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.

Martin A. Kayman (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/contactsandpeople/profiles/kayman-martin.html) will continue, as will the Reviews Editor, Adam Piette (http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/staff/piette).

Greta studied at Vassar in the USA and at Freiburg in Germany and is currently professor of American and English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Giessen; she has a strong interest in the development of European perspectives on American issues (for more information, see http://www.greta-olson.com/index.htm).

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. 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

The call for papers for volume 19 is available:
Please note that the deadline for proposals for all of the issues is 31 October 2013, with delivery of completed essays by 31 March 2014.
Volume 19 will appear in 2015.
Please consult the journal’s Aims and Scope and Editorial Policy for general guidelines on proposing a special theme and/or contact the General Editors for specific advice on formulating a CFP.

---

5. 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).

---

6. Reflecting back on Volume 15 and Looking  forward to Volume 16

EJES seeks to engage with English Studies in Europe 'and beyond'. It has been the explicit aim of the (partially) new editorial team to expand the concerns of the study of English in Europe geographically as well as in disciplinary terms. Thus we were very happy to have seen the first issue of EJES to be ushered into print by a Romanian and Hungarian guest editor team last year: 15.3: The Esoteric in Post/Modernism, eds. Pia Brînzeu & György E. Szönyi. The disciplinary expansion of English Studies was witnessed by issues that worked to reassess Medievalisms and to address the centrality of the study of Material Culture: 15.2: Medievalism, eds. Andrew James Johnson & Ute Berns, and 15.1: Matter and Material Culture, eds. Maurizio Calbi & Marilena Parlati.

2011 has been a year in which the concept and material conditions of the European project have been severely challenged. Thus the general editors would like to express our solidarity with our Greek colleagues during this very difficult time. We are most thankful that despite current hardships, the Greek guest editors Evgenia Sifaki & Angeliki Spiropoulou will be seeing 16.3: Gender Resistance into print later this year. Before then, we look forward to one issue that examines meanings of the house in Anglophone texts from postcolonial and gendered perspectives and another on the ecologies of travel: 16.1 Housing Fictions: The House in Writing and Culture, 1950 to the Present, eds. Janet Larson, Francesca Saggini & Anna Enrichetta Soccio, and 16.2 Dislocations and Ecologies, eds. Alexa Weik & Christoph Irmscher.

---

7. Future Work

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.

---

8. Forthcoming Issues of EJES
2013

---

9. 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): 2002-2010

Martin Kayman (University of Wales, Cardiff): 2005-
Angela Locatelli (Universià Degli Studi di Bergamo): 2005-2010
Ansgar Nünning (Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen): 2002-2010