Our Activities
Giving to the ALSC
Over the years, we have given our vision tangible form in a variety of ways.
- Our tri-quarterly journal, Literary Imagination (published since 1999), has earned an international reputation for excellence. It publishes criticism, fiction, and poetry from established and emerging writers. Authors have included Robert Alter, Ann Beattie, Saul Bellow, Robert Bly, Ronald Bush, Clare Cavanagh, Stanley Crouch, W. S. Di Piero, Anne Ferry, David Ferry, Donald Hall, Geoffrey Hill, Brenda Hillman, John Hollander, Richard Howard, James Longenbach, W. S.Merwin, Leonard Michaels, Les Murray, Marjorie Perloff, Christopher Ricks, Charles Simic, Willard Spiegelman, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, Derek Walcott, C.K. Williams, and Michael Wood. Literary Imagination is known for its cosmopolitan character, publishing innovative work in many genres and a generous amount of translation. It has been praised in, among other places, The Chronicle of Higher Education and in the London Times Literary Supplement, and two of its authors have won Pushcart Prizes for work published in the journal.
- Each year, we hold a conference in a major city of North America, with panels covering a wide range of literary topics, and, often, presentations in film, music, and theater. We always give imaginative writers pride of place, never forgetting that we gather to celebrate the arts of literature. Writers who have spoken at our conferences include Margaret Atwood, John Barth, Michael Collier, Stuart Dybek, Robert Fagles, Anthony Hecht, Norman Mailer, Dow Mossman, Sigrid Nunez, Francine Prose, Carl Phillips, Robert Pinsky, A.E. Stallings, and Tom Wolfe. Scholar-critics who have spoken include Marie Borroff, Jenny Clay, Frank Kermode, Bernard Knox, Ferdinand Mount, Stephen Orgel, and James Wood. The speaker for 2008 will be Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies.
- The ALSC sponsors local meetings in cities across North America so that members can gather for readings, lectures, discussion, and literary conviviality during the year between national meetings.
- Our newsletter, Literary Matters, constitutes yet another form of our community, printing contributions from members, news of the association, and the programs of the conferences. Special features of the newsletter include a Neglected Authors column, letters to the editor, and a "Letter from Paris" by Virginia Larner, and we have just launched a special section for outstanding essays by undergraduates.
- Forum, our occasional series, publishes studies of special topics and is distributed not only to our members but to journalists, policy-makers, think tanks, and politicians to stir debate about the roles of literature in society and in educational institutions. Our first issue, written by John Briggs, was an extensive survey of the teaching of composition across a wide range of schools in North America; our second issue, edited by Mark Bauerlein, collected the responses of a number of ALSC writers to the 2004 NEA report on the decline of reading in the United States. Forum has attracted national attention—articles about it have appeared in several newspapers, including the Times (London) Literary Supplement and The Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
650 Beacon Street, Suite 510
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Phone: (617) 358-1990 | Fax: (617) 358-1995
E-mail: alsc@bu.edu
Copyright © 1995-2009 Association of Literary Scholars and Critics