60 Days of Scholarly Journal Article Writing -- Day 16

For background on the 60 Days of Journal Article Writing, please click here.

Do you want to get blown away? I mean seriously impressed? Then have a look at this amazing list, which is only for one literary field! There are 26 journals on the main list, and 15 on the "of interest" list, for a stunning total of 41. Please tell me if I missed anything.

This will be a long post, because I have been researching possible journals to which I will submit my public guinea pig, an article-in-progress in Restoration and early eighteenth-century studies. Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks suggests a detailed search process at the beginning of Week 4. There are a lot of great journals out there.

This is not the place to debate impact factor and other key issues (I've discussed it a number of times with editors at the annual Blackwell conference in DC, and in other contexts), but it is reasonably straightforward to work with a good reference librarian and construct a solid list of journals to consider for your various projects. If you live in a town that lacks this splendid resource, the internet yields much on a search of journal rankings.

Following is a list I find quite staggering. I consider myself in a "narrow" field, but oh heavens the choices for potential publication depending upon the project, its scope and parameters. One of them is my first choice for the article I'm blogging about, but creating this list really flapped my brain about the possibilities, and how straightforward it would be to re-think a piece that was rejected at one place, elevate it to better scholarship, and submit it somewhere else.

I personally consider all of these to be first-tier journals, and I welcome input from others on that assessment. They are in alphabetical order, along with one paragraph from the journal's own copy.

Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (University of Illinois). Welcomes essays concerned with the application of contemporary theory and methodology to all aspects of culture 1660-1800, including literature, history, fine arts, science, history of ideas, and popular culture.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction (McMaster University). An international quarterly, published in French and English, devoted to the critical and historical investigation of literature and culture of the period 1660-1832.

Eighteenth-Century Life (Duke University Press). Committed to interdisciplinary exchange, Eighteenth-Century Life addresses all aspects of European and world culture during the long eighteenth century, 1660–1815.

Eighteenth-Century Studies (Johns Hopkins University). Publishes different modes of analysis and disciplinary discourses that explore how recent historiographical, critical, and theoretical ideas have engaged scholars concerned with the eighteenth century. The official publication of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).

ELH: English Literary History (Johns Hopkins University). Since 1934, ELH has published studies that interpret the conditions affecting major works in English and American literature. The importance of historical continuity in the discipline of letters remains a central concern for ELH but the journal does not seek to sponsor particular methods or aims.

English Manuscript Studies: 1100-1700 (The British Library and the University of Chicago).

Forum for Modern Language Studies (Oxford University Press). Publishes articles on all aspects of literary and linguistic studies, from the Middle Ages to the present day. The journal sets out to reflect the essential pluralism of modern language and literature studies and to provide a forum for worldwide scholarly discussion.

Huntington Library Quarterly (University of California Press). Publishes articles on the literature, history, and art of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries in Britain and America, with special emphasis on: the interactions of literature, politics, and religion; the social and political contexts of literary and art history; textual and bibliographical studies, including the history of printing and publishing; American studies, through the early nineteenth century; and the performance history of drama and music.

Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (Wiley-Blackwell). Formerly British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Publishes articles relating to the eighteenth century, on specific questions of interest to eighteenth-century scholars, as well as on interdisciplinary questions.

The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society (Oxford, for the Bibliographical Society). UK scholarly journal for the study of bibliography and of the role of the book in history.

Literature and History (Manchester University Press). Unique in its plural identity, it is a biannual international refereed journal concerned to investigate the relations between writing, history and ideology. It provides an open forum for practitioners coming from the distinctive vantage points of either discipline (or from other adjacent subject areas) to explore issues of common concern: period, content, gender, class, nationality, changing sensibilities, discourse and language.

MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly (Duke University Press). Open to essays on literary change from the Middle Ages to the present, and welcomes theoretical reflections on the relationship of literary change or historicism to feminism, ethnic studies, cultural materialism, discourse analysis, and all other forms of representation and cultural critique.

Modern Language Review (Modern Humanities Research Association, UK). Sibling publication to Yearbook of English Studies, published by the same Association. Papers submitted to one will be considered for the other.

Modern Philology (University of Chicago). Concerned with literary works, literary traditions, and literary criticism-we do not intend to compete with our cousin journal, Critical Inquiry, in range of material treated-and we are not concerned with Western classical literature-here we do not intend to compete with our sister journal, Classical Philology. But we are not, except in these ways, a specialized journal. We will publish work on literature from the (date of) the medieval period in the West forward, and not only in the Western tradition.

New Literary History (Johns Hopkins University Press). Focuses on questions of theory, method, interpretation, and literary history. Rather than espousing a single ideology or intellectual framework, it canvasses a wide range of scholarly concerns. By examining the bases of criticism, the journal provokes debate on the relations between literary and cultural texts and present needs.

Novel: A Forum on Fiction (Brown University). Dedicated to promoting critical discourse on the novel and publishing new and significant work on fiction and related areas of research and theory.

Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (Bibliographical Society of America). Contributions to the Papers may deal with books and manuscripts in any field, but should involve consideration of the book or manuscript (the physical object) as historical evidence, whether for establishing a text or illuminating the history of book production, publication, distribution, or collecting, or for other purposes. Studies of the printing, publishing, and allied trades are also welcome.

PMLA: Papers of the Modern Language Association (MLA). Welcomes essays from its members of interest to those concerned with the study of language and literature. As the publication of a large and heterogeneous association, the journal is receptive to a variety of topics, whether general or specific, and to all scholarly methods and theoretical perspectives.

Philological Quarterly (University of Iowa). Welcomes submissions on any aspect of medieval European and modern literature and culture. Special issues on particular themes, under guest editorship, also appear regularly in our pages, as do solicited book reviews. Some of the articles we publish pay close attention to textual detail, while others take textuality itself as a central analytical category, a realm that includes physical bibliography, the sociology of knowledge, the history of reading, reception studies, and other fields of inquiry.

Prose Studies (Routledge). Forum for discussion of the history, theory and criticism of non-fictional prose of all periods. While the journal publishes studies of such recognized genres of non-fiction as autobiography, biography, the sermon, the essay, the letter, the journal etc., it also aims to promote the study of non-fictional prose as an important component in the profession's ongoing re-configuration of the categories and canons of literature. Interdisciplinary studies, articles on non-canonical texts and essays on the theory and practice of discourse are also included.

SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 (Johns Hopkins University). SEL focuses on four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century. The editors select learned, readable papers that contribute significantly to the understanding of British literature from 1500 to 1900.

Signs (University of Chicago Press). Publishes pathbreaking articles of interdisciplinary interest addressing gender, race, culture, class, nation, and/or sexuality either as central focuses or as constitutive analytics; symposia engaging comparative, interdisciplinary perspectives from around the globe to analyze concepts and topics of import to feminist scholarship; retrospectives that track the growth and development of feminist scholarship, note transformations in key concepts and methodologies, and construct genealogies of feminist inquiry; and new directions essays, which provide an overview of the main themes, controversies, and approaches in recent scholarship in particular fields and introduce this work and its theoretical and conceptual innovations to an interdisciplinary audience.

Studies in Bibliography (University of Virginia). Presents a wide range of scholarly articles on bibliography and textual criticism. A forum for the best textual and bibliographical work being done anywhere in the world, a role it seeks to maintain under the editorship of [Fredson] Bowers's successor, David L. Vander Meulen.

Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Johns Hopkins). Annual volume that features significantly revised versions of outstanding papers read at national and regional conferences of ASECS and its affiliates.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature (University of Tulsa). Devoted to the study of both literary and nonliterary texts--any and all works in every language and every historical period produced by women's pens.

Yearbook of English Studies (Modern Humanities Research Association, UK). Sibling publication to Modern Language Review, published by the same Association. Papers submitted to one will be considered for the other.

LIST TWO: Journals of great interest, but not quite in my discipline or methods:

The Age of Johnson (AMS).

British Journal of Aesthetics (Oxford University Press). An international forum for debate in philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of art. The Journal is published to promote the study and discussion of philosophical questions about aesthetic experience and the arts.

The Cambridge Quarterly (Cambridge University Press). A journal of literary criticism which also publishes articles on cinema, the visual arts, and music. It aims, without sacrifice of scholarly standards, to engage readers outside as well as inside the academic profession.

Comparative Critical Studies, formerly New Comparison and Comparative Criticism, now merged (Edinburgh University Press for the British Comparative Literature Association). Concerned with with comparative literary and critical studies internationally and in the U.K., from whatever standpoint.

Eighteenth-Century Ireland (Mary Immaculate College, Limerick). The refereed Journal of the Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society / Cumann Éire san Ochtú Céad Déag.

Journal of the History of Ideas (University of Pennsylvania Press). A medium for the publication of research in intellectual history that is of common interest to scholars and students in a wide range of fields. It is committed to encouraging diversity in regional coverage, chronological range, and methodological approaches. JHI defines intellectual history expansively and ecumenically, including the histories of philosophy, of literature and the arts, of the natural and social sciences, of religion, and of political thought. It also encourages scholarship at the intersections of cultural and intellectual history — for example, the history of the book and of visual culture.

MLN: Modern Language Notes (Johns Hopkins University Press): Critical studies in the modern languages (Italian, Hispanic, German, French) and recent work in comparative literature provide the foundation for the articles and notes in MLN. Every volume contains four single-language issues and one comparative literature issue.

Oxford Literary Review (Edinburgh University Press). Britain's oldest journal of literary theory. It is concerned especially with the history and development of deconstructive thinking in all areas of intellectual, cultural and political life.

Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory (Edinburgh University Press). Publishes essays and review articles in English which explore critical theory in general and its application to literature, other arts and society. Regular special issues by guest editors highlight important themes and figures in modern critical theory.

Parallax: A Journal of Metadiscursive Theory and Cultural Practices (Leeds, UK). I don't have a link or more information for this journal.

Philosophy and Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press). Explores the dialogue between literary and philosophical studies . . . aesthetics of literature, theory of criticism, philosophical interpretation of literature, and literary treatment of philosophy. ... challenges the cant and pretensions of academic priesthoods through its assortment of lively, wide-ranging essays, notes, and reviews that are written in clear, jargon-free prose. (Love that last bit.)

Poetics (Elsevier). Interdisciplinary journal of theoretical and empirical research on culture, the media and the arts. Particularly welcome are papers that make an original contribution to the major disciplines - psychology, sociology, and economics - within which promising lines of research on art and culture have been developed including economic sociology and the sociology of culture.

Poetics Today (Duke University Press). Brings together scholars from throughout the world who are concerned with developing systematic approaches to the study of literature (e.g., semiotics and narratology) and with applying such approaches to the interpretation of literary works.

Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University for the Voltaire Foundation). We welcome work across a broad range of disciplines and critical methodologies, reflecting the diversity and global network of exchange that characterises the Enlightenment.

Textual Practice (Routledge). Works at the turning points of theory with politics, history and texts. It is intrigued by the processes through which hitherto marginal cultures of ethnicity and sexuality are becoming conceptually central, and by the consequences of these diverse disturbances for educational and cultural institutions.