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>Call for Papers
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>Ampersand: The Graduate Journal of Comparative Literature at NYU
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>Issue One
>Avant Theory:
>Criticism before 1900
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>Ampersand is currently accepting submissions for its premier issue.
>Ironically, the premier theme of this journal of the future is Comparative
>Literatureís past.  Taking at least one of the primary functions of the
>comparatist to be the study of reading, this first issue seeks to offer what
>might be described as a collection of retroactive manifestoes supporting,
>explaining, and even discovering past approaches to comparative criticism.
>Not against ëtheory,í but perhaps beyond theory, or more precisely,
>avant-theory, we seek to find in the rubble of criticismís discarded past
>useful perspectives for criticismís present.  What was the relationship
>between literature and theory before the twentieth centuryís ëliterary
>theoryí boom?  Granting that a vast portion of the history of reading in the
>west has been dominated by ìclassicalî notions of literature, this issue of
>Ampersand hopes to receive submissions that will illuminate not just
>divergences and anomalies within that tradition, but also to examine the way
>that different interpretations of these apparently fixed formulae constitute
>independent and unique theories of reading in their own right--despite their
>apparent veneer of traditionalism.  This issue is neither an attempt to
>break with postmodernityís perpetual self-referentiality, nor an attempt to
>rescue from the past some long interred ideal, but rather an attempt to
>closely examine the history of textual analysis in order to make use of the
>sometimes overlooked fact that sophisticated thinking about reading did not
>begin with the popularization of the term ëcritical theory.í
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>Submissions to this first issue should examine or demonstrate critical
>models either preceding, or outside of, the current
>Nietzsche-Heidigger-Theory geneology.  In particular the editors are seeking
>essays that examine pre-twentieth century critical approaches and theories.
>Essays should also be explicitly comparative; though history, language, and
>culture will all be considered as equally valid modes of comparison.
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>Deadline for submissions is January 10, 2003.
>Please send all submissions to Brad Tabas at [log in to unmask] or Paul
>Grimstad at [log in to unmask]
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