This issue of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics is devoted to the intersection of the imaginary and the documentary, the fictional and the cultural in the three genres of literature
(poetry, fiction, and drama), in history, in film (feature and documentary), in photography, in plastic arts, and in architecture. Collagein art, portrait paintings, political poetry, archival
footage in films, the historic novel, and the metaphors of histography are some of the examples that demonstrate the interfacing between the imaginary and the documentary. Subjectivity and
ideology of the artist and scholar might be couched in a flight of fantasy or in a rational argument , but in both cases they are joined to a specific worldview that is analyzed and discussed.
