ALSC was organized in 1994 by a group of senior scholars -- among the founding members were Robert Alter, Joseph Brodsky, Denis Donoghue, John Hollander, Alfred Kazin, Mary Lefkowitz, Richard Poirier, Christopher Ricks, and many others equally distinguished -- who felt that, given the continuing interest in literature among a large number of students, teachers, and educated general readers, there ought to exist in America an organization devoted to literary studies.
The original invitation to join ALSC made clear that the aims of the organization were to be plenary. "The organization is open to all those with a genuine interest in the study of literature. It will welcome classicists as well as modernists, independent as well as academic literary critics. While accepting support from individuals, institutions, and foundations that share its concerns, it is not and will not be identifiable with any ideological or political position."
The above is taken from the "Short History of ALSC" written by Norman Fruman for the Spring 1995 ALSC Newsletter. It is a quite astounding story of a rise from modest and somewhat casual beginnings to an end that is not yet in sight.
(remarks on the conference program by Jeffrey Staiger)
The program committee this year created a remarkably attractive and varied
program, a mix of important general topics as well as specific literary works,
creative writing as well as scholarship, enduring issues in literary study
as well as a look at the current state of affairs. The distinguished list
of speakers provided absorbing and thought-provoking comment on all of these
subjects. On all of this the program speaks for itself. What perhaps needs
some further comment and explanation is the series of changes that were made
in the general shape of the program.
From the first conference in Minneapolis two years ago, ALSC has
chosen to avoid the kind of program that offers a bewildering variety of
concurrent
sessions, preferring instead a series of four plenary sessions. Both kinds
have their advantages. The former gives conference-goers a choice of sessions
to and thus the opportunity to tailor the program to their own interests,
and it also affords more people (particularly younger scholars) a chance
to be heard. But experience has shown that this model brings with it very
serious disadvantages: in practice, the proliferation of sessions leads to
a huge plenitude of papers on trivial subjects.
Picture taken following panel on "The Current State of Literary Studies." L to R: Denis Donoghue (1998 president of ALSC), Eleanor Cooke, Seymour Chatman
For this reason, the ALSC chose instead to provide a common intellectual
experience 
for
all present--one which conveys a sense of what the Association stands for,
and thus also fosters an intellectual community devoted to upholding "the
validity of the literary imagination" and a common literary culture.
Panel on Jane Austen in modern criticism. L to R: Lorraine Clark, Jill Heydt-Stevenson, Inger Brody, Paul Cantor
This year's committee largely followed the path of its predecessors, but
also attempted to take some modest steps to deal with its drawbacks. Thus
without abandoning the principle of concentration that made the previous
meetings so congenial, this year's planners for the first time included
concurrent sessions on Saturday morning, one on Jane Austen, the other on
contemporary poetry.
The "poster session" represents another way in which the ALSC San Francisco conference attempted to maintain the essential format of previous years while dealing with one of the problems it creates--a problem that is especially acute for younger members. The logistics of this session are described on page 7 of the ALSC newsletter for Spring/Summer 1997.
The Saturday afternoon session represents a change of a different kind.
Here for the first time we had a session devoted to the current state of
literary studies, and thus to the fundamental problems of the profession
that led to the formation of the ALSC. In the first two years we have been
careful to ensure that the Association was defined positively by what it
stood for, rather than negatively by what it stood against. The first two
conferences reflected that concern: their programs were devoted almost wholly
to a direct discussion of authors and genres. This was not done because of
any reluctance to oppose the current trends that seem to so many in the
profession deplorable, but
because we
thought that our primary emphasis had to be on doing a job that was not being
done. Only on this basis would criticisms of current excesses carry weight.
ALSC dinner, Cathedral Hill Hotel
This year's program committee felt, however, that the time had now arrived
for a big of toughminded reflection on the enterprise of literary criticism
itself. From one standpoint, the confusion that has reigned in literary studies
in recent years presents an opportunity. As the consensus that motivated
what Harold Bloom has called the "guilty flight away from the aesthetic"
begins to disintegrate, the need for rethinking the basis of literary studies
can only become more acute. This year's conference was meant to offer a forum
for that kind of rethinking.
(complete text in Summer 1997 ALSC Newsletter)
The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics is approaching, I think,
a potential turning point. Our membership can do a great deal to help us
move forward to a significant second stage in our development. . .
.
We began with a few hundred members . We have grown to two thousand, but that still leaves us decidedly a minority organization in the broad field of literary studies. Given the pressures of conformism that make themselves felt in so many departments of literature, our attempt to create an alternative forum for the discussion of literature initially triggered a whispered chorus of rumors that we represent some sort of conspiracy against purportedly innovative or progressive trends in literary studies.
About a year and half ago, when I was being driven to the airport after lecturing at a university several states away from my own, my very amiable host, a recently tenured professor, confided to me that he was an ALSC member but thought it best not to divulge that fact to his colleagues. . . .
My own sense is that as an organization we are ready to move beyond this initial age of suspicion. . . . We have shown that it is still possible to talk cogently about literature in a language intelligible to living readers of literature, without recourse to the exclusionary argot of academic coteries. Our membership, which from the start included some of the leading scholar-critics on the continent -- by no means clustered in a single political grouping or professional clique -- has been sufficiently heterogeneous in all respects to refute the notion that we are some sort of marshalling of forces for a counter-revolution. . . .
As we approach our third annual meeting, I think every single member should be ready to promote the Association. Each one of us should now undertake to bring at least one, and preferably two, members into ALSC -- whether colleagues or students, or writers and critics outside the academy. With a membership of more than double our current two thousand, we may begin to have the transformative effect on the profession to which we aspire. The time for dramatic growth is now ripe. The effort required from each of us is not great. The only obstacle is laying to rest a body of preconceptions and suspicions that have some time since shown themselves to be obsolete.
Robert Alter was the 1997 president of ALSC. He is Class of 1937 Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has written seventeen books, focusing on such topics as the European novel from the 18th century to the present, contemporary American fiction, and modern Hebrew literature. He has also written extensively on the literary aspects of the bible. His book The Art of Biblical Narrative won the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought. Other books Alter has written include Hebrew and Modernity, The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age, and most recently, Genesis: A New Translation with Commentary.
Alter earned his bachelor's degree in English from Columbia University in 1957, and earned his master's degree in 1958 and his doctorate in 1962 from Harvard University, both in comparative literature. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress. He has twice been a Guggenheim Fellow, has been a Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jeruselem, and Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University.
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