CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is the new editorial home of the prestigious Journal of Women's History (JWH).
Previously at Ohio State University, the journal's editorial base relocated to the U. of I. in July after Illinois' proposal won out over those of several competing universities.
U. of I. history professors Jean Allman and Antoinette Burton will co-edit the journal - the first devoted exclusively to the international field of women's history. The professors have extensive experience as editors of anthologies, books reviews and a book series. Allman also is the new director of Illinois' Center for African Studies; Burton has been on the editorial boards of several national and international journals.
The Journal of Women's History advisory board for the coming year consists of three U. of I. history professors, Megan McLaughlin, Elizabeth Pleck and Leslie Reagan. Marilyn Booth, a U. of I. professor of comparative and world literature with a specialty in Arabic literature, will serve as the books editor. History graduate students Jennifer Edwards and Rebecca McNulty will be the managing editors.
Indiana University Press had published the journal from its inception until this year, when publication moved to Johns Hopkins University. The editorial team has shifted bases over the years, starting at Indiana and then moving to Iowa State University and Ohio State.
The new editors said that in pursuing the editorship, they received "invaluable financial support" from the history department, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the vice chancellor for research and the Illinois Humanities Council.
Illinois' first official issue, 17:1, will come out in Winter 2005, "so it will be about a year before we have our full stamp on the journal," Allman said.
History professor Clare Crowston is organizing the first special issue on "Women, Material Culture and Consumption."
Allman and Burton said that in terms of its subscription base, its international reputation and its scholarly quality, the journal has never been stronger.
In their proposal they wrote: "Over the course of almost a decade and a half, the journal has successfully bridged the divide between 'women's' and 'gender' history by foregrounding women as active historical subjects in a multiplicity of places and times.
"Both by design and by virtue of the diverse research undertaken by scholars of women, gender and feminism, the journal itself constitutes a living archive of what women's and gender history has been, as well as a testament to its indispensable place in the historical profession at large."
The editors say that their vision for the journal has many facets. Among other things, they intend to enhance the journal's consideration of international, transnational and global issues; facilitate easier international access to the Web version of the journal; work on strategies for bridging the gap between the so-called "first-world" scholarly production and the so-called "third-world" access or participation; and draw graduate students into professional training by running a workshop on feminist scholarship and publishing.
Allman and Burton said that the U. of I. offers "an exciting and attractive locale for the journal at this moment of transition" largely because the core faculty in women's and gender history in the department of history is nearly a dozen strong; the history department counts more than a dozen other faculty members who have expertise in women's and gender history; and the work of scholars in other units, including the Gender and Women's Studies Program and the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program, intersects directly with women's history.
They also acknowledged the U. of I. Library, which ranks third among academic libraries in North America and first among public university libraries in the world, as an invaluable asset in the work of producing an international journal.