Editor's Column: Continuing Traditions and New Beginnings

Abstract

It is with great pleasure that I assume the editorial responsibilities of The Comparatist, the official organ of the Southern Comparative Literature Association. I assume the tasks of editor also with a great sense of dedication. This journal is one of a handful of publications devoted to Comparative Literature in the United States. It has a fine tradition of mentoring the work of young scholars in our field. This commitment is highlighted by the yearly publication of the best graduate student paper from the preceding year's SCLA conference. Under the able hands of its past editors, The Comparatist has done much to foster the work of scholars in the initial stages of their careers. I have a personal fondness for this journal since it was here, under the able editorship of John Burt Foster, Jr. that I published my own first articles. Although I then lived and worked in the North, I knew that the SCLA and The Comparatist were the places to go if one needed mentoring and feedback on one's fledgling steps in the profession. It was my experience with the SCLA and The Comparatist that has so endeared me to this organization and this journal. I hope to continue this editorial dedication to helping and mentoring young scholars during my tenure as editor. The Comparatist, however, is also a journal that senior scholars hold in esteem and seek as a congenial site for their work. I am committed to upholding the custom of publishing senior contributions alongside the work of junior colleagues. With the encouragement of the Board of the Southern Comparative Literature Association, I plan in the coming issues to dedicate space in each volume to innovative clusters of articles. These clusters will in no way replace the open submission content of the journal which has, I am happy to say, increased exponentially in recent years. These cluster groupings will take various forms. In this issue, for example, I have included a forum sponsored by the International Comparative Literature Association last year at the American Comparative Literature Association Conference in Puebla, Mexico (April 19-24, 2007) where a number of representative scholars from the United States, Europe, and Asia gathered to discuss the field of Comparative Literature in their respective countries. Although our discipline is presumably global in scope, we can be as provincial as any national language and literature group. It was for this reason that I organized this forum at the American national association's meeting with the goal of facilitating discussion concerning what was happening in our discipline internationally. I introduced the forum in my then capacity as President pro tempore of the International Comparative Literature Association. Taking off my sober top-hat of Editor and putting on the more comfortable cloche of cynic and polemicist, I reproduce this introduction here to present this collection. Eugene Eoyang offers his thoughts on the state of Comparative Literature in Hong Kong. Hans Bertens discusses how recent developments in European university reform have impacted on the discipline in The Netherlands. Ross Shideler discusses the health of the field, as it is currently configured in the United States and Steven Sondrup outlines the role the international association plays in the discipline. Chon Young-Ae gives a brief analysis of the past and future of Comparative Literature in Korea. Inaga Shigemi offers a history of Japanese encounters with the West as a point of departure for his discussion of how Comparative Literature might develop in the future. An expanded version of Professor Inaga's comments in Puebla is presented in these pages and they provide an ideal bridge to the next grouping of articles appearing in this issue. …