Editor’s Introduction

Abstract

Arien Mack Editor’s Introduction IN LIEU OF A TRADITIONAL EDITOR’S NOTE, I WANT TO USE THIS space to remember John Hollander—a remarkable poet, scholar, and teacher, and my good friend. I met John in 1957 when he came to Connecticut College (then Connecticut College for Women), where I was a recent faculty wife and he was a young assistant professor just emerging from the Harvard Junior Fellows program. We soon became friends, and John quickly became an important part of my life, some­ one from whom I learned many things and who was as loyal a friend as one could have. He and his wife saw me through the death of my husband in 1958. Soon thereafter we all left Connecticut College for New York City, where we continued to see each other with a frequency that increased when some years later I married someone who was a good friend ofJohn’s. John was extremely important to me as editor of Social Research. A true polymath, he was always ready to talk about and suggest themes for possible issues and the best people to write about them. Because of his seemingly unlimited interests, the topics we discussed ranged widely, far beyond the normal reaches of literature and the social sciences. It was John with whom I first discussed the possibility of organiz­ ing a public conference as the basis for an issue of Social Research. His enthusiasm for the idea and his help in realizing it were responsible not only for our first conference in 1988, In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Diseases, which we held at the height of the hysteria about the AIDS epidemic, but for many others that followed as well, each of which also became a special issue of Social Research. He often came up with conference themes that we worked Editor’s Introduction xxi on together with other people who came to our extraordinary plan­ ning meetings, for whom he was very much the magnet. It would be hard to forget John’s contribution to our conferences, Home: A Place in the World, or In the Company ofAnimals because he was the magician who crafted what were among our very best conferences and issues. In all John spoke at seven Social Research conferences. We are now coming up on our thirtieth. There never would have been a first without him. John’s importance to the journal and as an extraordinarily learned and generous friend are things for which I will always be grateful. xxii social research ...