For all of Oklahoma’s image as a largely isolated, often passed over state, you might be surprised to learn that for the past full century, it’s also been something of a worldwide hub for international literature and global culture thanks to the University of Oklahoma’s long-running World Literature Today magazine.
Launched in 1926 as a university publication originally titled “Books Abroad,” the magazine would grow into World Literature Today, bringing the words, minds, and spirits of international writers and scholars right here to Oklahoma, and taking Oklahoma onto a global stage of ideas and culture long before our state had professional sports victory or music megastars.
Now celebrating the magazine’s centennial year, editor-in-chief Daniel Simon is spearheading a look back at the deep history and impact of World Literature Today through a century-spanning anthology and an upcoming art show spotlighting the unique cover designs of years past, all in honor of the hundred-year journey of the publication and the unexpected success that began as a gamble ten decades ago.
Daniel Simon: It really boils down to a professor here in the mid 1920s named Roy Temple House, who had this vision for a publication that would review books of all kinds from all over the world. And so he thought, “well, we need to be more open to the world.”
He thought, “well, we've got our base here on the Southern Plains. It's very much a transnational crossroads for Native cultures and African American and Spanish language explorers and settlers from all the European countries, you know, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.” So, he thought, “why not do it here? We'll give it a try, and and hopefully the world will respond.”
And they they did
Brett Fieldcamp: That global response and appreciation for the magazine grew, too, with the expansion and the widening scope of the talents and works discussed, as Simon and other editors have worked to better represent the full breadth and multi-culturalism of truly worldwide literature.
Daniel Simon: In, you know, the early years, there was kind of a Eurocentric focus, and a lot of the contributing editors focused on Spanish and French and German and Italian, but over the years there was a real push to globalize the publication.
So even during my tenure as editor-in-chief, we've really tried to focus as much on the Middle East and Africa and Asia as we have on the rest of the world.
Brett Fieldcamp: To look back over that evolution of the magazine and its contributions to the broader world of global literature and arts, Simon and the team released “A Compass on the Navigable Sea,” a one hundred year-spanning retrospective anthology collecting the best writings and works from a century of World Literature Today.
Daniel Simon: I'd spent three years going through the archives, looking for the best essays, book reviews, interviews, fiction, letters to the editor, poems, etc. and I tried to put together a compilation that I thought would be reflective of some of the evolution of world literature in the 20th century and early 21st centuries.
And so my idea was to commemorate the centennial by putting together the best of the best.
One of the neat things about it is that all of the royalties from the anthology are going towards our student scholarships, so we're again connecting to our teaching mission.
Brett Fieldcamp: But that’s not the only celebration of the magazine’s long history for this year.
Thursday, September 17th will see the opening of a new exhibition at OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art displaying the ten most creative, memorable, or visually rich covers from across the magazine’s history, chosen from throughout the decades by the current staff and crowning a fan-favorite winner voted on by readers.
Daniel Simon: By the 80s and 90s and early 2000s, we had a series of editors and art directors who really wanted to make it more appealing and more magazine-like in terms of the cover design.
And so we thought we'll focus on 1977 to the present, so the most recent 50 years of World Literature Today, and try to come up with what we think are the top 10 covers during that time span, and let readers have a say in voting for their favorite along the way.
Brett Fieldcamp: It’s all a part of not only looking back at what World Literature Today has offered to the international community over these past hundred years, but also kicking off the next century for the magazine and reiterating the importance that it continues to foster across borders, oceans, and cultures, all from right here in Oklahoma.
Daniel Simon: For a lot of writers, we have testimonials from them saying, "You don't know how much Books Abroad and World Literature Today meant to us as a lifeline to the West and to what was happening elsewhere,” and we've heard that time and time again that what we're able to do here, based in Oklahoma, but then be kind of this lighthouse to the rest of the world, is really indispensable and really valued by folks from all over the world.
So we have kind of a dual citizenship, I would say: local and global.
Brett Fieldcamp: The exhibition “The Art of the Literary Magazine: The Top 10 Covers of World Literature Today” opens Thursday, September 17th at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of art, and the centennial anthology edition “A Compass on the Navigable Sea” is available now, with proceeds going to student scholarship funds.
For more, visit worldliteraturetoday.org.
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