alternative formats
alternative formats
The editors at postmedieval are deeply interested in fostering an expanded range of scholarly genres, beyond the typical scholarly article. Our hope is that this will continue the work of reshaping received scholarly paradigms and will also help meet the needs of scholars working under varied labour conditions. Some of the genres envisioned by our former editors-in-chief (‘What might a journal be?’), and that we are continuing to solicit, are as follows:
This genre has long been a feature of postmedieval. It’s an opportunity to stage a state-of-the-field conversation and open that conversation to wider audiences. Book-review essays are usually around 6000 words and address three to five texts, all related to a specific theme or question. These texts can be, but don’t have to be, monographs. Past reviewers have also considered essay collections, editions, translations, journal issues, novels, and other media documents. We expect these essays to summarize briefly the texts under review, to map out their intellectual contexts within ongoing conversations, and to evaluate the texts’ individual contributions as well as the overall direction of current work. (We will help in obtaining review copies for all accepted proposals.)
Some samples of Book-review essays we have published:
David Matthews, ‘In search of lost elsewheres: Medievalism today’
Philippa Byrne, ‘Chronologies of the animal turn’
In this genre, an author introduces a specific term, some word or expression, from their field of study. The term could be drawn from a premodern archive, from the scholarly methods used to study the past, or from the modern reimagination of the Middle Ages; it could be jargon or slang; it could be an
‘untranslatable.’ Authors will define their term, situate it, riff on its significance, and suggest some of the interesting conceptual or methodological questions that the term could raise. We’re envisioning mini-essays of around 2000 words, but we are open to longer pieces too.
Noted documents Introduce and provide a brief edition, translation, or other presentation of a primary source within your field. The aim of this genre will be to make new sources, and their theoretical stakes, accessible to a wider readership. Accordingly, author-editors are invited to stage the source’s conceptual and methodological relevance to a range of scholars working on different aspects of the medieval or premodern world.
A sample of a Noted document we have published:
Daniel Sawyer, ‘The counter-Arthurian piracy of Jack Spicer's Holy Grail’
Two scholars share a conversation in print. These scholars might be bound together by relations of similarity (working on a similar topic or conceptual problem, traveling similar paths to becoming medievalists, etc.) or by differences (different fields, disciplines, academic generations, or institutions). One might be interviewing the other, or they might be mutually posing questions and responding. We hope the genre will be a chance for the back-and-forth of conversation to find its way into the pages of the journal.
Some samples of Dialogues we have published:
Charlotte Eubanks and Reginald Jackson, ‘All tied up: A conversation about disorder, harmony, and the potentials of entanglement in Classical East Asia’
Kári Gíslason and Lisa Bennett, ‘Creative practice as research in Old Norse-Icelandic studies: Ancillary characters as storytellers’
This genre will be in some ways similar to a book-review essay, but it will focus on a recent conference, symposium, exhibition, or other event (virtual or in-person) that is of interest to the study of the Middle Ages, premodern world, or medievalism. Such a ‘report’ would describe the event for readers (including brief summaries of relevant talks or public dialogue); would contextualize the event within broader conversations (positioning it within the current ‘state of the field’ as well as broader trends in the humanistic or historical disciplines); and would evaluate the nature of the event’s contributions, less by judging the quality of particular papers than by articulating their most compelling aspects, their cumulative impact, any oversights or exclusions of the event, and new directions for future work. We anticipate ‘Reports from the field’ being 3000 to 5000 words in length, though this is flexible. We plan to commission these pieces—so if you’d like to cover an upcoming event, or if you know of an event that should be covered, please reach out to us. Proposals for co-authored reports
are welcome. Authors should not be directly involved with the organization or execution of the event.
If you have interest in writing a piece in any of these genres, please reach out to us at postmedievalED@gmail.com. We welcome proposals, which can be as simple as one or two paragraphs explaining the basic idea for the piece as well as its conceptual or cross-disciplinary interest for readers.
The audience we aim for is quite heterogeneous, composed of scholars working on varied archives of premodernity, early-modernity, and medievalism. Accordingly, we encourage authors to explain specialized terminology and to articulate conceptual stakes with a diverse audience in mind.