MELUS, MELUS, and the Crossroads of Cultures

When I was in graduate school at Columbia a few decades ago, the American literature curriculum, with a few exceptions, hovered around the shrines of mostly dead white male writers. There were no courses in African American literature; one, maybe two, black graduate students; and no black faculty. I was excited, therefore, when one of my friends ran up to me, face glowing, saying, “John, I have some good news and some bad news.” “What’s the good news?” I asked. He replied, “You won’t believe it, but they’ve actually scheduled a seminar on African American literature next term.” “Great!” I exclaimed, “but what’s the bad news?” “They’ve hired a German hippie to teach it.”

The “German hippie” turned out to be a visiting assistant professor named Werner Sollors, who at this period in his long career favored leather and had long hair. However, his seminar was a revelation and started me off on my decades-long exploration of a great literature and culture, one that spoke powerfully to my Southern roots. Werner was master of almost all US ethnic literary traditions, and he soon introduced me to classics, such as Jewish American Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1934). One of the best things he did for me, however, was encourage me to join something called MELUS, which I learned stood for The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. Werner loaned me a few copies of the outfit’s journal, and I was hooked for life, literally, as I hold a lifetime membership in the Society.

My first job at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, plugged me into the church’s splendid new movement for social justice, and I devised a course using that rubric, “Literature of Social Justice.” I taught four courses a term at Saint Mary’s, two of them always composition, so I did not always have time to prepare my literature classes carefully. Many times MELUS articles came to my rescue with their exciting new insights into the books I was teaching. Furthermore, I learned about books I ought to be teaching by reading various articles.

In the early 1980s, my circle of friends who wrote on ethnic literature expanded exponentially. I was chosen to participate in a groundbreaking conference at Yale University, “Reconstructing American Literature,” which convened to plan a new anthology of American literature, one that would include many works by ethnic and women writers, alongside pieces by “canonical” writers. Sponsored by the Feminist Press, and led by its dynamic president, Paul Lauter, the gathering led to spirited, sometimes fiery, debates about who and what should be included in the canon. There was heresy afoot—some even suggested that Henry James should be dropped—but it was here I learned about important writers I had never heard of who deserved inclusion in the canon. Throughout the conference, presenters referred to key articles and books in their fields, and many times they pointed out key essays in MELUS. Eventually, most of us who attended the Yale conference helped to write headnotes, edit, and comment on writers we fought to include in the new anthology; initially, it was to be published by the Feminist Press, but it finally emerged as the influential Heath Anthology of American Literature, which quickly challenged Norton, Oxford, McMichael, and the other standard anthologies for dominance in the field. The competitors had to change their approach to keep up their share of the market, and the pressure on them was partly due to the increasing attention that scholars, students, and publishers were paying to the innovative articles in MELUS. Naturally, when teachers adopted the Heath Anthology of American Literature and wanted to learn more about writers they had not encountered before, they turned to MELUS, and many then subscribed to the journal.

At the Yale conference, I met James Robert Payne, who would eventually be elected the Society’s president. Over the years, he and I served on the MELUS executive board and worked closely with the superb editor of the journal, Joseph Skerrett, Jr...