The cover of a new journal started and edited by Joseph Carroll, Curators' Professor of English at UMSL.

Joseph Carroll, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, co-founded and co-edited The Evolutionary Review: Art Science, Culture, a new annual journal published by State University of New York Press in Albany. The first volume debuted in January.

The journal was co-founded and co-edited with Alice Andrews, who teaches in the Psychology Department at State University of New York at New Paltz. The founders of The Evolutionary Review set out to bring together a mix of “big-name senior scholars and bright young people” to write on serious scholarship, but to avoid dull, academic style. The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New Yorker served as models for the kind of style they sought. Unlike pieces in these publications, writers for The Evolutionary Review all adopt an evolutionary perspective on human nature.

“Our chief aim is to demonstrate the evolutionary human sciences can in fact encompass all things human,” Carroll said. “Along with essays on the most difficult theoretical issues in the field, we have essays on Facebook and ‘American Idol,’ movie reviews, an essay on the neurobiology of musical response, a survey of the main themes in the 40 or 50 chief operas and essays on horror fiction and women in cinema. It’s a review of culture in general.”

In addition to several 4,000-word essays and 1,500-word reviews, each volume will feature about 15 illustrations, including photos, reproductions of paintings and panels of comics. The second volume is due out next January. The anthology “Evolution, Literature and Film: A Reader,” which is co-edited by Carroll, is scheduled for release in April.

“The evolutionary movement in literary studies is picking up steam in a big way,” said Carroll, a leading authority on Darwinian literary theory and author of “Evolution and Literary Theory” and “Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature.” A new volume of Carroll’s essays, “Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice,” will be published by SUNY Press later this year.

Visit http://www.evolutionaryreview.com for more information about The Evolutionary Review: Art, Science, Culture. Visit http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5077-the-evolutionary-review-volume-1-issue-1.aspx to subscribe to the journal or purchase individual articles from it.

More information:
http://www.umsl.edu/divisions/artscience/english/faculty/carroll.html
http://www.sunypress.edu/