2022 Call for Contributions

The editorial team of Scholarly Editing invites contributions to Volume 40 of the journal, which will be published in 2022.

Several recent publications influence our call for Volume 40. The essays published in Indigenous Textual Cultures: Reading and Writing in the Age of Global Empire (2020) and in The Digital Black Atlantic (2021) emphasize the impacts of decolonial scholarship worldwide, and we are grateful to editors Tony Ballantyne, Lachy Paterson, Angela Wanhalla, Roopika Risam, and Kelly Baker Josephs for these contexts. Similarly, “Libraries and Archives in the Anthropocene” (2020), a recent issue of the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies edited by Eira Tansey and Robert D. Montoya, interrogates the meanings of archival and library practices in our current cultural moment. Our K-12 Teaching and Learning Sources and Narratives section is likewise influenced by conversations on race and ethnicity in the classical world by Solange Ashby, Debora Heard, and Stuart Tyson Smith and on teaching LGBTQ+ history by Eric Marcus, Deb Fowler, and the team at History Unerased. We are particularly interested in contributions that are in dialogue with these teachers and scholars.

We particularly seek the contributions of researchers from Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people and cultures of the Global South as well as those who have expertise in the histories and literatures of those groups and peoples, including documentary editors, textual scholars, historians, educators, genealogists, family historians, students, librarians, archivists, and community members.

Contributions for Volume 40 are due June 1, 2022.

For further information about technical specifications, content, and house style, see the “Contributing” page on our website.
Direct all questions about submission and peer review to Managing Editor Robert Riter at rbriter@ua.edu.

Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people and cultures of the Global South are underrepresented in the field of scholarly editing. That paucity of representation is a telling indicator of systemic and institutional racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination. For Volume 40, we seek contributions that focus on the following:

• texts by Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, communities in the Global South, and other marginalized groups;
• the recovery efforts of small-scale projects and micro-editions;
• rare or marginal texts;
• texts that dislodge the single-author model;
• oral histories and tales;
• creative works of “rememory”;
• explorations of ways in which scholarly editions, archives, metadata, and pedagogical recovery projects can promote inclusion, rather than reproducing colonization/marginalization;
• discussions of the manner in which editors can offer nuance and context to historically famous and canonical figures so that attention is given to their accomplishments as well as the ways in which they violated human rights or ethical norms, or in other ways failed to live up to the representations of them in popular culture;
• the decolonizing of artistic works, archives, records, and editions for the discoverability of racialized and underrepresented stories and cultural artifacts as well as cautionary advice from communities who prefer to preserve their cultural heritages in their own ways;
• and the role that new technologies, social media environments, editorial institutes, and other educational initiatives play in advancing all of the endeavors set forth above.

We acknowledge the complex issues related to cultural sovereignty and the ownership and control of texts, stories, and documents of Indigenous peoples, and we recognize that our adoption of a Creative Commons license and open access publication raises questions of colonization and appropriation with regard to micro-editions. We welcome short meditations, provocations, and full-length essays that address these concerns.

We particularly encourage transcripts of conversations and interviews between recovery practitioners; essays on the theory, practice, and pedagogy of recovery; reviews of print and digital editions, digital humanities projects, and the digital tools that enhance recovery; and small-scale editions of the understudied authors, texts, and documents that reflect our diverse and multifaceted cultural heritage.

We are interested in contributions in all disciplines and from individuals at any stage of their career, as well as from those who engage in public history and the advancement of knowledge beyond the academy. We encourage the submission of contributions from all those who are custodians of knowledge.

Essays

Scholarly Editing publishes essays on decolonizing analyses and practices and on the theory and practice of recovering the voices and cultures of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous peoples; Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, and the people and cultures of the Global South. Such contributions may also explore the digital tools and contexts that enhance this work.

Uncovering and Sustaining the Cultural Record

Editing primary sources for publication has extensive origins in multiple disciplines, as is evident from the membership of the Association for Documentary Editing, a multi-disciplinary organization that includes scholars from history, philosophy, literature, and musicology in the United States and abroad. We invite scholars, digital humanists, librarians, students, archivists, educators, and community members from outside these groups to contribute brief essays (1,250-4,000 words) about their experiences of uncovering and sustaining the cultural record as a set of practices, as a field, or as an act of recovery of silenced voices.

In issuing this invitation, we look forward to publishing a set of short essays that will demonstrate diversities of practice, perspective, and emphasis. Our goal is to explore capaciously the contexts of knowledge production as theorized by Roopika Risam in New Digital Worlds: Postcolonial Digital Humanities in Theory, Praxis, and Pedagogy (2019). Central questions include “how projects are designed, how material in them is framed, how data in them is managed, and what forms of labor are being used to create them.”

Review Essays

Scholarly Editing reviews letterpress and digital editions, digital projects, and the digital tools that enhance recovery of, and expand access to, primary-source materials. In accordance with our Statement of Purpose, we review materials that amplify the work of diverse voices and celebrate the contributions of underrepresented and silenced communities. While we do not accept unsolicited reviews, we welcome proposals from readers who would like to serve as reviewers as well as recommendations of work that may be appropriate for review.

College and University Classroom Essays

We invite all explorations of the intersections between recovery and pedagogy at the university level. Potential areas of inquiry may include theoretical approaches to teaching scholarly editing and other forms of digital recovery, the use of primary source materials in the classroom and in public outreach programs, teaching with print editions and/or born digital projects, and training student members of editorial projects. Collaborative essays are welcome, including those that advance their argument through case studies and with materials such as assignments, course syllabi, and excerpts from students’ work (with appropriate permission).

Micro-Editions

Scholarly Editing is a home to sustainable small-scale editions of interesting and understudied texts. Such editions may range from a single document to 130 short documents or to two variants of a single text. We encourage those who wish to propose a micro-edition to consult the executive editorial team in advance of forwarding their proposals.

K-12 Teaching and Learning Sources and Narratives

The purpose of the K-12 Teaching and Learning Sources and Narratives section is to support and promote high-quality curricula in which primary sources help students analyze and engage with the historical past. These pieces may focus on any period from ancient civilization up to contemporary times, with a focus on bringing to light marginalized, overlooked, and understudied perspectives and those who have been subject to colonization, both in history and historiography.

In working with primary sources, students develop critical thinking skills, understand historical events from the perspectives of those who lived them, and learn not just what we know about the past but how we know it. Students at all levels, from kindergarten through high school, can benefit from exposure to a wide variety of primary sources that reflect a diversity of voices and perspectives.

With these goals in mind, the K-12 Teaching and Learning section highlights primary sources that help educators teach history in new and innovative ways. We welcome contributions that complement existing curriculum materials but offer contrast in perspective or voice. Special consideration will be given to pieces that contrast two sources from the same historical context.

Voices and Perspectives: Interviews and Conversations

We publish transcripts of conversations and interviews with recovery practitioners. We invite those who wish to propose conversations and interviews to consult the executive editorial team in advance of forwarding their proposals.