Introduction: Katharine D. Newman and redefining American literature

What do you see Walt Whitman? Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you? ... I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade, I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me ... All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! And you of centuries hence when you listen to me! And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same! Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent! Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her rights upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. --From Walt Whitman, "Salut Au Monde" In July 2001, Veronica Makowsky invited us to guest-edit a special issue of MELUS in celebration of Katharine Dealy Newman's life and work. We knew then already that our festschrift for Newman would have to be more than just a miscellaneous volume to honor the memory of the woman who had played a more crucial role than any other individual in bringing MELUS--and MELUS--into existence in the early 1970s. Imbued strongly with what we know today as the MELUS mission, Katharine herself would have liked such a celebration to be more than a compendium of her life and achievements. So we decided in our Call to spread our net as wide as possible to attract scholarly fish of all hues, and see what we could gather. Our Call stated in part, "Our objective in bringing out this special number is to preserve and expand Newman's legacy by attempting a retrospective evaluation of the role played by MELUS during the past three decades in the ongoing re-definition of American Literature by taking stock of developments in ethnic and cultural studies since the 1960s." We welcomed especially essays on pedagogy, canon, theory, and ethnic literary studies as a "discipline," as well as others on the role of anthologies and critical editions in transforming curriculum. We had also hoped to include some new interpretations of by-now canonical ethnic American authors or texts, as well as some pieces dedicated to the recovery of lost, neglected, and forgotten figures or texts. As our table of contents indicates, we have every reason to be happy with the wide-ranging response from our fellow scholars. To be sure, like the persona in that elusive Emerson poem, "Days," we might acknowledge the understandable gap between what one wishes for and what one actually receives. And yet, this gathering of essays by Americanists from around the globe, seasoned and emerging scholars as well as graduate students still discovering their voices, represents some of the most exciting scholarship in US literary studies on issues of canon and context, pedagogy and theory, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, nation and diaspora, individual and group identity. We are especially pleased to include quite a few international scholars: from Ireland, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, and Israel. We expect that this collection as a whole, and through its individual essays, will raise new debate and discussion, and for us, that is indeed the best measure of how we might remember Newman and honor her legacy. In relation to the many shared spaces and intersections among the interconnected and overlapping areas of American Studies and Cultural Studies, multi-ethnic literary studies as a field--in tandem with African American literary studies--is now so vast that it would be foolhardy for any one volume to cover all its subsets systematically and exhaustively. While limited in many ways by what we could accept from the submissions we received--or at times, what we could nudge or commission into being to fill up some lacunae--we were attentive to the need to cover a wide and suggestive range of issues in relation to the multiple ethnicities and historical experiences that make up the United States and the Americas beyond. …