Editorial Remarks: Fifty Years of College Literature

As I step into the role of Editor of College Literature, the timing feels especially strange as it is the journal's fiftieth anniversary year. Learning about a journal with such a long history and simultaneously participating in planning meetings for how to best celebrate its trajectory is a peculiar juxtaposition. However, it also means that I can promote College Literature's accomplishments without the worry of self-aggrandizement, since the work I'm to spotlight is entirely the work of others, not my own.

College Literature began under Bernard Oldsey's Editorship as a thrice-yearly journal premised upon the belief that quality literary analysis and excellence in teaching go hand-in-hand; one cannot be done without the other. In its early years, the journal privileged considerations of canonical works and preferred analysis that focused on single texts, proposed new curriculum and course rationales, or explored pedagogical concerns. After Oldsey's period as Editor, under Kostas Myrsiades and Graham MacPhee's leaderships, the journal shifted in tandem with the evolving focus of literary classrooms. It expanded to consider more literary traditions beyond the Western canon—minority literatures, Eastern cultural production, and oral literature, among other areas—as well as new approaches to textual analysis, including interdisciplinary and comparative studies. During this period the journal grew to a longer format, became a quarterly publication, incorporated the Special Issue feature, introduced Critical Forum conversations, and won the CELJ Phoenix Award for editorial excellence, as well as other awards for special issues and journal design. Amidst these changes and accomplishments, the underlying constant of the journal has always been a commitment to producing content useful to the profession of teaching literature.

Behind the scenes, College Literature's commitment to pedagogy extends from the content of the issues it publishes to the production of them. Over the past fifty years, many graduate and undergraduate students alike have been introduced to the process of academic publication and honed their skills at copyediting, locating peer reviewers, identifying book review content and potential reviewers, and contributing to the general work of running a scholarly journal. The labor of designing a hands-on learning experience for the students at West Chester University of Pennsylvania is a secondary (and often invisible) legacy of the journal's importance, and one which the last Editor, Carolyn Sorisio, worked diligently to establish and then maintain despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the day-to-day work of higher education.

While writing these remarks on a late Friday afternoon, I received an email out of the blue from a high school student requesting access to an article from one of the early issues of College Literature and expressing their excitement over the possibility of being able to read it. Such an email is perhaps the most perfect embodiment of the early mission of this journal and its ongoing commitment to foster excitement over the study of literature for current and future generations of students while also promoting critical scholarly inquiry. For our fiftieth anniversary celebration, I invite you to help us celebrate this legacy by following us on social media—College Literature on Facebook and @CollegeLitJrn2 on Twitter—and enjoying special features spotlighting articles and authors from the journal's past. We will also be celebrating our Special Issue feature by combining our Spring and Summer issues (50.2 and 50.3) into an extended Special Issue, guest edited by Alyssa Hunziker and Mitch Murray and titled Genres of Empire, which will be released as our summer issue this year.

As I step into the role of Editor, my vision for College Literature is to continue the excellent work of the former editors and to bring my own passion for world literatures to expanding some of the journal's comparative focus. I hope to revive the Critical Forum commentaries related to the evolving content of college literature classrooms and to provide a space for conversations that reflect the current trends in literary analysis and the challenges of the profession. And, above all, my commitment is to maintain the journal's dedication to accessible content that is useful in igniting the interests and learning of our students.