Thursday, December 7, 2006

Writer: Philip Lee Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
Contact: Sarah Spence, 706/542-0417, sspence@uga.edu

UGA classics prof Sarah Spence proud of journal Literary Imagination, which she edited for eight years; it now moves to new editor, new city

Athens, Ga. – From the start, it was different – a journal in which literary studies focused on literature rather than the social contexts of art. Literary Imagination also brought creative and scholarly writers together in a new context and created a dialogue between classical and modern critics.

The journal, founded and edited by Sarah Spence (right) of the UGA classics department, quickly earned a national and international reputation. Now, after eight years as editor, Spence is relinquishing her duties, and the journal will move to Boston and to Oxford University Press, which will assume responsibilities for production and distribution.

“One of the issues we wanted to address was that the questions being asked of literary texts were relegating literature to a secondary position,” says Spence. “Literature, in short, needed to reapproached as much for its beauty as its power, and literary criticism needed to be re-forged as a tool that would reveal its strengths.”

It’s ironic that the last issue Spence edited is on Vergil, author of the Aeneid, since that Roman poet’s name is engraved on the frieze around the Administration Building on North Campus, reflecting a day when classical authors were the heart of a liberal arts education. (It’s spelled “Virgil” on the frieze, and both spellings have been in common use for hundreds of years.)

The mantra of Literary Imagination under Spence’s leadership was simple: literature first. And the literature she has published has included a dazzling list of authors, including John Updike, Rosanna Warren, Mark Strand, Geoffrey Hill, W.S. Merwin and Stanley Crouch.

Literary Imagination is the official journal of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, an organization formed in 1994. The group’s aim is to encourage wide-ranging discussions between those committed to the reading and study of literary works, and to the reading and writing of non-fiction essays, criticism and scholarship concerned with them.

“It’s been a great joy to work with established writers but also with new and emerging poets and critics, some of whom published here for the first time,” says Spence. In fact, two authors have already won prestigious Pushcart Prizes for their work published in the journal. The contents of each issue often includes unusual and intriguing texts, from the first publication of excerpts of the bizarre and wonderful journals of Mary Moody Emerson, the aunt of Ralph Waldo Emerson, to ruminations on The Wizard of Oz.

Spence credits editorial and production manager Karen Coker and numerous graduate students with a lion’s share of the work for the past several years. Spence came to UGA in 1987 as a faculty member in the department of comparative literature, but she moved to classics in 1994. She teaches Vergil, rhetoric and Latin and medieval poetry, among other things. As she moves from the editorship of Literary Imagination, she has more than enough projects ahead. One is a book, already underway, about how poets from Vergil to Dante used Sicily as a way to talk about empire.

A second is a version of the Aeneid, based on a 19th century translation, to be sold in the popular low-price classics series by Barnes & Noble.

“I hand this journal over with a smile,” Spence wrote in a “Letter from the Editor” in the current issue of Literary Imagination. “I am pleased at the success we have had and excited by the future that beckons.”

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