EJES:  The  European  Journal  of  English  Studies

The web page of EJES is to be found on the website of the publisher Routledge.
Routledge belongs to the Taylor & Francis Group.

1. the editorial team
   
2. the aims and scope
3. the editorial policy
4. calls for papers for forthcoming issues
5. special conditions for ESSE members
6. recent issues
7. forthcoming issues
   
8. the former editors (from 1997 to 2005)

Editors

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. 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 the increasing number of academics interested in the dialogical and plurivocal development of their subject or who teach outside their own area of expertise. To this end, it also offers non-specialists examples of recent approaches and new ways of 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 perspectives. EJES appears three times a year. Individual issues are devoted to specific themes but include a section devoted to interventions on timely 'key issues' in 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)

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.

• Volume 13, Issue 1, Travelling Concepts
• Volume 13, Issue 2, Intercultural Negotiations
• Volume 13, Issue 3, The Rhetoric of National Character
• Volume 14, Issue 1, Beyond Trauma: the Uses of the Past in XXI Century Europe

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