Editor's Note

This issue contains a number of stimulating and innovative papers concerning the redrawing of cultural, political, economic, literary and theoretical boundaries by traditionally “marginal” and “marginalized” areas within the “new” Europe, contextualized by Anna Klobucka’s insightful introductory essay. There are also outstanding general contributions by Alina Clej, Marcel Cornis-Pope, James O’Rourke, Henry Sussman and Peter Williams which will be of interest to readers concerned with contemporary comparative theory and literature. In addition, we are establishing a new policy in the area of book reviews.

While we have published review articles in the past, we really have not focused as much attention on them as we would have liked nor have we formed any policy on them. So, we would like to announce that as a regular feature of symploke we will be publishing two types of book review: one we call “Reviews” and the other “Book Notes.” The former—“Reviews”—will be 1,500 to 2,000 word review articles. Each “Review” will either cover a number of volumes (as in the case of the review by Walter Jacobs in this issue of five recent books on “whiteness”) or will take-up a more in-depth analysis of a major volume in the field (such as the review by Christian Moraru—again, in this issue—of a collection of articles on international postmodernism). The other type of book review—what we are calling “Book Notes”—will be 500 word introductions and comments on volumes of potential interest to our readership. We welcome suggestions for either type of book review, and look forward to increasing the number of both types of book review in future issues.

The special topic for this issue mentioned above—which we call Refiguring Europe—brings us into one of the most highly contested yet intellectually challenging areas of international literary and cultural studies. Most of the papers collected in this special issue of symplokecome from an MLA Chicago session chaired and organized in 1995 by Anna Klobucka entitled “”Minor” European Literatures and the Idea of Europe.” Participants in Klobucka’s special session included Astradur Eysteinsson, Stéphane Spoiden, and Urszula Tempska. Given the success and high quality of the presentations, Christian Moraru, Associate Editor of symploke and fortunately also a participant in the MLA special session, suggested to the panel that revised and expanded versions of their presentations be collectively submitted to the journal for publication consideration. Much to our good fortune, the panelists decided to take up Moraru’s suggestion, and under the organization of Klobucka, revised presentations by Eysteinsson, Spoiden, and Tempska along with a theoretical statement on the European periphery by Klobucka and additional contributions by Laszlo K. Géfin and Helena Kaufman were submitted to symploke for peer-review. Needless to say, our reviewers were quite impressed with the essays, and it was decided that a future special issue of symploke would be centered around the articles submitted to us by Klobucka. The result, along with additional work by Ronald Bogue, Francis J. Greene and piece co-authored by Moraru and myself, is this volume. We would like to thank each of the contributors to this special issue for their fine work and patience with the editorial process. A special word of gratitude goes out to Anna Klobucka for all of her efforts which led to the publication of Refiguring Europe.

On the horizon, we have two special issues in the works. The topic of our next issue will be Practicing Deleuze and Guattari (Volume 6, Numbers 1 & 2). Our expected publication date for this issue is mid-summer 1999, and a partial listing of contributors may be found on page 256. After that, we plan to publish an issue entitled The Culture of Affiliation (Volume 7, Numbers 1 & 2). We welcome contributions discussing how membership in particular social, political and professional communities inflects reading, writing, and teaching practices, as well as other aspects of academic performance, such as canon formation and critical methodology. Deadline for submissions is 3 May 1999, and our expected publication date for this issue is December 1999. Also, it should be noted...