We give you the scuttlebutt on academic journals—aiding you in selecting the right journal for publication—in reviews that are sometimes snarky, sometimes lengthy, always helpful. Written by Princeton University graduate students and Wendy Laura Belcher.
For those interested in publishing articles examining modernism, especially from an interdisciplinary or international perspective.
Founded in 2005, Modernist Cultures is a relatively new journal, but it is growing rapidly. Published bi-annually for the first nine years of its existence, the journal expanded to three issues per year in 2015 and published four issues in 2018. This success is perhaps tied to the growth of the British Association of Modernist Studies, the organization which founded the journal. The journal also appears to have found favor with some important names in the field. Marjorie Perloff, for example, publishes regularly here. The November 2017 issue even includes a series of articles wherein Perloff responded to an article published by Micheal Kindellan and Princeton Professor Joshua Kotin, who in turn responded to her response. This does not seem to mean that only established academics can publish here though either. The authors here come from a variety of backgrounds and professional positions.
Modernist studies often skew towards the English and the Anglophone, and this continues to be the rule here. There’s a lot of Pound, Eliot, Joyce and the rest. That said, the journal does appear to be genuinely open to articles that look beyond these boundaries and has published articles on Canadian Modernism, Bengali Modernism and the Chinese reception of modernist books.
Useful for Submission
Word Count: 7,000-9,000
Issues per year: 3 (4?)
Current volume number: 14
Articles per year: 30-35 now that they have expanded to 4 issues per year.
Citation style: MHRA (Also, American students will want to pay attention to British spellings)
Abstract length (if required): 100-150
Upcoming special issues (if available): They publish special issues regularly. This reviewer did not see anything posted, but the CFP is likely published on the BAMS website.
Relevant Editors:
Andrzej Gasiorek, Reader, University of Birmingham
Deborah Longworth, Senior Lecturer, University of Birmingham
Michael Valdez Moses, Associate Professor, Duke University
Online?: Yes
Bibliography (articles in the journal consulted for this review)
Jess Cotton, “‘Rimbaud in Embryo’: Collaborative Production in T.S. Eliot and Hart Crane,” Vol. 14, No. 1 (2019) 36-52.
Lise Jaillant, “From New York to Shanghai: Global Modernism, Cheap Reprint Series and Copyright,” Vol. 13, No. 1 (2018) 115-133.
Marjorie Perloff, “Response to Kindellan and Kotin,” Vol. 12, No. 3 (2017) 377-383.
Michael Kindellan and Joshua Kotin, “Response to responses,” Vol. 12, No. 3 (2017) 388-390.
Andrew Frayn, “Introduction: Modernism and the First World War,” Vol. 12, No. 1 (2017) 1-15.