UNITAS, which was established in 1922 and one of the oldest extant academic journals in the Philippines, has been reinvigorated and launched as an online journal.
UNITAS is an international online peer reviewed journal of advanced research in literature, culture, and society. It is published bi-annually by the University of Santo Tomas.
Having come out in May and November 2017, UNITAS is also available in hard copies as printed on demand or in a limited edition.
During the formal launch of the UNITAS online held recently at the Thomas
Aquinas Research Complex Auditorium, UST Secretary-General Rev. Fr. Jesús M. Miranda, Jr., O.P., expressed his pride in the long legacy of the journal, tracing its multidisciplinary roots and multilingual history in
his welcome remarks. He pointed out that it was first published monthly in Spanish when UST was still in its first campus in Intramuros, as the construction of the Main Building in the Sampaloc campus was underway. It eventually became a bilingual publication, utilizing Spanish and English,
and then English and Filipino.
Recently, it has published articles in local languages, such as Kapampangan.
In almost a century of being at the forefront of knowledge generation and
dissemination, UNITAS is known for being the venue of academic discussion and research as it expands the theoretical grounds of the various fields and disciplines. For its widereaching and topical comprehensiveness,
UNITAS has long been known for its tradition of publishing outstanding scholarly works.
The reinvigoration of UNITAS was made possible through the various offices of UST that include the Office of the Rector, Office of the Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs, Office of the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation,
Research Center for Culture, Arts, and Humanities, Office of the Secretary-General, the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and the Office of the Scholar-in-Residence.
UST Faculty of Arts and Letters Dean Prof. Michael Anthony C. Vasco, Ph.D.,
stressed in his closing remarks, “We hope that, through the revival of UNITAS, more scholars would be given the opportunity to publish their
research and make it more accessible to the wider public, this time through UNITAS as an online journal.”
The members of the International Editorial Board include University of Chicago Professor of Comparative Literature Loren Kruger, Philippine National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera, Edge Hill University Professor of
Performing Arts Victor Merriman, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Sciences Po Paris Patrick A. Messerlin, National Institute of Education Assistant Professor T. Ruanni F. Tupas, University of Warwick Professor of
Comparative Literary Studies Stephen Shapiro, among others.
Prof. Maria Luisa Torres Reyes, Ph.D., UST Scholar–in–Residence, is the Editor-in-Chief of UNITAS. It is hosted by the UST Department of
Literature under the Faculty of Arts and Letters.
Future issues include a special edition on Philippine Literature in Spanish, guest edited by Dr. Jorge Mojaro Romero, from the Instituto Cervantes de Manila and the University of Santo Tomas, as well as another special edition
on Film Criticism in the Philippines, co-guest edited by Prof. Joel David of Inha University, South Korea, and Prof. Joyce Arriola of UST.
More recently, UNITAS has also launched a book-length study of Nick Joaquin’s works by E. San Juan, Jr. The 2017 issues of UNITAS may both be
accessed through http://unitasust.net.
