The
web page of EJES is to be
found on the website of the publisher Routledge.Routledge belongs to the Taylor & Francis Group.
- the editorial team
- the aims and scope
- the editorial policy
- calls for papers for forthcoming issues
- calls
for topics
- recent issues
- forthcoming
issues
- the former editors (from 1997 to 2005)
1. The Editorial Team
The team appointed in 2006 to relaunch EJES under the Routledge imprint has come to the end of its term of office. Angela Locatelli and Ansgar Nünning are standing down (the latter after ten years at the helm) and will be replaced by Greta Olson and Stephanos Stephanides, whose nominations were confirmed by the ESSE Board in Turin.
Stephanos was trained at University College, Cardiff and is presently Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Cyprus, of which he was a founder member. He is also a leading figure in the Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies and an award-winning poet and translator (http://www.hum.ucy.ac.cy/ENG/people/ stephanides.htm).
While Greta extends our concerns towards the Atlantic, Stephanos brings a volume of intercultural experience at the margins of Europe and Asia. Together, they amplify significantly our vocation to engage with English Studies in Europe 'and beyond' (see the journal's editorial policy).
Martin A. Kayman, Cardiff University
Greta Olson, Justus Liebig University, Giessen
Stephanos Stephanides, University of Cyprus
Adam Piette, University of Sheffield
Following the appointment of the new team of general editors, the advisory board has also been refreshed. Roughly half the previous team continue, and half are new members. Selecting from names proposed by the members of the ESSE Board, we have sought to maintain an appropriate disciplinary and gender balance, with representation from all the active member associations in ESSE. As is now tradition, the former editors have also been appointed to the Board, which is now constituted as follows:
2.1 Aims and Scope
EJES presents work of the highest quality in English literature, linguistics and cultural studies from the multidisciplinary and multicultural perspective that characterises the study of English in Europe. The aim of the journal is to publish substantial scholarly and critical interventions in a fast-developing field and thereby itself to influence the agenda in its disciplines. A research journal, written by and for specialists from all parts of the disciplinary spectrum of English Studies in Europe and beyond, EJES is also addressed to academics interested in the dialogical and plurivocal development of their subject and are interested in innovative work outside their own area of expertise. To this end, it also offers non-specialists examples of recent approaches and new ways of conceiving and engaging the field of English studies. The journal places a high premium on readability, discussion of controversial issues, and the inclusion of a wide range of disciplinary, cultural and theoretical perspectives.
EJES appears three times a year. Individual issues are devoted to specific themes, proposed by guest editors, and designed to attract cutting-edge research from across and between the disciplines that make up English Studies in Europe and beyond. A substantial book review section keeps readers informed about new publications in the field, particularly where these challenge existing assumptions or offer to make a difference to the practice of the discipline. 'The cause is Europe . . . The cause is also English Studies in the broadest sense of that term . . . Moreover, the cause is debate.’ (Editorial, EJES 1.1)
3. Editorial Policy
a. In organising either an issue or a series
of
issues of European Journal of English Studies, we need an idea of what
makes EJES distinctive. What,
in other words, do we mean by 'European'
in the context of this journal?
Although we wish EJES to
privilege work of international quality
produced within Europe, to interpret ‘European’ as a restriction on
authorship by place of work would be both unworkable and outrageous. On
the other hand, whilst the journal will no doubt empirically target a
primarily European readership, to define its Europeanness in that way
would only be to give it a geography, not a content, and, in relation
to an increasingly de-territorialised discipline, perhaps an
old-fashioned geography at that. Furthermore, any attempt to define a
'European' content risks a crass essentialist construction of a unitary
Europe which defies the continent's very own history.
Yet we do need to establish and assert the character of our journal in
a way that distinguishes it from other journals of English Studies, in
a non-parochial manner yet distinctly 'European' way. To that end we
seek to harness aspects of the specificities of the heterogeneous
practices of European English Studies that are also worthy of the
suffix, 'and beyond Europe'.
b. As stated in the journal's 'Aims and Scopes', the
editors propose that what characterises the study of English through
the larger part of Europe is its multidisciplinary and multicultural
nature.
That is to say, in the first place, that English is studied in most of
Europe as a subject made up, in a variety of ways, of a range of
disciplines or sub-disciplines, including Literature, Theory,
Linguistics, Language Studies, Area Studies, and the study of
Culture—each term of which is itself plural in its conceptions and
practices. ‘European’, in this sense, would signify the multifaceted
view of the object of study and its corollary would be the potential
for dialogue between the (sub-)disciplinary approaches which construct
it.
To this end, rather than devoting individual issues to particular
disciplines within English Studies, the editors are proposing a series
of topics each of which may be addressed, in a dialogical manner, from
a variety of disciplinary (and, ideally, interdisciplinary) points of
view. As the original editorial, cited in the Aims and Scopes,
proclaimed: 'the cause is debate'. This, we believe, has worked for the
European English Messenger, and should work also in the more formally
scholarly context of the European Journal of English Studies.
c. If 'European' stands for 'multidisciplinary', it
also stands for 'multicultural'. The editors understand 'multicultural'
here as the inevitable situatedness of the subject (both the subject
who reads and the subject being read) in the various concrete cultural
contexts in which English is studied throughout Europe: in other words,
a location for the study which is itself already a linguistic and
cultural relatedness, and not necessarily a merely a bilateral one.
The fact that European English Studies assumes a variable but located
intercultural relationship to the object of study is not only a matter
of the defining foreignness of the study of English in non-Anglophone
cultures, but embraces the increasing 'strangeness' of the texts and
contexts of the canon as it expands in genres, modality and geography
beyond the traditional realms of 'English' or 'American Studies', even
for Anglophone scholars working in what, problematically no doubt, they
would ultimately still call 'their own language and/or culture'. A
second defining characteristic of European English Studies (‘and
beyond’) would then be the foregrounding of the study of English as a
study of cultural relationship. The editors hope that the Journal will
also play a major part in this dialogue between the texts and contexts
of English and those of other cultures in which it is studied and with
which it interacts - once more, across the various disciplines that
constitute it.
d. The editors would also argue that that European
English Studies are presently also characterised by their growth and
mutability. As we know, there has been a massive expansion of English
Studies in Europe over the last generation, and an equally impressive
increase in contacts between its various localities which has provoked
rethinkings and reconfigurations. With the implementation of the
Bologna Agreement which is currently proceeding at various paces, more
change will occur, both within the subject and, eventually, in its
relations to other disciplines.
Once again, although of particular concern to scholars working within
Europe, the changing nature of the discipline and its objects—the new
cultural contexts, uses and locations of English(es) in the world - is
not restricted to this geographical area.
The policy of EJES in its
selection of themes, and in each issue’s 'open' section, will therefore
also privilege, as characteristically 'European', an attention to such
change, a continual questioning of the
object of study, a constant attention to new texts and contexts, new
approaches, new configurations, new interdisciplinarities, and the
accompanying revision and revaluation of canons and orthodoxies.
e. Finally, we return to the potential audience for EJES. Once again, we are
aware of the dangers of generalisations
regarding the heterogeneous and unstable construction of 'Europe'.
Nonetheless, we are confident that if EJES
editors and contributors aim
to address an audience that does not take the discipline, its objects,
or its questions for granted as part of a single disciplinary or
cultural project—in short, a questioning and heterodox readership -
they
will succeed in earning the readership of a large number of colleagues
in the various contexts that make up Europe - and beyond.
4. Calls for papers for forthcoming issues of EJES
5. Calls for topics
THE EDITORS WELCOME PROPOSALS FOR TOPICS FOR VOLUME 18
There is a (partially) new team at EJES! As has been announced, Angela Locatelli and Ansgar Nünning have stepped down, and Martin Kayman has been joined as general editor by Greta Olson and Stephanos Stephanides.
The new team is continuing the journal’s highly successful policy of commissioning theme-based issues, whose topics are, as far as possible, suggested by the guest editors themselves. The general editors seek to ensure that issues are varied and broad in scope; that they focus on topical issues in and across the disciplines embraced by English Studies in Europe; and that they showcase cutting-edge research from a range of academic traditions. The journal manifests its 'European' character not by restricting access to scholars working in Europe, but by publishing peer-reviewed research of international quality on the topic in hand from a range of disciplinary viewpoints, thereby promoting interdisciplinary discussion on matters of cultural and intellectual concern across the fields of English Studies in Europe and beyond.
Proposals are welcome for new topics to be commissioned for Volume 18, to be published in 2014. The editors are particularly interested in topics that address emergent fields and novel themes; topics concerned with particular periods or periodisation as such; as well as proposals addressing cross-disciplinary issues of research paradigms and methodologies in English Studies. In all cases, guest editors are encouraged to craft their proposal to embrace as broad a range as possible of disciplines in English Studies.
PLEASE SEND YOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR 2014 TO THE GENERAL EDITORS BEFORE 11 NOVEMBER 2011.
We are happy to explore possible ideas with colleagues who are interested in developing proposals for special issues. Issues may be guest edited by one individual or by two or three (ideally from different locations in Europe) as the proponents wish. Full support is provided by the general editors throughout the process of assembling an issue. Please ensure that your proposal demonstrates how it advances the ambitions of the journal for a distinctive 'European' approach to English Studies.
For further details regarding the journal's Aims and Scopes and its Editorial Policy, visit the ESSE website, or feel free to contact any of the general editors.
Potential contributors and guest editors should note that, in order to ensure fairness in the selection of articles and to guarantee the quality of the material published by the journal, proposals for submissions are subject to peer review, as are the final version of submitted articles.
6. Recent Issues of EJES
The tables of contents of past issues of EJES, as well as abstracts of papers publishes, are available from the website of Routledge, starting with the three issues of Volume 4 (year 2000).
eds Jacek Gutorow, Jerzy Jarniewicz & David Kennedy
14.2: Crime Narratives: Crossing Cultures and Disciplines
eds Maurizio Ascari & Heather Worthington
14.3: Cultural Histories
eds François Poirier, Logie Barrow & Karine Bigand
7.
Forthcoming Issues of EJES2011
15.2: Medievalism, eds Andrew James Johnson & Ute Berns
15.3: The Esoteric in Post/Modernism, eds Pia Brînzeu & György E. Szönyi
2012
16: Housing fictions: The house in writing and culture, 1950 to the present, eds Janet Larson, Francesca Saggini & Anna Enrichetta Soccio
16: Gender Resistance, eds Evgenia Sifaki & Angeliki Spiropoulou.
8. The former editors (from 1997 to 2005)
In spite of some overlapping, there have been two distinctive Editorial teams after the one constituted by the founding Editors:
Catherine Belsey (University of Wales, Cardiff): 1997-2000
Herbert Grabes (Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen): 1997-2001
Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Université Paris X – Nanterre) 1997-2000
Catherine Bernard (Université Paris VII): 2000-2005
Claire Connelly (University of Wales, Cardiff): 2000-2005
Ansgar Nünning (Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen): 2002-
Martin Kayman (University of Wales, Cardiff): 2005-
Angela Locatelli (Universià Degli Studi di Bergamo): 2005-
Ansgar Nünning (Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen): 2002-
