Dear Friends of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers: I joined the ALSCW twenty years ago when I was looking for a professional organization dedicated to literature and the literary imagination. I discovered what I was looking for among the scholars, critics, and writers dedicated to the goals of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers:
· to promote excellence in literary criticism and scholarship;
· to work to ensure that literature thrives in both scholarly and creative environments;
· to encourage the reading and writing of literature, criticism, and scholarship;
· to foster wide-ranging discussions among those committed to the reading and study of literary works.
I write to you now as president of the ALSCW with an urgent message. The ALSCW must expand its membership in the following months if it is to prosper in future years. I urge you to join or rejoin the Association. Help us maintain and strengthen its rejuvenating annual conferences, its local readings, its excellent online newsletter Literary Matters, its Forum publications, and its premiere journal Literary Imagination published by Oxford University Press. Begin receiving your copies of the journal and the newsletter, preferential registration rates at the annual conferences, and news of local ALSCW events. Join our collegial pursuit of the Association’s founding goals.
Your decision to become a member of the ALSCW this year will be crucial to the future of the Association. In the coming weeks and months, members will be contacting graduate students, former ALSCW members, friends of the Association outside the academy, and other colleagues to tell them about the work of the Association and the urgency of increasing our membership. I hope one of them will be able to reach you. Please look over the attached materials, click on our website (www.alscw.org), and join us in our pursuit of the Association’s goals. If the spirit moves you, please sign up for a self-renewing membership and forward my message to others, with your endorsement. Help us preserve and strengthen this worthy Association.
Sincerely,
John C. Briggs, ALSCW President
Professor of English, UC Riverside
Membership
ALSCW membership year is based on the calendar year (January-December). When you join as a new member, Oxford University Press will begin to send Literary Imagination. You will also have access to the online archives of past issues of our journal and our newsletter, Literary Matters.
Whatever level of membership you choose, you will be doing a great service to literature and the humanities by supporting the ALSCW. Thank you for your support!
Please use the form below to renew your membership in the ALSCW or to join. We accept all major credit cards. To pay by check, click here to download the form in PDF format and mail the completed form along with your check to our postal address: 650 Beacon Street, Suite 510, Boston, MA 02215.
Premium memberships are $125 annually; Regular memberships are $85 annually; Senior membership (70 and above) are $60; Reduced price memberships are $45 annually. (Those eligible for reduced price memberships are members in their first year, students, and members earning less than $50,000 a year). For two-member households, the regular rate is $85.
To Purchase or Renew your Membership
It is very easy to renew or join online here: http://alscw.org/membership/join/index.html
When you have successfully submitted your membership request you will receive an email confirmation within twelve hours. Fields for payment information will appear as you fill out the preceding field for membership type.
*If you have any difficulties submitting your form, please verify that you have filled out all the required fields (those marked with an asterisk). Should the trouble persist, please email us at office.AT.alscw.org@literarymatters-beta.plicat.io.example.com or call our office at (617) 358-1990and we will do whatever we can to assist you.
When you press the “Submit” button, the “Registration Submitted Successfully” may flash briefly in a part of the web page that has scrolled out of view. You will then see a blank version of the form again. You should check your email for a confirmation message once you have submitted your information.
650 Beacon Street, Suite 510
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Phone: (617) 358-1990 Fax: (617) 358-1995
office.AT.alscw.org@literarymatters-beta.plicat.io.example.com
Copyright © 1995-present Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
Our Mission Statement
Our History
In 1994, a group of professors of literature, critics, and imaginative writers, tired of lamenting the overly politicized debate about literary study in the academy, joined together to create a different kind of organization, one aimed at combating this intellectual partisanship. The founders represented many unique perspectives and literatures from ancient to modern, but shared a common exasperation with the narrow theoretical and sociological discourse that seemed to have gained ascendancy in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the eighties and nineties. We wanted a renewed and enlarged field of study, more freedom of thought and expression, and more lively exchange between scholars and literary artists.
We represented no political agenda. Our members ranged across a broad ideological (or non-ideological) spectrum. What held us together was the desire to create a forum where lovers of the word could carry on spirited literary debate and examine the arts of writing. ALSCW has made an important contribution to revitalizing the study of literature in the United States and beyond, and will continue to do so.
The goals of the ALSCW:
- to provide space for encounters between scholars, critics, editors, and teachers, and fiction writers, poets, playwrights, and screenwriters;
- to foster connections between the academic study of literature and the wider literary culture extending beyond the academy;
- to sponsor and disseminate studies of curriculum and wider topics relating to literature (such as the teaching of composition, and the reading habits of a well-informed, critically alert citizenry;
- to create links between the teaching of literature in primary and secondary schools, and instruction in colleges and universities;
- to encourage debate and exchange between and among scholars of ancient and modern literatures, and between and among those who study Western texts and the texts of every culture and continent in the world;
- to explore the literary dimensions of other arts, including film, drama, painting, and music;
- to support, encourage, and guide the study of literature.
650 Beacon Street, Suite 510
Boston, Massachusetts 02215
Phone: (617) 358-1990; Fax: (617) 358-1995
office.AT.alscw.org@literarymatters-beta.plicat.io.example.com
Copyright © 1995-present Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers