Forum: A Publication of the ALSC
Forum is an occasional publication of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics.
Forthcoming Issues
ALSC Councillor Sandra Stotsky has begun the work of collecting data for the long-anticipated ALSC-sponsored project on high school literature curricula in the U.S. The project has substantial support from the University of Arkansas, The Bradley Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities*, and partnerships with The Concord Review and the California Reading and Literature Project.
Dr. Stotsky has provided ALSC with a basic outline of the project. Click here to read it.
*N.B. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this Website do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Back Issues
Forum No. 3, Spring 2009
Forum No. 3 was published in spring 2009, and was titled The Latest Illiteracy. To read more about this project, click here. More information on ordering this issue will be available soon.
Forum No. 2, Spring 2005
ORDER FORUM NO. 2 ONLINE, or VIEW THE PDF
In
this second issue of Forum, members of the ALSC respond variously
to Reading
at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, the study
released by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004. It is part
of the mission of the ALSC to provide what our title announces, a forum
for discussion of questions concerning the life of letters in our country
and beyond. As an association, we have no unified policy or position
on this report or on any other, but in creating space for debate, we
try to draw attention to matters we consider important. We are committed,
as well, to making connections between literary activity in school,
from primary and secondary education through undergraduate and graduate
study, and in the public sphere. The ALSC was founded, in part, to resist
what we perceived to be two unhealthy forces of separation: the increasing
detachment of the professionalized study of literature, on the one hand,
from the concerns of writers practicing the art, and on the other, from
the teaching of literature in school programs for the young. The report
on Reading at Risk addresses both of these concerns as well as
many others, and suggests that we cannot think of literature in only
a specialized context. A consideration of reading in a society at large,
and the raising of complex questions about the nature of "literature,"
inevitably prompt reflection on the character of our schools, of our
libraries, of family life as a structure for education and entertainment,
of changing technologies for story-telling and enchantment, and of our
culture generally conceived. In a round-up as brief as the one presented
here, we can do no more than indicate some directions for further thought.
But we hope to have done that, and to have focused attention on a variety
of problems. How does a civilization define itself? How does it tell
its stories, sing its songs, pass along its cherishings and its cautions?
What is the relationship between the private life of the imagination
as nourished by literature, and the public life of culture? Is there
a relation between the political health of a republic and the quality
of the intellectual and artistic lives of its citizens?
We are grateful to Mark Bauerlein for having shaped this issue of Forum and for having assembled the divergent views here whose expression, we hope, will provoke more debate, and even more importantly, more projects to foster reading.
—Rosanna Warren
Past President (2005), Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
Forum No. 1, Winter 2004
ORDER FORUM NO. 1 ONLINE, or VIEW THE PDF
I'd
like to welcome you to the inaugural issue of Forum: A Publication
of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. Many members
of the ALSC have long sought a new venue in which position papers, commissioned
studies, and critical views on a range of pedagogical, educational,
cultural, and scholarly subjects reflecting the distinctive perspective
of our organization might be made available to a wide audience. With
the founding of our newest imprint, Forum, the ALSC has just
such a vehicle. The new imprint is not intended to replace, but rather
to supplement our long-standing and distinguished journal, Literary
Imagination. Forum will appear on an occasional basis and
with the approval of the Executive Council of the ALSC. Our inaugural
issue makes available to members of the ALSC and to other interested
readers Writing Without Reading: The Decline of Literature in the
Composition Classroom, which was commissioned by the Executive Council
of the ALSC. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank John Briggs,
the author of this report, for his timely and considered work on a culturally
significant issue. Finally, I would like to encourage everyone to read
and to share with others the first issue of our new imprint. Forum promises now and in the future to bring greater attention, critical
respect, and scholarly distinction to the ALSC, an organization flourishing
as it enters its second decade on the public scene.
—Michael Valdez Moses
General Editor of Forum and Past President (2004), Association of Literary Scholars and Critics
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