Celebrating literary minds: Reflections on editing festschrifts

“Festschrift” is a German word coined in the 19th century by combining ”fest”, meaning “celebration” or “festival,” with ”schrift”, meaning “writing” or “script,” to signify “celebration writing” or “festival publication.” It’s also sometimes called “festgabe”, denoting “commemorative gift” or “presentation gift.” Its French equivalent is liber amicorum, which translates to “book of friends.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word has been lexicalised in English since 1892; hence, it is no longer italicised in English usage, as is customary for foreign words.

A festschrift is a publication honouring an eminent individual in a particular field—a scholar, creative writer, or scientist—usually to mark a significant birthday, retirement, or other milestone. It may take the form of a monograph or a scholarly symposium, but traditionally it is a collection of scholarly essays by colleagues, students, and admirers of the honouree—those inspired by the honouree’s genius and extraordinary achievements, or by their worldview, knowledge, collegiality, and mentorship, and willing to celebrate and preserve their legacy or footprint in the field.

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The articles in such a commemorative volume, or sometimes a journal special issue, are not random in topic but generally align with the intellectual and scholarly ambit of the person being commemorated. It carries forward the ideas and intellectual legacy of the dedicatee, expressing gratitude for shaping their future through the honouree’s scholarly excellence, as well as for the extraordinary empathy and warmth with which they have passed on their proverbial torch to succeeding generations, thereby fostering a familial atmosphere within the academic community. Such a work of collective tribute is usually presented during the honouree’s lifetime. If it is prepared for a deceased intellectual, it is called a gedenkschrift (literally “memorial writing” or “memorial publication”)—something I am currently contemplating to honour and preserve the intellectual bequest of my late friend and a leading light in Bangladeshi, nay South Asian academia and the literary sphere, Professor Syed Manzoorul Islam.

The tradition emerged in 19th century Germany, amid the Romantic era’s cultural emphasis on the personal adulation of intellectual heroes at Prussian universities, such as the University of Berlin, where academic practice celebrated individual scholarly legacies through collective gestures. It spread internationally, notably to universities in the UK and US and to parts of Asia, facilitated by émigré scholars fleeing Nazi persecution after World War II and, in Asia in particular, through colonial and postcolonial networks. It has become a popular and prestigious way of paying tribute to architects and stewards of knowledge in Asian academia, where admiring and idolising educators is an ingrained aspect of the culture.

Some of the earliest festschrifts in Bangladeshi academia are the commemorative volumes published in honour of the linguist Dr Muhammad Shahidullah and the historian Professor A.B.M. Habibullah, respectively, in the 1960s and 1980s. A more recent volume that is likely to resonate with the current generation of scholars is Politics and Culture: Essays in Honour of Serajul Islam Choudhury (2002), edited by Fakrul Alam and Ferdous Azim. It is dedicated to a renowned professor of English at the University of Dhaka and, arguably, one of the most venerated public intellectuals and literary luminaries of our time, often fondly known among his students and admirers, including myself, as “SIC Sir.”

I have been involved in curating and editing festschrifts since 2018, when I unexpectedly but delightfully received a call from Professor Nina Morgan, then Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS)—a welcome and heartening surprise. She began in a collegial spirit, with polite greetings and friendly enquiries about my research. She then gradually broached the main topic. She invited me to edit a festschrift in honour of Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim for her 75th birthday in 2019—a multi-award-winning, internationally renowned Asian-American poet, writer, editor, and literary scholar of Malaysian-Singaporean origin, who has been a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara since the early 1990s.

Professor Lim is my dearest friend, whom I first met at an ACLALS conference in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. She has since remained a major influence and inspiration in my life, both as a friend and a mentor. Professor Morgan wanted the festschrift to be a special issue of JTAS—a journal founded in 2009 by Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin of Stanford University, Professor Alfred Hornung of Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany), and Professor Lim. I instantly accepted her invitation, as I could not think of a better way to honour and map the legacy of a major literary voice of our time.

Professor Lim began her career as an Anglophone writer at the age of ten and has since published thirteen poetry collections, a memoir, three novels, three volumes of short stories, and numerous authored and edited critical books on Southeast Asian literature, gender studies, diaspora and transnational studies, and Asian-American literature. She was the first Asian woman to win the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book for her debut poetry collection, Crossing the Peninsula and Other Poems, in 1980. She also won the American Book Award twice, in 1989 and 1997; the Asiaweek Short Story Prize in 1997; the MELUS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009; and the Feminist Press Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. She has held fellowships or visiting professorships at universities including Yale, MIT, the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and City University of Hong Kong, and was Chair Professor and Head of the Department of English at the University of Hong Kong from 1999 to 2001.

Despite her multifaceted talent, Professor Lim regards herself primarily as a poet. Accordingly, we focused the festschrift on her poetry, bringing together eight articles and an introduction by well-known scholars from different cultures and generations across Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and the US—all friends and admirers of Professor Lim. It also included five of Professor Lim’s new poems, accompanied by commentary from Professor Morgan. Titled “Festschrift: The Poetry and Poetics of Shirley Geok-lin Lim,” it was published in December 2019 as volume 10, issue 2, of the journal.

This experience bolstered my confidence, and I took on a second festschrift—this time for my revered teacher and colleague at the University of Dhaka, Professor Niaz Zaman. Professor Zaman is a celebrated Anglophone writer with three novels, three collections of short stories, numerous scholarly books and essays, and edited anthologies of creative and critical writing. She has received several national and international awards and fellowships, including the Bangla Academy Award for Translation in 2016, the American Alumni Association Award for Education in 2017, the UPL Prolific Author Award in 2018, and Ekushey Padak from the government of Bangladesh, the country’s second-highest civilian award.

Professor Zaman is the “spider mother” of our generation—an intellectual descendant of the towering South Asian feminist and women’s educationist Begum Rokeya and a central creative force in the Bangladeshi literary and academic scene—who has inspired and nurtured a new generation of scholars and writers in the country through her dedication, warmth, mentorship, resilience, creative power, and the energy to instil empathy and moral imagination in her students and admirers. She has shared her life and literary mantra through classroom lectures at three universities in Bangladesh—University of Dhaka, University of Chittagong, and Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB)—as well as through The Reading Circle (TRC), a reading group with occasional publications that she founded in 2020, and through Gantha, a platform for aspiring women writers, young and old, in both English and Bangla , which has published several books by members of the group, such as Ganthagalpa (2010), Lekhoker Kotha (2013), and Alice Munro: Nirbachita Galpa (2017). She initiated these two organisations to address the historical lack of networking opportunities and informal literary gatherings for women that are readily available to their male counterparts in a conservative, androcentric society like Bangladesh, where, of late, the deformity of religion and the commodification of culture have become a dominant norm.

Once I was confident in the project’s feasibility, I invited my esteemed friend, the iconic literary scholar Professor Fakrul Alam, to share editorial responsibilities. We worked hand in hand throughout the project and, after about two years of hard work, brought out the festschrift Confluence of Words and Worlds: Essays in Honour of Professor Niaz Zaman earlier this year. Published by The University Press Limited and funded by IUB, the festschrift features 16 articles by colleagues, students, and admirers of Professor Niaz Zaman, focusing on different aspects of her writing or on her research topics that have influenced and inspired the participating authors. 

Following the successful launch of Confluence at IUB on June 8, I have undertaken a third festschrift—this time for Professor Fakrul Alam, my co-editor on the previous volume and a distinguished literary academic and critic who has published with such leading international publishers as Harvard University Press and Oxford University Press. He has mentored numerous students and young scholars across generations. The book will be co-edited with Professor Rubina Khan of Dhaka University and Professor Ahasanuzzaman of IUB. We already have 23 academics from Australia, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the UK, and the USA—all former students, colleagues, or admirers of Professor Alam, yet renowned scholars in their own right—who have committed to the project. We plan to present the book to Professor Alam on July 21, 2027, to commemorate his 76th birthday, and expect East West University, where Professor Alam serves as an advisor to the English Department, to sponsor it.

These festschrifts are likely to benefit Asian academia in multiple ways. They will help bridge the divide between established and emerging scholars by introducing and nurturing the younger generation to the culture of collective scholarly tribute and intellectual community. They will also foster a culture of gratitude, mentorship, collegiality, and intellectual continuity, and demonstrate that festschrifts are a vital means of preserving academic memory and honouring senior scholars who have inspired younger generations through their selfless dedication to knowledge, creativity, and research, thereby encouraging them to advance the cause of learning for the betterment of humanity.

Mohammad Quayum is an academic, writer, and editor whose scholarship bridges South Asian and Southeast Asian literary and cultural studies.