THE DREW SYMPOSIUM: History, Fiction, Historical FictionAuthor(s): Albert Rabil, Jr.Source: Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 76, No. 2/3, Papers from The DrewSymposium (Summer/Fall 1993), p. 201Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41179210 .

Accessed: 11/06/2014 13:12

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Soundings:An Interdisciplinary Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.51 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:12:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

THE DREW SYMPOSIUM: History, Fiction, Historical Fiction

Jf Louis Mink had been able to attend the Symposium on His- tory and Fiction at Drew University on April 9-10, 1992, spon- sored by the Graduate School of Drew University, the College

of Liberal Arts of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Soundings, and The Society for Values in Higher Education, he would have enjoyed the fellowship of the occasion as much as its substance; he was a persuasive spokesperson for fellowship, as his reflections on his experiences of fellowship in the SVHE eloquently testify.1 And so he would have found it entirely ap- propriate and even fundamentally important, before discussing the symposium itself, to thank Merrill Skaggs, a board member of the Society and Dean of the Graduate School at Drew, who so generously co-sponsored and so capably organized the event. Without her support and commitment to the undertak- ing over a two-year period of planning, the symposium and this issue of Soundings based on it certainly could never have taken shape. I am grateful also to Dean Lorman Ratner and to many Fellows of the SVHE for their participation and support of this venture.

Our symposium is arranged in two parts. In the first, the four major conference presentations, those of Robin Winks, Sherley Anne Williams, Vivian Gornick, and Carolyn Heilbrun, are each followed by a response, and then by a general discus- sion carried on by the panelists and the audience. We are able here to offer only the briefest excerpts from these lively and wide-ranging exchanges.

In the second part of our symposium we hear from Dale Porter, Nicole King, Eileen Bender, Wini Warren, and Gail Eifrig, each of whom explores a different, and revealing, aspect of the relation between history and fiction. These latter papers were not subject to discussion at Drew in Spring 1992, and we invite Soundings readers now to engage in that discussion with us.

AR

NOTES 1. Louis O. Mink, Fellowship, An Essay Written for Informal Presentation in

1976 and edited for Publication by Barbara A. Mowat and Donald W. Sherburne. Published in Memory of Louis O. Mink, Kent '47 (1921- 1983), Vice President of the Society 1974-1983 (New Haven: Society for Values in Higher Education, 1983) 40 pp.

Soundings 76.2-3 (Summer/Fall 1993). ISSN 0038-1861.

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.51 on Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:12:51 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions