Foreword

For this landmark 100^th issue, we invited a group of former contributors to respond to the following: "What are the questions that fascinate you? What do you want to know?" We have been dazzled by the myriad responses—some humorous, some serious, all eloquent—embracing matters of language, literature, history, politics, and the mystery of time itself. What emerges from the mosaic of responses is not only a glimpse at what may lie ahead in literary studies, but a privileged glimpse of what drives us as scholars and as human beings, trying to understand the meaning of our lives on this fragile globe, spinning in interstellar space.