by WMQ Editor Josh Piker At the risk of invoking one of my many least favorite Tom Cruise movies—or, as a quick Google search informs me, what looks to be a more recent (but even more uninspired) movie based on a video game—I’d like to talk for a minute about the need for speed. Last year, I blogged about my… Read More
by Josh Piker It will, I suspect, come as no surprise to hear that the relationship between authors and those scholars who serve as readers for article manuscripts is an ambivalent one. I try to recruit five readers’ reports for each essay that goes out for peer review. A not insignificant part of my job consists of finding ways… Read More
Fissiparous. Centrifugal. Pluralization. A-synthetic. Comes to find that when I blog about #vastearlyamerica, my inbox fills up with fifty-cent words. Each of those words captures potential consequences of the expansive nature of our field. Fragmentation, dispersal, diversity, scale, incoherence. I’ve been hearing a lot about these topics since “Getting Lost?” was posted a few months… Read More
In today’s post, WMQ author Miles P. Grier (January 2016) reflects on the editing process at the William and Mary Quarterly and how his background as a literary scholar affected that experience. I ain’t gonna play no second fiddle / Cause I’m used to playing lead —Perry Bradford by Miles P. Grier In a 2008 Forum, published simultaneously in… Read More
In today’s post, WMQ (January 2016) author Christopher Parsons reflects on how the editorial process he went through with the article pushed him to reframe his understanding of the key players in the story—including the leafy one. by Christopher Parsons I know more about ginseng than I ever thought that I would, and I suspect that many of my friends and family… Read More
Last month I wrote about the extraordinary range of subjects, chronologies and geographies encompassed in the field of early American scholarship. As the OI’s support for and investment in interdisciplinary work, and gatherings such as last year’s joint annual conference with the Society of Early Americanists suggest, we should add methods and theoretical approaches to… Read More
Is the WMQ really in danger of “losing its way” as Gordon Wood says it is? Josh Piker looks at just what we mean when we talk about #VastEarlyAmerica and responds to that charge. Karin’s yearlong tour through #VastEarlyAmerica will be fascinating to follow, and I am very much looking forward to the conversations that ensue. With those dialogues and debates… Read More
ICYMI: In the October 2015 issue of Uncommon Sense, Josh Piker brought us some special math. How does 122 + 462 + 462 = 18? Find out how the WMQ answers that question. My daughter, Naima, is twelve and I can no longer help her with her math homework. Yes, she’s that good at the subject; and, yes, I’m… Read More
by Josh Piker I’m frequently asked what it takes to publish in the William and Mary Quarterly, a subject that I’m happy to talk about, of course. I’m especially happy to do so with graduate students and junior scholars. But I find that I discuss strategies for having an article accepted in the Quarterly with the sense that I’m… Read More
By Josh Piker— So, I was reading Joyce Chaplin’s “The Other Revolution” in the most recent issue of Early American Studies when I got to Table 1 (p. 297), which breaks down WMQ “Articles by Subfield” for the volume years 1973, 1983, and 1993. At the bottom of the table, there’s the following caveat: “Note: These numbers do not… Read More
Joshua Piker talks Open Access and Quarterly Subscription Rates Last fall, Karin Wulf, the OI’s Director, met in London with some of the key officials charged with designing and implementing Britain’s Open Access policies. In the course of that conversation, Karin pointed out that STEM journals and humanities and social science journals have very different subscription rates, and she instanced… Read More
One of the OI’s major goals for the next years is to articulate and share the scholarly values and practices that characterize the work of our community from conferences to publications. I talk with willing and unwilling audiences alike about the specific brand of intensive and collaborative editing practiced at the OI. I talk about our editors and our… Read More