of Comparative Literature
- Letter from the ACLA president, Margaret Higonnet
- Letter from Secretary-Treasurer, Elizabeth Richmond-Garza
- ACLA Sessions at MLA, San Diego, December 2003
- Call for Papers: ACLA Conference 2004, Ann Arbor
- ACLA Financial Statement
LETTER FROM THE ACLA PRESIDENT MARGARET HIGONNET
Dear Colleagues,
The power of global thinking, and its hazards as well, have been much debated by comparatists. This has perhaps been especially true in a year when uncertain communication and violence have marked the return of world attention to the birthplace of Sumerian culture, where the oldest mappa mundi was found on a sixth-century Babylonian tablet. We have had ample occasion to reflect on the complex factors that affect how history is written, and more specifically how cultural history is forged or forgotten. Forces that may seem remote and vague, like the "bitter river" that circled ancient Babylon on that tablet, have come home, threatening freedom of travel and intellectual exchange. Programs and departments of comparative literature have been challenged to keep their budgets balanced and to continue supporting research. This year, the ICLA meeting planned for Hong Kong had to be cancelled. Libraries are struggling to preserve freedom of speech in the face of exiguous security measures.
Yet in many ways, this forty-third anniversary of the ACLA has also been a year for comparatists to celebrate. The annual meeting April 4-6, 2003, ably hosted by Heather Richardson-Hayton and Laurel Amtower at the California State University San Marcos and San Diego State University, attracted well over 600 presenters at 70 panels. This set another record, in spite of financial cutbacks, reduced travel in response to the war in Iraq, fears of SARS, and visa problems for some esteemed international scholars who were forced to withdraw. The beautiful hillside setting of the university at San Marcos, between the desert and the sea, as well as the elegant modern buildings and high-tech classrooms, offered participants the possibility of enjoying a fine balance between provocative papers and relaxed pleasures. The theme of border crossing drew reflections on gender, genre, media, material culture, audiences and Arabic culture, among many other topics.
The distribution of our annual prizes at the conference underscored the continuing vitality of comparative scholarship today. Henry Remak, who received the first Lifetime Achievement Award, handed out offprints of his recent scholarship. The Harry Levin Prize, which was awarded to Julie Stone Peters for her superb Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880, attracted such strong submissions that three other authorsóGil Anidjar, Ian Balfour, and John C. Shieldsóalso received honorable mention. Although we are still working to build the fund for the Bernheimer Prize, we were able to award the prize this year to Emily Wilson, for her doctoral dissertation in comparative literature at Yale University. The Horst Frenz and A. O. Aldridge prizes went to excellent graduate students selected from an impressive cohort.
Many of our panels, like Harry Potter, produce sequels in subsequent years. We look forward to seeing each other again next year, when the annual conference will be held April 15-18, 2004, at the University of Michigan, hosted by Tobin Siebers. The call for papers published in this issue envisions a broad range of topics under the rubric of "Global Ethnic NetworksóOld and New" (http://www.umich.edu/~acla).
Under the stewardship of Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, who became our new Secretary-Treasurer a year ago, the ACLA is presenting a new face electronically. The web site offers links to information about the organization, membership forms, our annual prizes, by-laws, minutes from board meetings, and of course the annual conferences. It also provides a quick springboard to titles of comparative literature journals, electronic journals, digitalized texts, and online bibliographies. Elizabeth has been working together with Carey Eckhardt, the President of the ADPCL, to update our list of programs and departments in comparative literature, and welcomes your input. We would also like to make the membership list as useful as possible to you, and would like your ideas about how to do this, e.g. by listing three fields in which you are currently working. For questions and suggestions, please write the secretariat at info@acla.org or to me at higonnet@uconn.edu.
We will also be welcoming your questions in response to our two panels at the 2003 MLA conference, which takes us back to San Diego. The roundtable chaired by Haun Saussy will present a draft of the next ten-year Report on the Discipline, which we think will provoke a discussion of changes within the profession, as lively as that which greeted the Charles Bernheimer report a decade ago.
This has been a time for rethinking how we do things as comparatists, and for moving comparative literature toward the center of our study of literature. As Carey Eckhardt's note here indicates, the ADPCL is planning a summer seminar for June 3-5, 2004, in Colorado Springs on evolving options for teaching world literature, looking at innovative curricula and broader institutional arrangements. Please contact Corinne Scheiner (cscheiner@ColoradoCollege.edu) with topics for the program. The MLA also invited comparatists to join the ADE and ADFL at a conference June 26-29, 2003, at Snowbird, Utah, to participate in a conversation about shared interests in areas such as translation studies, cultural studies, post-colonial literature, film, and gender studies. Under the leadership of President Mary Louise Pratt, a comparatist herself, and of the MLA's Executive Director Rosemary Feal, questions about the institutional place of comparative literature, of interdisciplinary work, and of area studies have come to the fore. The MLA publications committee is also interested in developing comparative proposals for the series on "Approaches to Teaching"; David Damrosch is planning a volume on "Approaches to Teaching World Literature" for the MLA "Approaches" series.
We look forward to further collaboration with ADPCL and the MLA in reconsidering where we usually draw disciplinary lines: along the boundaries of period, national language, and genre. Should the creative foment of the panel titles that our members actually propose to conference organizers help us to redefine the "divisions" of our discipline, the job definitions when we hire, and the requirements imposed on our graduates? Amid these sea changes, we need to be especially sensitive to their impact on our students and our junior faculty. Comparatists should be able to contribute models for the integration of modern language departments that are consolidating, and the comparative focus on cultural and interdisciplinary studies will benefit from the interdisciplinary focus that promises to be one of the hallmarks of the twenty-first century. These trends cannot be separated, of course, from our responsibility to ancient cultures, a point of which David Damrosch eloquently reminded us at the conference. This year I am especially grateful not only for the remarkable panoply of David's projects that should help renew our teaching, but also for his support as I recovered from an accident. With David on one side, and Kathleen Komar, our new Vice President, on the other, I look forward to the promise of the coming year.
LETTER FROM THE INCOMING SECRETARY ELIZABETH RICHMOND-GARZA
This letter could not begin without a heartfelt expression of praise for Dr. Elaine Martin's collegial and professional administration of the Secretariat at the University of Alabama. As both a friend and an adviser, she has made both my job and that of my assistants, Kevin Carney, Ryan Fisher, Matthew Russell and Laura Sager, so much easier this year and has challenged us to carry on her accomplished work. I also wish to thank the ACLA Board and membership for having given UT Austin the opportunity to host the ACLA's administrative offices until 2007. As I imagine the role of interdisciplinary and foreign language programs in the next few years, I see the Secretariat as having an important role to play not only within the ACLA but, in fact, in comparative studies more generally. I see the University of Texas as an ideal place for this development with your collective support, wisdom and, sometimes, patience. The Secretariat will continue to expand and develop technologically, intellectually and the institutionally.
Situated now in the complex and multicultural border region of the United States, the Secretariat will continue the ACLA's commitment to the inclusive regional definition of "American" which has been expressed so well through the choice of both the topics and the locations for our meetings. I hope that we can build on the ACLA's already distinguished international and multicultural profile so as to integrate these vital areas of comparative study even more fully into the ACLA's profile, not only hemispherically but also globally. I hope the Secretariat will be able facilitate such area studies liaisons and organizational collaborations especially in diasporic and globally oriented studies.
In the context of such interdisciplinary and collaborative goals, the continued enhancement and development of the ACLA's web resources is crucial, making the ACLA an ever more critical site of intellectual and collegial exchange and connection. I hope that you have had a chance to look through our completely renovated website and invite any comments and additions. The growth which I imagine for the ACLA website ranges from simple additions like expanded databases, collaborative discussion groups and distribution lists, to showcasing through web publishing the innovative and interdisciplinary achievements of our members.
In this era of assessing the place of literary and linguistic studies as whole within the academy, I see the future of Comparative Literature as lying in a clear articulation of its role not only in graduate but also in undergraduate education. I would like to use the crossroads of the Secretariat for undergraduate outreach and as a central resource and point of reference and support for faculty designing and developing comparative studies at their home institutions and for undergraduates themselves whose work will be crucial in defining the future of our field. The membership of the ACLA represents the most complete, varied and dynamic network of scholars working in Comparative Literature, and their interests and expertise are invaluable. I am honored and excited to have the chance to work with all of you in the next few years.
Elizabeth M. Richmond-Garza Secretary-Treasurer, ACLA
MLA ANNUAL MEETING December 2003 (San Diego, CA)
ACLA SESSIONS
The ACLA is sponsoring two panels at this year's MLA Convention in San Diego. If you will be attending the MLA in San Diego we hope that you will join us for these two comparative sessions as well as for our cash bar, shared with the School for Criticism and Theory. The topics, session organizers, and speakers are listed below. Please consult the MLA program for time and venues for all three of these ACLA sponsored events.
Panel A. "Comparative Literature in the New Millennium: Diagnosis, Therapy, Prognosis"
Chaired by Haun Saussy, Stanford University
This session will be a roundtable forum chaired by Haun Saussy, to present and discuss the draft ACLA Report on the Discipline, successor in formation to the Bernheimer Report. Members are warmly invited to come and contribute ideas and comments for the shape of the final report, which is to be presented at our annual meeting in Ann Arbor next spring.
Panel B. "From the Old World to the Whole World: Anthologies Today"
Chaired by Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, University of Texas at Austin
This panel will bring together editors from several major world literature anthologies to discuss the changing curricular shape of the field and strategies for the future. The speakers and topics will be:
1. Mary Ann Caws (CUNY Graduate Center, general editor of The HarperCollins World Reader): "Words and Worlds"
2. Gary Harrison (University of New Mexico, co-editor of The Bedford Anthology of World Literature): "What Is World Literature?"
3. Sarah Lawall (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, general editor of The Norton Anthology of World Literature): "Reading the World"
4. David Damrosch (Columbia University, general editor of The Longman Anthology of World Literature): "What Isn't World Literature? Selection, Definition, Presentation"
We look forward to seeing you at both sessions.
January 1, 2002 ‚ December 31, 2002
ACCOUNTS Alabama Credit Union Checking Account Balance Forward Expense Income Final Balance Alabama Credit Union Savings Account Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance Alabama Credit Union Money Market Account Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance 2002 Conference in Puerto Rico Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance AM South Savings Account Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance University Federal Credit Union (Austin, TX) Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance Perishing Investment Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance University of Texas Account Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance University of Texas Contribution Balance Forward Expenses Income Final Balance EXPENDITURES Journal subscriptions ICLA yearly payment Prizes Membership fees/dues Conferences Travel Website Student subsidies Office expenses Refunds/Returned checks Bank/Credit Card fees Miscellaneous Office staff TOTAL EXPENDITURES TOTAL INCOME (Membership, Conference, UT) Balance TOTAL ASSETS Perishing Investment UT Account Year-end Balance Initial Balance Net Change Respectfully prepared by Kevin Carney and Ryan Fisher, ACLA Administrative Assistants.
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© 2003 american comparative literature association
