Symposium journal keeps SU on world literatures map

Rob Enslin
(315) 443-3403

What do modernity, multimedia and morality have in common? They constitute more than a dozen topics addressed in the latest issue of Symposium (Heldref Publications, 2009), a quarterly journal edited by members of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics (LLL) in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences. For more than six decades, LLL has played a leadership role at Symposium, growing it into one of the world’s leading periodicals on modern literatures. Contributions, often comparative in scope, examine literary texts written in languages other than English. They include peer-reviewed essays on works by Dostoevsky, Kafka, Eco, Bertolt and others.

Amy Wyngaard, associate professor of French, succeeded Professor Emeritus Augustus Pallotta as executive director in 2007. It’s no accident that Wyngaard, whose area of expertise encompasses 17th- and 18th-century French literature and culture, welcomes contributions from fellow Francophiles. The current issue, for example, features a critique on mainstream modernity by Larry Riggs (Butler University), who devotes space to Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Molière and Bourdieu. Other articles include assessments of works by Camus and Rousseau, written by Vincent Grégoire (Berry College) and Diane Brown (Macalester College), respectively, along with an in-depth account of a Brazilian sex worker- turned-memoirist by George Carlsen (Pepperdine University). The journal also publishes essays on a variety of German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Latin American and Yiddish themes.

Wyngaard says that Symposium’s raison d’etre complements that of LLL, in that it promotes diversity and transcultural understanding throughout campus. She credits Symposium’s vitality to LLL chair Gerlinde Sanford, who supervises contemporary German and Austrian submissions, and to five other SU professors who comprise the editorial board. They are Gail Bulman (Latin American literature and theater), who doubles as the journal’s book review editor; Kathryn Everly (contemporary Spanish narrative); Ken Frieden (Hebrew and Yiddish literature); Harold Jones (Medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature); and Pallotta (Italian Romanticism and Post-War narrative). Symposium also benefits from 17 associate editors from top research institutions around the country, including Yale University, the University of Chicago, Rutgers, Penn State, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Illinois, the University of Texas and the University of California-Irvine. Currently, more than 400 institutions worldwide subscribe to the journal.

Symposium is published four times a year. Print and online subscription rates vary from individuals ($62-$65) to institutions ($162-$195). More information is available at http://www.heldref.org/pubs/sym/about.html.

LLL offers graduate and undergraduate programs in French, Spanish and linguistic studies. The department also provides undergraduate programs in Italian, German, Russian and the classics; studies in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Tamil and Turkish; and training in English as a second language. For more information, visit http://thecollege.syr.edu.