Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures

Symposium is a quarterly journal of criticism in modern literatures originating in languages other than English. Founded in 1946, the journal is housed in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics and is published by Taylor & Francis/Routledge. Symposium features research on authors, themes, periods, genres, works, and theory, often through comparative or interdisciplinary studies. The journal publishes unsolicited essays as well as periodic special issues. Most issues include reviews of recent critical monographs in modern literatures. Although primarily in English, issues can include discussions of works in the original language. Symposium is a member journal of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.

The Symposium editorial board is pleased to announce the establishment of the Harold G. Jones Award for Best Essay in the amount of $1500, thanks to the generosity and vision of former editorial board member Harold G. Jones, Professor Emeritus of Spanish. The award will be given annually beginning with the 2018 volume year.

Congratulations to the recipient of the Harold G. Jones Award for the best essay published in the journal

2023 - Forecasting Extinction at the Guatemalan Border Forests: El mundo como flor y como invento by Mario Payeras
Emily Celeste Vázquez Enríquez
Abstract
In this article, I examine two short stories written by Guatemalan author Mario Payeras, both included in the collection El mundo como flor y como invento. Through the portrayal of the connections between the environmental vibrancy of the Guatemalan northern highlands and the ongoing presence of colonizing frameworks, the author identifies the key elements that, in the context of a porous border delimitation, participate in the endangerment of the human and the nonhuman alike.

2022 - Capitalist Thresholds: La muerte de Artemio Cruz and the Mapmaking of Modern Mexico
Pavel Andrade
Abstract
In this essay, I argue that Carlos Fuentes’ La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962) delineates a theory of Mexico’s long transition to capitalism. I demonstrate that Fuentes’ novel makes sense of the world as it continually separates the external from the internal, the realm of the social from the realm of the individual, and popular from bourgeois interests.

2021 - Molière’s L’École des femmes and the Work of Accessories
Claire Goldstein
Molière’s L’École des femmes and the Work of Accessories
In Molière’s L’École des femmes, fashion accessories—the small and mobile flourishes that festoon an outfit—circulate among characters in ways that limn the fault lines between the sexes and genera...
www.tandfonline.com

2020 - “M. Zola n’observe plus”: The Bourgeois Type in Zola’s Pot-Bouille
Anne O’Neil-Henry
“M. Zola n’observe plus”: The Bourgeois Type in Zola’s Pot-Bouille: Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures: Vol 74, No 3 - Taylor & Francis
Abstract. In this article, I analyze Zola’s often-understudied 1882 novel of the bourgeois apartment building, Pot-Bouille, to show how it stages the particular impossibility of accurately capturing the nineteenth-century bourgeois type and, more generally, a critique of naturalist method.Pot-Bouille exposes the hypocritical, even deceptive nature of the immeuble’s residents through scenes ...
www.tandfonline.com

2019 - The Tyrannies of the In-Between: Liminality in Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Historia de una escalera
Adam L. Winkel
The Tyrannies of the In-Between: Liminality in Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Historia de una escalera: Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures: Vol 73, No 2 - Taylor & Francis
All quotes from the play are from the edition published by Espasa Austral and edited by Virtudes Serrano in 2013. 2 For example, see Ruple (“He was the first of the postwar writers to abandon the evasionistic line and attempt serious expression of contemporary problems” [16]); Halsey (“The premiere of Antonio Buero Vallejo’s Historia de una escalera in 1949 marked the resurgence of ...
www.tandfonline.com

2018: Andrea S. Thomas (Loyola University Maryland), "Judith Gautier, Vers Libre, and the Faux East," Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 72, no. 2, 2018, pp. 77-88.

2015 - Best Graduate Student Essay: Sonja Stojanovic (University of Notre Dame), "Marie Darrieussecq's Ghost," Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 69, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 190-202.

2015 - Best Junior Scholar Essay: Lauren Brown (Occidental College), "Spatial Identities and Glissantian Detour: Narrative Strategies in Maryse Condé's Traversée de la mangrove," Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 69, no. 2, Jun. 2015, pp. 87-97.

2015 - Best Senior Scholar Essay: Maria DiFrancesco (Ithaca College), "Facing the Specter of Immigration in Biutiful," Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, vol. 69, no. 1, Mar. 2015, pp. 25-37.

More information about the journal can be found at: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/vsym20/current.