Editor's Note

The following text indexes 30 years of scholarly criticism (1974-2003) in three categories; all articles and reviews published in the journal are listed by the author and reviewer's last name, by article title, and by the article subject. Separately the work indexes all books reviewed in College Literature by the author's last name and by the book title.

College Literature was established in 1974 to appear three times a year, starting in the winter of 1974. Originally it was designed as a literary-pedagogical journal publishing articles by leading scholars and critics dealing with those literary works which are most commonly taught in American colleges and universities, and which formed a loose canon of Western culture. It continued in this vein until the retirement of its first editor, Bernard Oldsey, in January of 1990.

Starting with the second issue of volume 17 (1990) and its new editor, Kostas Myrsiades, College Literature continued publishing as a triannual literary-pedagogical journal but with a more expanded editorial policy which sought to make available the most current, thought-provoking, theoretical, pedagogical, and scholarly interrogations of cultural texts for the college/university literature classrooms of today and tomorrow. The journal emphasized usable, readable, and timely material designed to keep its readers on the cutting edge of new developments and shifts in the theory and practice of literatures by covering the full range of what is presently read and taught as well as what will be read and taught in the college/university literature classrooms of the future. It encouraged a wide variety of approaches to textual analysis, criticism, and the teaching of literary texts—oral and written, Western and Eastern, minority and Third World, interdisciplinary and comparative.

With an expanded staff of advisory editors from universities throughout the U. S. and an international advisory board, College Literature was well on its way in establishing itself as a major scholarly journal publishing cutting edge articles and periodically offering special issues and special focus sections on topics which were then current in academia. Starting with the first issue under the new editor and continuing through 2003, College Literature has published special issues on

The Politics of Teaching Literature
Literary Theory in the Classroom
Teaching Minority Literatures
Cultural Studies: Theory, Praxis, Pedagogy
Teaching Postcolonial and Commonwealth Literatures
Columbian Encounters
Critical Theory in (Post)Communist Cultures
The Politics of Teaching Literature 2: A Symposium
Third World Women's Inscriptions
Race and Politics: The Experience of African American Literature
Comparative Poetics: Non-Western Traditions of Literary Theory
(De)Colonizing Reading/(Dis)Covering the Other
Queer Utilities: Textual Studies, Theory, Pedagogy, Praxis
Diversity and American Poetries
Law, Literature, and Interdisciplinarity
Cultural Violence
The Profession of Literature at the End of the Millennium
Teaching Beat Literature
Oral Fixations
Teaching Medieval Women
Literature and the Visual Arts
Working Class Literature
Algeriad
Literature and the Arts: A French Perspective

A series of other changes were undertaken in revitalizing the journal. With issue 17.2 (1990), College Literature was redesigned and expanded from its original 100 page format to over 200 pages per issue. With issue 27.1 (2000), the journal again redesigned its cover to include color and with issue 29.1 (2002), College Literature became a quarterly publishing eight articles per issue in addition to a number of review essays and book reviews in each issue. These changes earned the journal the CELJ Phoenix Award for editorial excellence and four other CELJ awards for special issues and journal design.

After 30 years of scholarly publishing, College Literature continues as a premiere journal of scholarly criticism receiving 200 submissions per year and subscribed by some 1000 colleges and universities throughout the U. S., Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.

Starting with the first issue of our thirty-first year 31.1 (2004), the journal has once again recommitted itself anew to serving the needs of college/university teachers by providing access to innovative ways of studying and teaching new bodies of literature and experiencing old literatures in new ways. We will continue to publish special topic issues and focus sections along with our regular general issues. Special topics already projected for upcoming issues...