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FROM THE EDITOR...

        Year after year the AIZEN continues to realize its mandate of broadening studies in Zola and naturalism through the erasure of borders. At our 2002 conference, Zola’s impact on Europe received special attention. As a result of his enormous success as a writer and his startling intervention in the Dreyfus Affair, his influence swept across the continent. Zola’s undertakings were immediately known in countries bordering on France, but were soon introduced into the outer reaches of the Continent as well, even in a country as far away as Finland that would seem completely removed from French culture.

        We took the AIZEN to Spain to encourage Zola studies on the Iberian peninsula and gave special attention to the diffusion and reception of Zola’s ideas there and in Latin America. Importantly, the redefinition of the Spanish novel in the nineteenth century benefited greatly from Zola’s influence. Moreover, Spanish is the AIZEN’s third language, so we are pleased that it has taken its rightful place, along with French and English, as a medium for scholarly exchange in our association. In line with the present construction of a new “Europe” - as a single political and cultural entity - the AIZEN continues to move into new territory and build bridges to strengthen connections among diverse cultures.

        The 11th International AIZEN Conference was held at the Universidad de Jaén, Spain, from June 13 to 15, 2002, marking the one hundredth anniversary of Émile Zola’s death. For the momentous occasion, over ninety participants came from eighteen different countries: Spain, France, Italy, England, Portugal, the Netherlands, Finland, Austria, Germany, Poland, Greece, Canada, the USA, Israel, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia. This was the largest number of participants ever to attend an AIZEN conference. Each one contributed to the exceptional intellectual climate of the event. It was the most important conference celebrating Zola’s centenary in terms of its international participation and the expanse of topics covered. Emphasis was placed, not only on Zola as a writer, but on the man as well.

        We offer a thank you to special guests Yves Chevrel and Françoise Gaillard, whose presentations played an important part in stimulating a vibrant scholarly exchange. Yves Chevrel, professor emeritus from the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, and the greatest specialist in European naturalism, gave a paper entitled “Zola et le renouveau de l’art dramatique en Europe à la fin du XIXe siècle,” in which he emphasized that Zola, in adapting his novels for the stage and developing his criticism of drama, attempted a renewal of contemporary European theater. Françoise Gaillard, who teaches at the Université de Paris VII-Denis Diderot, has renewed nineteenth-century studies and made them relevant to the twentieth century by interpreting the work of French realist and naturalist novelists in terms of modernity. Her paper entitled “Zola, le oui à la vie de La Bête humaine au Docteur Pascal showed how a selection of Zola’s naturalist texts, ostensibly limited to the description of concrete reality and the negative influences of milieu, convey on another level positive insights of a philosophical nature.

        In homage to the writer and his legacy, a special panel was organized entitled “One-Hundredth Anniversary of Zola’s Death.” Renowned scholars made public new research: Alain Pagès revealed documents that point to Zola’s possible assassination; Francisco Lafarga Maduell reported on opposing Catalán reactions to Zola’s death, underscoring the virulence of the Catholic press; and Danielle Coussot provided an update on the present state of research on Zola and its new directions. Colette Becker, one of the greatest Zola specialists, gave a paper on feminine desire in the work of this author, as part of a special session on the naturalist representation of women. Within the framework of this session, Domenica De Falco, doctoral student from the Université de Paris III-Sorbonne nouvelle, presented “Femmes goncourtiennes,” for which she received the Schor-Cahm Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper.

        The 8th International Naturalist Film Festival consisted of two films that did justice to the Spanish location of this conference and forged a link with the New World. Both films shown reveal the cruel dimension of human nature through the dog metaphor and attest to the naturalist influence of Zola in their scandalous exposure of man’s physical and moral suffering. Made in collaboration with Salvador Dali, Un Chien andalou (France/Spain, 1929) by Luis Buñuel, who lived for nine years in Mexico, announces the filmmaker’s signature exaltation of erotic desire. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores perros (Mexico, 2000), a new Mexican film featuring dogfights, centers on a dreadful automobile accident and its complicated consequences as played out in the lives of several characters.

        Organizer-in-Chief Anna Gural-Migdal and AIZEN organizers Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt and Robert Singer would like to extend a warm thank you to Encarnación Medina Arjona, Professor in the Departamento de lenguas y culturas mediterráneas at the Universidad de Jaén, for initiating the project of celebrating the Zola’s centenary in Spain and preparing the event during two years. As Co-Organizer of the 11th International AIZEN Conference, she played a key role in making all local arrangements and planning an exceptional program of festivities, through her collaboration with the municipal and regional authorities and, especially, her own university. We thank the Universidad de Jaén, and its Rector Luis Parras Guijosa, for sponsoring and hosting the event. We would like to express our appreciation as well to the Secretariado de Relaciones Internationales at the Universidad de Jaén, in particular, Francisco Feito, Vice Rector, and Jesús López-Peláez, Director, and the Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación and its Dean Gabriel Tejada, for their support and good will. A special thank you goes to the Departamento de lenguas y culturas mediterráneas, and its Director Guadalupe Saiz Muñoz, for welcoming us.

        We heartily thank the Junta de Andalucía, especially Francisco Reyes, delegate from the government, the Diputación Provincial de Jaén and its President Felipe López, and the City of Jaén, for their exceptional contribution to the reception of the AIZEN. We are grateful to the Spanish Ministerio de ciencia y technología and the Ministerio de Educación, cultura y deporte, for their endorsement of the conference.

        The centenary celebration received extensive media coverage, not only in the town of Jaén and the region, but nationally as well. The event was reported in twenty-two newspapers, including El País of Madrid. The opening ceremonies, inaugurated by the honorable Rector of the Universidad de Jaén, in the presence of Brigitte Émile-Zola, great-granddaughter of the writer, appeared on Spanish television.

        We would like to pay homage and express gratitude to honored guest Brigitte Émile-Zola, M.D., and curator of a private collection, her family legacy, for making the trip to Spain and celebrating with us. Before her presentation at the Naturalist Dinner, entitled “Portrait de Jeanne Rozerot d’après les souvenirs de son fils Jacques et un choix de lettres inédites de Zola,” she shared childhood memories of her grandfather Jacques. The setting for Dr. Émile-Zola’s talk was the splendid banquet evening at the Parador Castillo de Santa Catalina of Jaén, perched atop the Cerro Santa Catalina and located adjacent to a castle built by King Alhamar of Alhambra fame, who was later conquered by King Ferdinand III El Santo. This extraordinary event began with a cocktail under the vaulted ceiling of the wine cellar and moved into the expansive banquet hall, lit with antique chandeliers. Piano music contributed to the magic of the atmosphere with the result that banqueters ended the evening in joyful song.

        Conference participants enjoyed a number of other special events to honor the centenary of Zola’s death in the exotic Andalusian setting. An opening cocktail with tapas and sangría was given by the Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación and the Secretariado de Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad de Jaén; on the first evening, conference-goers enjoyed dinner on an olive plantation in the Andalusian countryside; sessions were held during the last day in the beautiful old Hospital San Juan de Dios, with its verdant courtyard, quaint chapel, and an excellent lunch was offered by the Diputación Provincial de Jaén. The conference ended with a tour of the Arab baths a few steps away. The final day was spent at the Alhambra, in Granada, admiring the Alcazaba, Palacios Nazaríes, and Generalife, with its Babylonian gardens. The 11th International AIZEN Conference, in celebrating Zola and his centenary, provoked further reflection on tolerance. What better place to gather than Andalusia, known in the past for the harmonious cohabitation of cultures.

        These memories of the Jaén conference are now darkened by a sad event. We must report the passing of Giampiero Posani, Professor of French Literature at the Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, in Italy. He attended our conference in Jaén, where he presented his last formal paper, entitled “Croupes naturalistes, croupes décadentes.”

        Posani’s research and teaching focused on Zola, naturalism, and other nineteenth- and twentieth-century French writers. One of the original aspects of his research was that he explored many areas of cultural studies, including the discourses of gastronomy, love and death, the political economy of the body, and eroticism in literature. He translated important works of literature and literary criticism from French into Italian, notably La Femme by Michelet (Liguori, 1977) and À rebours by Huysmans (Einaudi, 1989). He wrote three books on Mallarmé: Mallarmé: il tramonto di Dio et il mezzogiorno del Capitale (Guida, 1975), Interpretazioni di Mallarmé (Savelli, 1975), and Interpretazioni di Mallarmé Prose (pour des Esseintes) (SES, 1976). We present our condolences to all Giampiero Posani’s colleagues and to his family, and in particular to his partner, Domenica De Falco.

        Our Association brings its 2003 conference to Texas this year to open up new areas of Zola and naturalist studies and place special emphasis on other places where this author’s influence has reached, specifically, the Southwestern part of the United States, a region that fuses with the Latin world. For the first time we take the AIZEN to the South, almost to the Mexican border, to this city rich in historical lore that lies at the crossroads of many cultures, but opens out onto Mexico and Hispanic America.

        The AIZEN is delighted to hold its 12th International Conference at the University of Texas at San Antonio. We extend our thanks to the College of Liberal and Fine Arts and its Dean Daniel Gelo, for their warm reception and generous support. A special thanks goes to Jeanne Campbell Reesman for initiating the project of bringing the AIZEN to the San Antonio campus of the University of Texas.

        We are grateful to the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Department of English, Classics, and Philosophy at the University of Texas at San Antonio for hosting the 12th International AIZEN Conference, and to their Chairs, Marita Nummikoski and Linda Woodson, respectively. Representatives of these departments who have worked closely with us and who deserve special thanks are Debbie López and Santiago Daydí-Tolson, the Local Organizers whose assistance and input have been invaluable. Their enthusiasm and hard work have been much appreciated by the Organizers-in-Chief, Anna Gural-Migdal and Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt, and by Co-Organizers Elizabeth Emery and Robert Singer.

        Brigitte Émile-Zola will honor us with her presence once again, as part of her on-going project to aid in the dissemination of information about her great-great grandfather, the writer we celebrate. She will continue her talks based on Zola’s letters to Alexandrine, his wife, and Jeanne Rozerot, the mother of his children, and on memories transmitted to her through her grandfather Jacques, who was ten years old when his famous father died in 1902. As a medical doctor herself, Brigitte Émile-Zola will comment on her great-grandfather’s practical notions about health and sickness in her presentation entitled “Les ‘petits soucis de santé’ de Zola à travers sa correspondance inédite à Alexandrine et à Jeanne.” This talk will take place on Friday, October 10, during the naturalist dinner in the Copper Kitchen, the original cafeteria of a former Ursuline Convent established in 1851, and now located on a campus of the Southwest School of Art and Craft, in San Antonio.

        We have two special guests: Jacques Dubois and Richard Brettell. Professor Emeritus at the Université de Liège, Jacques Dubois is an eminent Zola specialist and world-renowned sociologist of literature. Together with colleagues, he created le Groupe Mu in the 1960s, which laid the foundations for a new rhetoric. He has published nine books including L’Assommoir de Zola. Société, discours, idéologie (Larousse, 1973) and L’Institution de la littérature: introduction à une sociologie (Nathan, 1978). Most recently, he authored a book entitled Les Romanciers du réel. De Balzac à Simenon (Seuil, 2002), and was responsible for the Pléiade edition of the complete works of Georges Simenon (2003). The title of Jacques Dubois’s talk will be “Zola, la fiction et les sciences humaines.” His paper addresses the question of Zola’s location within the literary field of production and shows how this author will, from that position, produce a body of sociological knowledge. It will take place on Friday, October 10, at 1:00 p.m. in room 3.326 of the Buena Vista Building on the Downtown Campus of the University of Texas in San Antonio.

        Special Guest Richard Brettell, foremost authority on Impressionism and French painting of the period 1830 to 1930, is Professor of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas where he established the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Museums. Among his publications are books on the work of Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas and Claude Monet, as well as more general studies of the Impressionist movement. His recent works include Monet to Moore:The Millenium Gift of the Sara Lee Corporation (Yale University Press, 1999), Modern Art, 1851-1929. Capitalism and Representation (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Impressionism: Painting Quickly in France, 1860-1900 (Yale University Press/Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2000). Richard Brettell will make a presentation with slides, on Thursday, October 9, at 5:00 p.m. in the Aztec Room of the Radisson Hotel San Antonio Market Square. His paper, entitled “Zola and the Painters,” will emphasize Cézanne, Degas and Renoir and, in particular, address the problem of textual-visual translation.

        We are very grateful to Dr. Robert April for having suggested to the AIZEN Organizers that they invite Richard Brettell to speak. Special thanks also go to Dr. Robert April, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, for organizing a panel and having successfully solicited funds from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The interest of this panel, entitled “The Mystery and History of Hysteria: Zola, Charcot, Lourdes, and Beyond,” is that it will bring together specialists in the fields of medicine and psychiatry who are able to comment on the medical content in Zola’s works. Medicine is, in fact, one of the major topics of this conference. In his own paper, Dr. April, a psychiatrist, will focus on medical approaches to the miraculous healings reported in Zola’s Lourdes. As a specialist in the history of nineteenth-century medicine and psychiatry, Toby Gelfand, from the University of Ottawa, will speak on the relations between Charcot, the first neurologist, and Zola. Zvi Lothane, a psychoanalyst from Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will compare “la grande hystérie” seen through the eyes of Charcot and Zola to the concept of hysteria developed later by Freud, another of Charcot’s students.

        Thanks go to Dorothy Diehl, for organizing a panel, entitled “Zola and Contemporary Pedagogical Thought: The Experimental Method in 2003.” The panel will explore how naturalist works of literature can be used themselves as scientific experiments in the classroom. And we thank Jeanne Campbell Reesman for organizing a panel, entitled “Jack London and Naturalism,” in which an effort will be made to delimit the specificity of this writer’s naturalist tendencies.

        All conference sessions will take place in the Buena Vista Building on the Downtown Campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio (501 West Durango Blvd. San Antonio, TX 78207). Registration will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., on Thursday, October 9, in room BV (Buena Vista) 1.338, on the first floor, and the opening speeches will be held in the same room. The sessions will take place that morning on the third floor of the same building, BV3.324 and BV 3.326, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

        A special lunch on Thursday is scheduled from 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at La Margarita Mexican Restaurant & Oyster Bar on the historic Market Square (218 Produce Row, San Antonio 28207; tel. 210-212-8413). Please just exit the Buena Vista Building on the side of the Pico de Gallo restaurant and go straight under the overpass. The Market Square is on the other side. We will have the “Filete de Pescado” lunch menu, which includes fresh grilled filet of codfish, a seafood enchilada, rice, and avocado salad. Each guest will be served iced tea, a dinner roll, and a Mexican dessert called “sopapilla.” The lunch will cost $18.00 US per person, tax and tip included.

        On Thursday afternoon, the sessions will be held on the first floor of the Buena Vista Building, in rooms BV 1.312 and BV 1.318. On both Friday and Saturday, October 10 and 11, all sessions will take place on the third floor of the Buena Vista Building, Downtown Campus of UTSA, in rooms 3.326 and 3.328. Please keep in mind that no food or drink will be allowed in these classrooms.

        The Opening AIZEN Wine and Cheese will begin at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday, October 9, in the Aztec Room at the Radisson, beginning with special guest Richard Brettell’s presentation. Wine (red or white), Mexican beer (Corona), a non-alcoholic punch, cheese, and raw vegetable hors d’oeuvres will be served to the sound of a Mariachi band.

        On Friday evening, October 10, at 7:30 p.m., the Naturalist Dinner in honor of Brigitte Emile-Zola will take place. We have reserved The Copper Kitchen (300 Augusta, San Antonio 78205), across from the Central Library in San Antonio and on the grounds of the Southwest School of Art and Craft, for this event. It would be best to share a taxi with other participants to arrive quickly.

        The dinner will be catered by the Club Giraud, which occupies the other structures in the former Ursuline Complex - early kitchen, carriage sheds, music rooms, and laundry. A French architect named François Giraud designed the 1851 Ursuline Academy and Convent buildings, recorded on the National Register for Historic Places and a Texas landmark. The Club Giraud, founded in 1981, has as its avowed purposed to preserve the historic buildings which it occupies and support the entire complex.

        The banquet menu will include Giraud Caesar salad, charbroiled medallion of tenderloin steak with sauce béarnaise, grilled Norwegian salmon with Tequila cilantro beurre blanc, roasted new potatoes with rosemary butter, haricots verts, French rolls, cheese straws and a glass of red or white wine. For dessert, there will be frozen white chocolate mousse, served on raspberry Chantilly cream sauce with a fresh raspberry garnish, and coffee or tea. The price for this dinner will be $49.00 US per person, tax and tip included.

        This year the Film Festival will feature two early masterpieces of naturalist film. It will take place in the Buena Vista Building, Downtown Campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio, from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on the first floor, Room 1.328.

        The Wind (black and white, silent with titles in English; USA,1928; 90 minutes), directed by Victor Sjöström, is set near the turn of the century. A young, socially disenfranchised woman from Virginia, played by Lillian Gish, leaves her home and heads to an unknown future in the Texas “Dust Bowl” region. Her life on the desolate, wind-swept prairie will include rejection by uncaring relatives, a failed relationship, murder, and sexual assault. Of special interest to the audience are the naturalist metaphors that abound, storms, and an ever-present hot wind in this rarely screened late-silent film masterpiece.

        The second film is Que Viva Mexico! (black and white, silent with titles in English; Mexico/USA, 1932; 90 minutes). This film masterpiece by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein is a socio-historical chronicle of modern-era Mexico, but it reveals that part of the country tourists do not often see. Four stories, freely mixing fiction with documentary, make up this celebratory and politicized narrative of naturalist, class-based struggle, and it even includes a view of the 1910 revolution. Eisenstein’s composition is full of his signature artful shots, and the film is beautiful as well as compelling. It is important to note that Eisenstein worked with American novelist Upton Sinclair on the production, and Que Viva Mexico! was neglected for many years. This is the newly restored version of the film, by Eisenstein’s original editor. If Zola had produced a film and shot on location, it might have resembled Que Viva Mexico!

        On Saturday evening, you are invited to join other conference participants for a narrated cruise, with a company called Yanaguana, followed by dinner at one of the restaurants along the River Walk. The price per person for the 40-minute tour of the River Walk is $6.00 US. Please sign up at Registration if you are interested in participating in this event.

        Accommodations in San Antonio have been arranged at the Radisson Hotel San Antonio Market Square, 502 West Durango Boulevard, San Antonio, TX 78207. The hotel is a 5-minute walk from the Downtown Campus of the University of Texas at San Antonio. Go straight across the street and through the Frio Building to the Buena Vista Building, where all the conference sessions will be held. The Radisson offers free parking and a free shuttle service for guests to any of San Antonio’s sights within a 3-mile radius of the hotel, if you book ahead. Near the hotel, you can also get a streetcar to the River Walk and other areas of San Antonio. The price for a one-way trip is $.50. The hotel offers complimentary guest use of its exercise facility, Jacuzzi, and swimming pool. Room service is available from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Some shops and restaurants are available at the hotel: for example, the Café Chameleon, where you can get breakfast as early as 6:30 a.m. and until 10:30 a.m. for between $8.00 and $10.00. Just a short walk from the hotel you can buy reasonably priced snacks or lunch at the Market Square.

        Looking ahead to future conferences, keep in mind that the 13th International AIZEN Conference will be held for the first time in South America, in the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from May 25 to 28, 2004. This event will last four days, instead of the usual three, and will be open to approximately 125 participants, in order to emphasize the importance of Émile Zola in Brazilian culture and show his influence on naturalist writers using the Portuguese language. The conference will be sponsored by the Faculty of Humanities at the Federal University of Brazil and the Casa Rui Barbosa Foundation, which has played an important role in promoting literature and culture and has, interestingly, a close connection to the Dreyfus Affair. Our honored guests will be Brigitte Émile-Zola and Henri Mitterand, great-granddaughter and world-renowned specialist of Émile Zola, respectively. Our special guest will be Alain Pagès, Editor-in-Chief of Les Cahiers Naturalistes and author of numerous books on Zola.

        We are indebted to Ligia Vassallo and Pedro Paulo Catharina, from the Faculty of Humanities, who have offered their collaboration with the AIZEN to bring this project into existence. We are grateful to Marcelo Jacques de Moraes, Coordinator of the Programa de Post-graduaçao em Letras Neolatinas at the Federal University of Brazil, and to José Almino de Alencar, President of the Casa Rui Barbosa Foundation, where the conference sessions will be held, as well as the Naturalist Film Festival. This is a magnificent edifice from the nineteenth century, surrounded by gardens and outfitted with ultra-modern facilities.

        The local organizers are planning an extraordinary program of social and cultural activities: an opening cocktail, a concert at the home of Brazilian composer Villa-Lobos, an outing to a cabaret with local dancers, and an excursion to the historical city of Petropolis. Presently, arrangements are being made for accommodations in a hotel or two on the famous Copacabana.

        We have good news about many of our members. Congratulations go to Jennifer Wolter, who completed her Ph.D. at The Ohio State University, with a dissertation titled “The Médan Matrix: From Les Soirées de Médan to a Divergence from Naturalism in Works by Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans.”

        Hats off to Gilbert Darbouze, who was promoted to Full Professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania and to Elizabeth Emery and Erika Sutherland, who are now Associate Professors at Montclair State University and Muhlenburg College, respectively. We are proud that two members who received the AIZEN Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper have recently landed positions as Assistant Professors of French, Carmen Mayer-Robin at the University of Alabama and Göran Blix at Princeton University. Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt has a new position in California, as Assistant Professor of French at Pacific Union College, and Christian Mbarga was also hired as Assistant Professor of French, at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada.

        Some of our members have books appearing. Anna Gural-Migdal’s collection of essays, entitled L’Écriture du féminin chez Zola et dans la fiction naturaliste/Writing the Feminine in Zola and Naturalist Fiction has come out with Peter Lang (Berne, 2003) and is available for purchase. It comprises thirty essays written by members of the AIZEN and an introduction that provides an up-to-date synthesis of all research on the topic.

        We congratulate Alain Pagès, who, together with Canadian colleague Owen Morgan, published Guide Émile Zola (Ellipses, 2003), a comprehensive work that accomplishes three major goals: it analyzes biographical data in order to establish an intellectual portrait of the author, provides a systematic literary analyses of his works, and explores Zolian posterity.

        Kudos for Colette Becker, whose edition of the entire Rougon-Macquart series has come out in a second edition (Laffont, coll. “Bouquins,” 2002), in five volumes with a “Dictionnaire d’Émile Zola.” And a Festschrift has recently been published in her honor: La Représentation du réel dans le roman. Mélanges à Colette Becker (Osea, 2002).

        Dorothy Speirs, lifetime member of the AIZEN, edited Mon cher Maître. Lettres d’Ernest Vizetelly à Émile Zola (Presses universitaires de Montréal, 2003) with Yannick Portebois, a work that brings together and comments on documents related to Émile Zola’s friendship and collaboration with this English translator of his works. François-Marie Mourad’s new book Zola critique littéraire (Honoré Champion, 2003) explores Zola’s role in the important developments of the press in the last half of the nineteenth century. As a major contributor to the process of legitimizing literature that was underway, he contested established values, promoting realist authors and fighting against the legacy of romanticism, all the while developing his own philosophy of representation.

        Jeanne Campbell Reesman published a collection of essays entitled Jack London: One Hundred Years a Writer (Huntington Library Press, 2002 ), along with Sara S. Hodson. These essays, by eminent London scholars, as well as “new London voices,” provide “fresh new insights into the complex creation of one of America’s greatest authors, one of those whose literary genius is only now becoming fully recognized,” according to reviewer Earle Labor.

        Manuel Prendes Guardiola has recently published two books on the Hispanic naturalist novel: La Novela naturalista de Federico Gamboa with the Universidad de la Rioja Press (La Rioja, 2002) and La Novela naturalista hispanoamericana. Evolución y direcciones de un processo narrativo, with Cátedra (Madrid, 2003). He emphasizes the social, historical and ideological context of Gamboas’ novels and reveals the romantic Latin American sensibility that surfaces. In his book on the Hispano-American naturalist novel, he shows how the genre serves as a particularly valuable, although complex, social document.

        We thank Dorota Walczak-Delanois, of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, for her loyal support. She has taken out a lifetime membership in the AIZEN, as has the library at Harvard University, which also now has a subscription to Excavatio.

        Encarnación Medina Arjona and Anna Gural-Migdal are presently preparing a collection of essays in honor of Emile Zola’s centenary. It will contain about thirty articles on Zola, naturalism, and naturalist writers around the world. The book will be published by the University of Jaén Press and will appear in 2004.

        Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt and Anne Dymond, a colleague in art history, invite submissions in French or English to a collection of essays on European gendered regionalist representation by June 30, 2004. Please contact Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt as soon as possible if you are interested in submitting a paper.

        Volume XVII of Excavatio came out at the beginning of the year, a Special Issue for Zola’s Centenary. It contains thirty articles, including a dossier entitled “The One-Hundredth Anniversary of Zola’s Death.” Other sections are as follows: “Zola’s Urban Novels,” “Film Adaptations of the Rougon-Macquart,” “Zola and his French Contemporaries,” “The Reception and Diffusion of Zola’s Ideas in Europe,” and “American and Cinematic Naturalism.” Now Volume XVIII of Excavatio is also available and contains, in addition to the special section of articles entitled “Zola and Naturalism in Spain,” articles on a number of other topics: “Social Aspects of Zola’s Works,” “Women in French Naturalist Fiction,” “The Wider European Context of Naturalism,” and “Naturalism in Latin America.” Please encourage your universities to follow the lead of Harvard, the University of Toronto, The University of Bonn, the University of Haifa, and take out a subscription to our highly acclaimed international review of naturalist studies. Your colleagues and friends will want to order our most recent issues since our journal is not only an essential tool for scholars who have specialized in the field of Zola and Naturalism, but also enjoyable reading and a mine of information for those who are interested in discovering new aspects of works by one of France’s greatest authors. We are grateful to Paul Perroud who recently bought a complete set of Excavatio volumes to pay tribute to our work and to honour the memory of his friend, Monique Fol, whom he met in 1957 at the University of California, Berkeley.

        As Editor-in-Chief of Excavatio, I would like to thank my Associate Editors, Elizabeth Emery and Carolyn Snipes-Hoyt, for their help. Our Editorial Assistant, Gust Olson deserves special thanks. He has provided invaluable assistance for three years and will be leaving us now. We wish him all the best in his new position in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I am grateful to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, and Dean Wolf, for their financial support. And finally, thanks go to the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta, its Chair, Donald Bruce, and his staff, for their encouragement and assistance.

        After twelve years of existence, we are reaping the rewards of our sustained efforts, since the AIZEN has achieved stunning success on an international scale. It has recently won the praise of the most eminent specialists in Zolian and naturalist studies, who honor us with their presence at our conferences. This recognition seems well earned. Our association, thanks to its dynamism and precise vision, has done much to assure the continuation of high quality research on Zola by bringing into the spotlight a number of talented young researchers. At our up-coming conference in San Antonio we will welcome doctoral students from the best North American and European universities. We are proud of ourselves as well for having contributed to the blossoming of interdisciplinary studies and to the promotion of comparative studies in the area of naturalism. It is now the moment to think about treating ourselves to a well-deserved rest. Starting in 2005, AIZEN conferences will take place every two years. This change in rhythm will allow our association to take new directions and diversify its activities in order to meet with even more success in the future…

        We are looking forward to seeing you in Texas and wish you all an excellent summer!