Editor's Comment

Editor's Comment The essays published in this number of SAF were submitted in response to our announcement of a special issue on "New Approaches to American Fiction." We have chosen the best of the articles submitted even though this qualitative selection did not allow us to cover all of the currently prominent "new" approaches. We trust that the essays published will be of interest to our readers for what they have to say about specific writers and works and for what they suggest more generally about the applications of recent critical theories to American fiction. Although this special number represents our current emphasis on innovative interpretive strategies, we welcome the submission of articles and notes that utilize "new approaches" as they emerge in the future. + * · Northeastern University, in cooperation with the Hemingway Society and the John F. Kennedy Library, will host the Second Biennial Hemingway Conference May 21-23, 1982, in Boston. In addition, we will host another conference entitled "Emerson and the American Renaissance" on June 12-13. Anyone interested in attending either event should contact the Editor as soon as possible. Attendance will be limited for both conferences. * * * The College of William and Mary announces a program of study leading to the degree of Master of Arts in American Studies beginning in the Fall Semester of 1982. Offered in cooperation with Colonial Williamsburg, the program will afford students interested in early American life ample research opportunities. The program is not, however, focused on a single period; applications are welcome from students with interests in all periods. Financial aid, in the form of fellowships and research assistantships, will be available. Fellowships pay full tuition and provide stipends up to $3,000. For further information write Director, Program in American Studies, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Va. 23185. * * * The American Transcendental Quarterly is soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on unrecognized women writers in nineteenth-century New England. Critical essays and notes, papers using nineteenth-century diaries and journals, and other contributions of interest on "minor" or previously unpublished women will be considered. Manuscripts should not exceed 30 pages and should be prepared in accordance with the AfLA Handbook ; the contributor's name and affiliation should be typed only on a cover sheet. The deadline for contributions is December 1, 1981. Address all correspondence to Women's Issue ATQ, Department of English, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island, 02881. * * * It was with deep personal sadness that I learned last spring of the death of Charles T. Davis, Director of the Afro-American Studies Program at Yale and a member of our board of Advisory Editors. I studied American poetry and Afro-American Literature with him when I was a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, and I came to know well the special feelings of respect and affection he engendered in students and colleagues alike. Later, when he had assumed his position at Yale, our relationship continued through activities surrounding SAF and through our mutual interest in Richard Wright. Charles Davis was a gifted and inspiring teacher, a pioneer scholar of Black Studies, a brilliant reader of dialect poetry, and, perhaps above all, a gentleman. There is no replacing him. We grieve at his loss, and we send our most heartfelt sympathies to his family. J.N. ...