Year Zero: A New Beginning

Abstract

It is our great pleasure to present the first issue of Romance eReview, a new online graduate journal of Romance Literatures edited and published by the Master’s students of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Boston College. This issue is the result of a yearlong, relentless effort by a small group of graduate students and faculty advisers, who wrote, edited and reviewed the articles published herein. Despite its novel format, this online journal seeks to revive the legacy of Romance Review, the graduate journal edited by the doctoral students of our department between 1989 and 2007. Before it was discontinued, Romance Review hosted remarkable essays from several generations of graduate students, who are now prominent scholars in prestigious North American universities. With this project we wish to create a dialogue among the languages and national literary traditions within our department and display the intellectual liveliness of our graduate program. We also intend to give our students a unique opportunity to practice their writing and fine-tune their critical reading skills, while offering them a venue to showcase their best work.