Journal Review Presentation

Due:

  • Journal subfield(s) and top 3 journal selections due by class on Monday, September 15
  • Presentations during class on Monday, September 29

Your journal review presentation is a short, informal ~5-7-minute presentation to the class about a leading or well-known peer-reviewed journal in one of your fields or subfields. After selecting the journal, you will investigate its history, editorial stance, foci and/or distinctive identity as a journal, institutional location, publication schedule or sequence, and/or recent issues. You will then present this information about your journal to the class on Monday, September 29.

Your presentation should include the following:

  1. An indication of the subfield(s) of literary and/or cultural studies in which your journal publishes work (this is about the expected audience for this journal; who can we expect to read it regularly?);
  2. Basic information about the journal itself, perhaps including:
    • Where the journal is published and/or its institutional location (is it published by a scholarly organization? a specific department? etc.), its editor and/or editorial board, and/or advisory board (does the journal provide any information about the role of its editorial and/or advisory boards in the publication process?);
    • How issues are organized, the journal’s publication schedule, the different kinds of work it publishes (research articles, book reviews, review essays, etc.), whether it regularly publishes special issues, and/or any accompanying digital publications or forums;
    • How potential authors can submit their work to the journal and any information the journal offers about its submission and/or peer review process;
  3. A discussion of what makes this journal distinctive (this is about the journal’s identity; what differentiates it from other venues in the subfield? how would you characterize its editorial stance?); and
  4. A discussion of 1-2 specific articles published by the journal in the last ~2-3 years that you think exemplify or characterize the journal’s identity and/or editorial stance and why.

You should focus the majority of your presentation on discussing numbers 3 and 4.

Selecting Your Journal

You should select a leading or well-known peer-reviewed journal in one of the fields or subfields in which you envision yourself working as a scholar. This assignment will be more helpful to you if you select a journal to which you could envision yourself submitting work in the near-ish future, so I encourage you to consider your selection carefully and to choose a journal that is specific to your research interests rather than a more general-purpose journal such as PMLA or Critical Inquiry.

If you’re not sure which journal you’d like to investigate, there are a number of resources you can utilize to help make your selection. You might start with the syllabi for the courses you’re taking this semester and conduct a survey of the venues where more recent work you will be reading in these classes is being published. You might also think about recent works of scholarship you have enjoyed or found inspiring and where they were published. You might also investigate where scholars whose work you admire have published recently. You can also talk to me or to other faculty about your research interests and ask for their suggestions about leading journals in your areas of interest. You can check out the “Literary Studies Journals” page of the Humanities Journals Wiki for a more comprehensive list of journals in various subfields. And for an even more comprehensive list, you can utilize the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which is available to you through Cornell’s library, to search for journals covering specific areas.

There is no one criterion that can definitively tell you if a journal is a “leading” or “well-known” journal in a particular subfield. In many subfields there may be several “leading” or “well-known” journals. While other disciplines rely heavily on metrics such as impact factor in ranking journals, in literary and cultural studies (like other disciplines in the humanities), the situation is more fluid and such metrics are often considered less important than reputation and perceived prestige. If you have questions about whether a specific journal is a “leading” or “well-known” journal in a particular subfield, I encourage you to ask me, other faculty, and/or your graduate student colleagues (perhaps a colleague who is further along in the program than you) for their input and opinions.

By class on Monday, Sept 15, you should email me with the following information:

  • The specific subfield(s) to which your selected journals contribute (e.g., African-American literary studies, post45 US literary studies, early modern studies, environmental humanities, etc.);
  • A ranked list of three possible journals you would like to investigate for this assignment.

Our goal is for everyone in class to present on a different journal, so depending on when I receive your email and what other journals your classmates are interested in investigating, you may not be able to investigate your top choice. I will assign journals on a first-come, first-served basis, and I will publish a list of selected journals to this page as I receive them. Although I would like you to prioritize a journal specific to your field(s)/subfield(s), you may include journals geared toward literary and/or cultural studies more generally, such as Critical Inquiry, PMLA, or New Literary History, in the list you send to me as back-up options.

Investigating Your Journal and Presenting Your Journal Review

Preparing for your presentation will mainly involve reading through your selected journal’s website and surveying/skimming some recent issues. You may also wish to bring in a page of notes to use to help you present. Please note that some journals may not provide information about all of the items or questions listed in numbers 1-4 at the top of this page; cover what you can and what you think is most important to discuss in the time you have.

Your presentation should be around 5-7 minutes long. I will set a timer that will go off after 7 minutes; after that point, you will have 30 more seconds to wrap up your presentation. It is important that we stick to time so that everyone in class has a chance to present. You do not need to prepare slides or other visual aids for your presentation, though you may choose to use the projector to display the journal’s webpage and/or a sample article if you wish.

Selected Journals

  • Aaron: Aphra Behn Online
  • Andrea: Gothic Studies
  • Yinka: Research in African Literatures
  • Niloofar: Modernism/modernity
  • Brett: GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
  • Iza: Latino Studies
  • Isaiah: African American Review