Academic Journals Sponsored and Edited by Department and Faculty

Without academic journals and databases, it would be a challenge for literary scholars to conduct their research.

Through funding and Research Assistants, Ralph Bauer has developed Early Americas Digital Archive, on which he serves as Editor. Ralph initially received support from the department in 2003, when he was granted a semester of research leave sponsored by MITH. In 2008, the dDepartment provided Ralph with a graduate research assistant who aids in the development and updates of EADA. At the same time, the department  provided a grant to purchase content for the database and to support publication of EADA. Ralph believes that without the department's support, it would have been impossible to develop EADA.

Emeritus Professor Jackson Bryer is the co-founder and co-editor of Resources for American Literary Study, founded in 1971. The department provided Jackson with a research assistant who performed various tasks on the journal such as, proofreading articles, proofreading galley proofs, checking missing information in footnotes and Works Cited listings in articles, researching missing information in articles and book reviews, and compiling an index for the issues. Jackson considers the departmental backing a significant contribution to the success and prestige RALS has achieved in the academic community. Jackson believes he could not have properly done his job as co-editor without the support.

Ted Leinwand has held a variety of positions at Shakespeare Quarterly. This past year, Ted served as Associate Editor, and recently has been promoted to Consulting Editor. At SQ, he vets essays, typically after they have been double blind peer reviewed by two or more outside readers. Every month, Ted reads multiple essays and discusses their merits with his colleagues at the publication. Ted notes that the publication is a premier journal for scholars to share their research with fellow Shakespeareans. The English department helps to support the publication of SQ.

Bob Levine serves on several editorial boards. Notably, he is on the inaugural board of J19: The Journal of Nineteenth Century Americanists. In this position, he reviews around five to ten essays a year and sends his reports to the co-editors of the journal. According to Bob, J19 is an innovative publication, with a section on “pleasure reading." J19 is based at Penn State University and Vanderbilt University. In addition to serving on J19, Bob is also a General Editor for Norton Anthology of American Literature. He is on the editorial boards of Frederick Douglass Papers, Authorship (an online journal based in Belgium), Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, American Literary History, and Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies. Bob is on the Advisory Board of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, and is a Humanities Consultant for "Maroons in the Americas" (a documentary film).

Sangeeta Ray has served as Associate Editor of Oxford Journals: Contemporary Women’s Writing for the past few years. In recent news, Sangeeta became the Associate Editor for World Literature.

Jane Donawerth co-founded and co-edited Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, on which she served as editor for six years. The journal was supported by the College, a "Friends of the Journal" organization, and the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies. Two years ago, the journal moved to a set of three editors, including Mihoko Suzuki, at the University of Miami. With remaining contributions, a trust was arranged to establish a prize for best article of the journal, with funding still administered by ARHU. 

The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, supported by the English Department and edited by Tita Chico, is a quarterly journal published by the University of Pennsylvania Press featuring scholarship that considers contemporary methodologies in relation to the study of eighteenth-century literature, history, science, fine arts, and popular culture. The Eighteenth Century is committed to an ongoing dialogue among various approaches to the eighteenth century: old and new historicisms, feminism, cultural studies, hermeneutics, and cultural materialism. The articles published recently represent some of the best cutting-edge work in the field. They include analyses of major authors and texts as well as historical questions about social class, the emergence of capitalism in Asia as well as Europe, international trade, imperialism and colonialism, nationalism, gender and sexuality, ethnicity and race, sympathy, the abolition movement, anatomy, the grotesque, and historiography, among many other topics. Recent and upcoming special issues reflect the breadth of The Eighteenth Century’s commitments and include “Accumulation, Dispossession, Enclosure,” “Bruno Latour and the Eighteenth Century,” and “The Drift of Fiction.”