Editor's Comment

Abstract

The Society for the Study of the American Short Story was established in 2010 at the annual American Literature Association convention. A group of us at that meeting lamented that despite the burgeoning scholarly attention to the genre, there was no professional body devoted to its study, no recurring meetings for the exchange of information about the field, no opportunity to engender fellowship among people with shared interests. With the cooperation of ALA, especially the leadership of Alfred Bendixen and Olivia Edenfield, we were able to establish an annual presence in the convention with two panels for the presentation of research and a business meeting to discuss organizational logistics.In due course we were nearly overwhelmed with the interest in presenting papers on our panels, so much so that we began planning a regional meeting devoted entirely to the American short story. Our first international symposium was directed by Olivia Edenfield, and it was held in beautiful Savannah in 2016, a walking city of enormous historical interest. It was attended by 140 academics from some 40 countries, and the conversations during the “off” hours were every bit as animated and engaging as those that were part of the formal program. At one of the luncheons, Dante James, a movie director, showed an original film based on Charles Chesnutt's “The Doll.”The growing involvement of international professors and graduate students prompted us to agree to a European venue for our next symposium, and Oliver Scheiding directed “The American Short Story: New Horizons” in Mainz, Germany, in October of 2017. In 2019 our international meeting was in New Orleans, and 127 scholars from 27 countries presented papers, served on panels, and participated in roundtable discussions of the genre. At the business conversations at that meeting we agreed to accept the invitation from the University of Innsbruck to host an international symposium in October of 2020. Gudrun M. Grabher, Chair of the Department of American Studies, will direct the event, which promises to further expand the reach of our organization throughout Europe.It became clear to us that the enormous momentum of interest in the American short story would justify the creation of a journal devoted to the subject, and after several months of discussions with possible publishers, we decided on the Pennsylvania State University Press, which had in place an impressive list of major periodicals. In conversations with the editorial staff of the press, we decided we would publish two issues each year, Spring and Fall, and the journal would be distributed in both paper and digital formats. We are thus delighted to celebrate the publication of our first issue, one reflecting the diverse interests and approaches of our members. In the future, our readers can expect to see standard articles and notes but also interviews, manuscript sections, photographs, bibliographies, and transcripts of discussion groups devoted to the genre.We interpret that genre in the broadest of terms, reaching back to the oral forms of Native Americans, the yarns and tales of rustic populations, and extending to the innovations of storytelling evident in the twenty-first century. In length, we are interested in everything from brief anecdotes to the novella, from religious parables to fables for children, from the raucous humor of the mining camp to the genteel recitations of the coffee table. But the central focus is likely to remain the traditional short stories published in popular magazines and in collections of fiction, including the enormously popular short-story cycles that have come to rival novels in the major national reviews. In their various forms, short stories, a form of literature a great deal older than the novel, have come of age, and we intend to study all of them.The cover of SASS features a photograph of Pattee Library at Pennsylvania State University, the central research collection for an historic graduate program. Fred Lewis Pattee was the first Professor of American Literature in the United States, a position he assumed after he had completed his M. A. at Dartmouth College. He held this seat from 1894 until 1928, when he was forced to retire because of age. Among his many books are A History of American Literature Since 1870 (1915) and, most pertinently, The Development of the American Short Story (1923), the first comprehensive study of the genre. Indeed, as even a quick glance at the book quickly reveals, Pattee knew thousands of American stories, and his chronicle of their history reveals his astonishingly perceptive reading and his humane good judgment. He certainly knew more about the subject than anyone else in the world, and his early work lies in the background of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story and this new scholarly journal. With humility and respect, we dedicate this issue to his memory.