Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers

Last updated

The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) was organized in 1994 as the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics by a group of over 400 scholars troubled by what they saw as an over reliance on post-modern theory in the academy. Among the founding members were Robert Alter, Joseph Brodsky, Denis Donoghue, John Hollander, Alfred Kazin, Mary Lefkowitz, Richard Poirier, Christopher Ricks and Roger Shattuck, "a Who's Who of the American literary establishment." [1] Since 1999, the association has published a review, Literary Imagination. [2]

Contents

Mission statement

The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) seeks to promote excellence in literary criticism and scholarship, and works to ensure that literature thrives in both scholarly and creative environments. We encourage the reading and writing of literature, criticism, and scholarship, as well as wide-ranging discussions among those committed to the reading and study of literary works.

History

In 1994, a group of professors of literature, critics, and imaginative writers, tired of lamenting the overly politicized debate about literary study in the academy, joined together to create a different kind of organization, one aimed at combating this intellectual partisanship. The founders represented many unique perspectives and literatures from ancient to modern, but shared a common exasperation with the narrow theoretical and sociological discourse that seemed to have gained ascendancy in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the eighties and nineties. They wanted a renewed and enlarged field of study, more freedom of thought and expression, and more lively exchange between scholars and literary artists.

They represented no political agenda. Members ranged across a broad ideological (or non-ideological) spectrum. What held them together was the desire to create a forum where lovers of the word could carry on spirited literary debate and examine the arts of writing. ALSCW has made an important contribution to revitalizing the study of literature in the United States and beyond, and continues to do so.

Goals of the ALSCW

Presidents

1995 - Ricardo Quinones

1996 - Roger Shattuck

1997 - Robert Alter

1998 - Eleanor Cook

1999 - Austin E. Quigley

2000 - Mary K. Lefkowitz

2001 - John Hollander

2002 - James Engell

2003 - Stanley Stewart

2004 - Michael Valdez Moses

2005 - Rosanna Warren

2006 - Tom Clayton

2007 - Morris Dickstein

2008 - Christopher Ricks

2009 - Clare Cavanagh

2010 - Susan Wolfson

2011 - Greg Delanty

2012 - John Burt

2013 - Sarah Spence

2014 - John Briggs

2015 - Adelaide Russo

2016 - John Briggs

2017 - Ernest Suarez

2018 - Richard R. Russell

2019 - Kate Daniels

2020 - Lee Oser

2021 - Lee Oser and David Bromwich

2022 - David Bromwich

2023 - David Mikics

Related Research Articles

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. This school of thought seeks to analyze and describe the ways in which literature portrays the narrative of male domination by exploring the economic, social, political, and psychological forces embedded within literature. This way of thinking and criticizing works can be said to have changed the way literary texts are viewed and studied, as well as changing and expanding the canon of what is commonly taught. It is used a lot in Greek myths.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary theory</span> Systematic study of the nature of literature

Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning. In the humanities in modern academia, the latter style of literary scholarship is an offshoot of post-structuralism. Consequently, the word theory became an umbrella term for scholarly approaches to reading texts, some of which are informed by strands of semiotics, cultural studies, philosophy of language, and continental philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literary criticism</span> Study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northrop Frye</span> Canadian literary theorist

Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Afrocentrism</span> African ethnocentrism

Afrocentrism is an approach to the study of world history that focuses on the history of people of recent African descent. It is in some respects a response to Eurocentric attitudes about African people and their historical contributions. It seeks to counter what it sees as mistakes and ideas perpetuated by the racist philosophical underpinnings of Western academic disciplines as they developed during and since Europe's Early Renaissance as justifying rationales for the enslavement of other peoples, in order to enable more accurate accounts of not only African but all people's contributions to world history. Afrocentricity deals primarily with self-determination and African agency and is a pan-African point of view for the study of culture, philosophy, and history.

Ian Watt was a literary critic, literary historian and professor of English at Stanford University. His The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) is an important work in the history of the genre. Published in 1957, The Rise of the Novel is considered by many contemporary literary scholars as the seminal work on the origins of the novel, and an important study of literary realism. The book traces the rise of the modern novel to philosophical, economic and social trends and conditions that become prominent in the early 18th century. He is the subject of an intellectual biography by Marina MacKay, Ian Watt: The Novel and the Wartime Critic (2018).

In literary criticism, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text. A close reading emphasizes the single and the particular over the general, effected by close attention to individual words, the syntax, the order in which the sentences unfold ideas, as well as formal structures. A truly attentive close reading means thinking about both what is being said in a passage, and how it is being said and leading it to possibilities for observation and insight.

New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book The New Criticism.

Sir Christopher Bruce Ricks is a British literary critic and scholar. He is the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities at Boston University (US), co-director of the Editorial Institute at Boston University, and was Professor of Poetry at the University of Oxford (UK) from 2004 to 2009. In 2008, he served as president of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics. He is known as a champion of Victorian poetry; an enthusiast of Bob Dylan, whose lyrics he has analysed at book length; a trenchant reviewer of writers he considers pretentious ; and a warm reviewer of those he thinks humane or humorous. Hugh Kenner praised his "intent eloquence", and Geoffrey Hill his "unrivalled critical intelligence". W. H. Auden described Ricks as "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding". John Carey calls him the "greatest living critic".

Cross-cultural may refer to

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Classic Chinese Novels</span> Novels regarded as the greatest and most influential pre-modern Chinese fiction

Classic Chinese Novels are the best-known novels of pre-modern Chinese literature. These are among the world's longest and oldest novels. They represented a new complexity in structure and sophistication in language that helped to establish the novel as a respected form among later popular audiences and sophisticated critics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World literature</span> Circulation of literature beyond its country of origin

World literature is used to refer to the total of the world's national literature and the circulation of works into the wider world beyond their country of origin. In the past, it primarily referred to the masterpieces of Western European literature; however, world literature today is increasingly seen in an international context. Now, readers have access to a wide range of global works in various translations.

<i>World Literature Today</i> American magazine of international literature and culture

World Literature Today (WLT) is an American magazine of international literature and culture, published at the University of Oklahoma. The magazine's stated goal is to publish international essays, poetry, fiction, interviews, and book reviews for a non-academic audience. It was founded under the name Books Abroad in 1927 by Roy Temple House, a professor at the University of Oklahoma. In January 1977, the journal assumed its present name, World Literature Today.

David Bromwich is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sacvan Bercovitch</span>

Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. During an academic career spanning five decades, he was considered to be one of the most influential and controversial figures of his generation in the emerging field of American studies.

Roger Whitney Shattuck was an American writer best known for his books on French literature, art, and music of the twentieth century.

Steven G. Kellman is an American critic and academic, best known for his books Redemption:The Life of Henry Roth (2005) and The Translingual Imagination (2000).

Morris Dickstein was an American literary scholar, cultural historian, professor, essayist, book critic, and public intellectual. He was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950) is a collection of sixteen essays by American literary critic Lionel Trilling, published by Viking in 1950. The book was edited by Pascal Covici, who had worked with Trilling when he edited and introduced Viking's Portable Matthew Arnold in 1949. With the exception of the preface, which was written specifically for the publication of the book, all the essays included in The Liberal Imagination were individually published in the decade before the book's publication in literary and critical journals, such as The Partisan Review, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, and The American Quarterly. The essays represent Trilling's written work and critical thoughts of the 1940s.

Kim Uchang is a South Korean literary critic and scholar of English literature. He is known for his arguments on building a rational society based on “aesthetic rationality” and moving beyond the dichotomy of conservatism and liberalism, modernism and post-modernism, nationalism and globalism, and literature as an ideology to empower the masses and literature as an art free of any political context.

References

  1. Grimes, William (7 December 1994). "In the Literary Field, An Upstart Alliance Based on Tradition". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 August 2010.
  2. "New Journal Aims to Refocus Literary Studies on Literature". Chronicle of Higher Education. April 23, 1999. Retrieved 26 August 2010.