Since 2019 Alluvium Journal has been sponsored by BACLS – the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies, with the three Managing Editors (currently Julia Ditter, Liam Harrison and Martin Goodhead 2020-22) forming part of the BACLS Executive. The Editorial team is grateful for the support provided by our colleagues on the Executive, including the current BACLS Chair Dr Philip Leonard, previous Alluvium Managing Editor and the current BACLS Publicity Officer Dr Zoe Bulaitis as well as our Senior Online Editor Dr Martin Eve.
The British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS) is a scholarly association that brings together academics and practitioners from across the UK and beyond in order to explore the current moment and its contexts. It is committed to literary studies in the broadest sense, including written, visual, performative and audible texts, in English and in other languages. BACLS aims to foster research at every level and to support both practice and pedagogy. The association was formally established in 2017.
The association aims to be inclusive:
- BACLS is not restricted to Anglophone literary studies and ‘British’ refers to the location of the organising scholars, rather than the range of the association.
- It takes ‘contemporary’ to reflect our feeling that that the association means to focus not a historical period but a ‘rolling sense’ of the contemporary: indeed, this is what makes the field different and unique. Rather than extensive debates about periodisation and ‘when the contemporary began’, the association is dedicated to a fluid and hybrid understanding of the contemporary ‘moment’ as an ever-evolving experience of the contemporary.
- For BACLS ‘Literary studies’ is similarly intended to open up the association to scholars working on the contemporary in literature and cognate disciplines, including comparative and world literatures, postcolonial studies, translation studies, linguistics, performance studies, media theory, comics studies, video games studies, adaptation studies, the study of popular music, cultural studies, critical theory, and digital humanities.
The association’s mission statement is as follows:
The British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies brings together scholars and practitioners from across the UK and beyond in order to explore the current moment and its contexts. It is committed to literary studies in the broadest sense, including written, visual, performative and audible texts, in English and in other languages. BACLS aim to foster research at every level and to support both practice and pedagogy.