Editor's Comment

Editor's Comment On October 15-16, 1976, Northeastern University will host the "Studies in American Fiction Bicentennial Conference," an event featuring nearly a dozen leading scholars of American literature. The focus of the Conference will be an assessment of the historical development of American fiction as well as its thematic and aesthetic contributions to our culture. Further announcements regarding the details of the Conference will be forthcoming in the Autumn 1975 issue of SAF. ß ß o Professor David D. Anderson, of the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University, has announced the "Sherwood Anderson Centenary Program" to be held at Michigan State, September9-11, 1976. The program will present dramatic readings of Sherwood Anderson's verse as well as formal papers and discussions relating to both primary works and secondary scholarship. Interested scholars should contact Professor Anderson as soon as possible. O O O Professor Ben Siegel, an Advisory Editor of SAF, will once again direct the "Summer Conference of Modern American Writing" at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. The Conference this year, to be held June 13-15, is entitled "The Experimental, Surreal, and Comic in Recent American Writing." Among the participants are Frank Capra, Digby Diehl, Melvin J. Friedman, Mark Harris, David Madden, William Stafford, and Linda Wagner. For more information, please contact Professor Siegel. ß O 4 G. K. Hall & Co. has initiated a new series of interest to readers of SAF. Reference Guides in Literature, under the General Editorship of Professor Joseph Katz (South Carolina), will provide annotated bibliographies of critical studies on important authors as well as information about primary works and major library collections. The first three volumes in the series, Frank Norris, John Osborne, and Sylvia Phth and Anne Sexton, are now available, and additional works are in preparation on Henry Miller, William Styron, Washington Irving, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Ernest Hemingway. Hall is also undertaking the publication of The New Merle Johnson's American First Editions, also by Joseph Katz. The descendant of American First Editions, originally prepared by Merle Johnson, and later revised by Jacob Blanck, this new Fifth Edition willbe the first revision of this important work in more than a generation. O O « Professor Daniel Waiden, Pennsylvania State University, is the editor ofa new journal, Studies in American Jewish Literature. The journal will be devoted to fiction, poetry, and drama in English which treats the subject of Jews in the American experience. Subscriptions are $5.00 per year. For more information, please contact the editor at the Department of English, 117 Burrowes Building, Pennyslvania State University, University Park, Pa. 16802. O 0 ß The University of Chicago Press is now publishing SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, edited by Catherine R. Stimpson (Barnard College). S/GNS seeks to be an international voice for scholarship about women in several disciplines: biology and medicine, sociology, political science and law, economics, history, psychology, theology, literary criticism and aesthetics. Interested scholars should contact Professor Stimpson at Box 20, 307 Barnard Hall, Barnard College, New York, N. Y. 10027. 118 It is a pleasant duty to once again acknowledge the assistance of a number of especially dedicated graduate students who have assisted the Editorial Board in the production and distribution of SAF. Patrick Destito, David Ditmars, and Quazi Serajulhoq have all given generously of their time and energies, and their assistance has been deeply appreciated. The work of Carolyn Kephart, SAF Graduate Fellow, and Karen Stanton, work-study student, has been essential to the continued growth and smooth functioningof SAF. For their continuing contributions, we express our most sincere gratitude. J.N. ...