The journal follows in the tracks of Poligrafías. Revista de Literatura Comparada, founded in 1996 by Luz Aurora Pimentel, and Poligrafías. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada. Nueva Época, directed by Adriana de Teresa Ochoa from 2012 to 2018. Poligrafías. Revista de Literatura Comparada was tightly linked to the Comparative Literature Graduate Program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), which was established in 1989 and went through an upsurge in 1996. Since the 1960s, the School of Philosophy and Literature, UNAM, held courses that, though not named as such, clearly had a comparatist approach—for example, with analyses made between the works of Proust and Carpentier, or between Beckett and Pinter’s. These courses can be seen as the basis of the work and methodologies that developed afterward.

 

In 1975, the Department of Modern Language and Literatures (Colegio de Letras Modernas) was founded and four important literary traditions were institutionally grouped—English, French, German, and Italian literature—which would eventually flourish into different groups and academic efforts explicitly directed towards comparative literature. Nowadays, the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures also includes the study of Portuguese literature and is in constant communication with other departments such as Classic Literature, Hispanic Literature, Theater, Philosophy, Geography, and History.

 

Poligrafías. Revista de Literatura Comparada showcased the research of professors and students, as well as their connections with other places around the world that had a comparatist approach. The journal had a remarkable Editorial Committee of comparatists that were fundamental for the development of the discipline’s teaching and research in Mexico and an Advisory Panel formed by notable international comparatists. With this structure, four print issues, organized by topics or common themes, were published up until 2004, gathering essays and reviews of theory and criticism key to comparatist research.

 

In 2012, the journal was published again under a new name, Poligrafías. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada. Nueva Época, emphasizing its attention to literary theory and broadening its picture, as Adriana de Teresa Ochoa, its editor, established in the presentation of this new period, where she highlighted the incorporation of different proposals of reflection and cultural analysis. It is worth mentioning that the new editorial board emerged from the Literary Theory and Criticism Seminar, whose members—who came from the Department of Modern Language and Literatures, the Department of Hispanic Literature, the Literature Graduate Program, and the Center for Research on North America (CISAN) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico—had previously worked together developing several studies involving literary theory and a comparatist approach. The Editorial Committee kept the Advisory Panel, the very same Luz Aurora Pimentel, and some important scholars in the development of the discipline from its origins. During this period, four issues that illustrate classic comparatist studies and the new horizons of literary and cultural theory of those years were also published.

 

In 2018, within the framework of the Journal Project of the Research Program at the School of Philosophy and Literature, Nuevas Poligrafías. Revista de Teoría Literaria y Literatura Comparada resumes the work of such important publications in Open Access.

—Irene Artigas Albarelli