AustLit

'It is a pleasure and an honour to commence my term as Editor of Literature & Aesthetics in the twenty-fifth year of this journal’s production, and I thank Dr Catherine Runcie, Honorary President of the Sydney Society of Literature and Aesthetics, for the opportunity to contribute to the SSLA and the journal. This twenty-fifth volume is a milestone that merits celebration, as the SSLA (while being formed in 1990 with a seventeen member Executive drawn from various departments in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney), has always been an independent organisation, separate from the University that has provided it with a home.  Literature & Aesthetics’ flourishing over two and a half decades is testimony to the goodwill and hard work of previous Editors, members of the Editorial Board, office bearers of the SSLA, and the scholars who have published their work in it. Catherine Runcie wrote a short history of SSLA to 2005, which showcased the activities of the Society to that date: these included evening seminars, local conferences, and hosting the highly successful First and Second Pacific Rim Conferences in Transcultural Aesthetics in 1997 and 2004.  In the years since 2006, the date of the history’s publication, Literature & Aesthetics has been the vehicle for much exciting research in literary, philosophical, aesthetic, religious, and cultural studies. From 2011 the journal was digitised and it is now available as a free, open access resource for scholars the world over to consult. In the five years since the establishment of the Literature & Aesthetics website (http://openjournals.library.usyd.edu.au/index.php/LA), half a million articles have been downloaded, a resounding popular vote on both the journal’s quality and relevance.'  (Editorial introduction)