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 is an excerpt. Read the full essay on The Daily Star and Star Books and Literature websites.

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