Duke University Press Log

Call for Papers: Transgender Studies Quarterly, The Translation Issue

The Translation Issue

Guest Editors: David Gramling and Aniruddha Dutta

Special Issue on Translating Transgender

Submissions of 4000-9000 words (in any language). Due March 1, 2015 for publication in Spring 2016

Few primary and secondary texts about transgender lives and ideas have been translated from language to language in any formal way over the centuries. Meanwhile, transgender, gender variant, and gender non-confirming people have often been exiles, translators, language mediators, and multilinguals in greater numbers and intensities historically than their cisgender counterparts have. This kind of positionality among languages has become a generative, yet often precarious aspect of trans* embodiment. Nonetheless, the discourses of transgender studies (as in the neighboring fields of LGBT / queer studies) continue to be more Anglophone, more monolingual, and less translated than they historically ought to be, given how the subjects that produced those discourses have often been prototypes of transnational and translingual border-crossing. This paradox continues to constrain disciplinary and conceptual agendas around sexuality and gender a great deal more than in other fields that have enjoyed consistent state and institutional support as well as access to international distribution pathways. This is an important problem for transgender studies in the coming decades because an Anglophone disciplinary and discursive disposition will continue to lead policy-makers, public intellectuals, and academics to fall back on ethnocentric and monolingual frameworks and resources. It perpetuates a hierarchical conceptual economy, with Anglophone and West European linguacultures at the top and trans and queer vernaculars in other languages either at the bottom of the epistemic order, or sequestered into localist, ethnicized, or neo-Orientalist fetish. If not profoundly transformed, how will this discursive hierarchization impact the multi-directional traffic in trans knowledge and ideas in years ahead? This issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly calls for multilingual and translational critique. This may take the form of:

• Essays offering a metacriticism of the field, its terms, and its methodologies from a multilingual point of view
• Essays offering a theoretical problematization of national languages and transnational lingua francae as such from a trans perspective
• Essays exploring the idea of a trans* lingua franca beyond Anglocentricity
• Trans-oriented research that often gets elided precisely because of rhetorical Anglocentricity or methodological monolingualism
• Essays critiquing the relationship between travel and multilingualism in trans* contexts
• Ethnographic studies of multilingual transgender spaces and communities
• Ethnographic studies of medical, legal, penal, educational contexts in which transgender positionality or existence are negotiated translingually
• Reflections on the craft and practice of translation
• Studies on how Anglocentricity in transgender epistemology perpetuates itself—institutionally, methodologically, politically
• Essays exploring how language normativity intersects with racial, ethnic, civic, sexual, erotic, socio-economic normativity in transgender contexts
• Studies that model a “multilingual transgender studies” or a multilingual trans-futurity more broadly
• Case studies on how language frontiers shape the planetary landscape of transgender discourse
• Reflections on the process of translating texts dealing with transgender and gender variance
• Essays on what transgender methodology in translation theory or practice might look like
• Essays exploring what working interpreters and translators (literary, poetic, technical, diplomatic) may reveal about transgender epistemology
• Historical studies linking multilingual, code-switching, and translingual practice with transgender embodiment
• Historical studies linking the genealogy of monolingualism with various kinds of gender normativity

Initial submissions may be in any language and will be peer-reviewed accordingly. Duke University Press requires publication in English, and we will commission translations of accepted submissions in the latter process of review. Accepted submissions will be published in the original language on TSQ’s Web site. Please send a complete manuscript by March 1, 2015 to tsqjournal[at]gmail[dot]com along with a short abstract and brief bio including name and any institutional affiliation. The expected length for scholarly articles is 4000 to 9000 words, and 1000 to 2000 words for shorter works. All manuscripts should be prepared for anonymous peer review. For articles engaging in scholarly citation, please use the Chicago author-date citation style. Any questions should be addressed to dgl[at]email[dot]arizona[dot]edu.

TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly is co-edited by Paisley Currah and Susan Stryker, and published by Duke University Press, with editorial offices at the University of Arizona’s Institute for LGBT Studies. TSQ aims to be the journal of record for the interdisciplinary field of transgender studies and to promote the widest possible range of perspectives on transgender phenomena broadly defined. Every issue of TSQ is a specially themed issue that also contains regularly recurring features such as reviews, interviews, and opinion pieces. To learn more about the journal and see calls for papers for other issues, visit http://lgbt.arizona.edu/tsq-main. For information about subscriptions, visit http://www.dukeupress.edu/TSQ.

Q&A with the editors of French Historical Studies

The incoming editors of French Historical Studies (FHS), Kay Edwards and Carol Harrison, discuss the future of the journal under their joint editorship, including information about forthcoming special issues and what topics they would like to see submitted to the journal. See the most recent issue here, and subscribe to the journal here.

How would you like to shape French Historical Studies in the future?

CAROL: In the future I think we’d like to continue some trends that we see in the field and that FHS is starting to reflect, publishing a lot about France and French history beyond the borders of metropolitan France. There will be more colonial material, which is where the field is going. We have exciting material on South East Asia and North Africa in the pipeline now that is being submitted.

KAY: We've also said that we've wanted to expand the chronological framework. FHS is open to anyone working in France or in these related fields over pretty much any chronology. But our submissions currently do tend to be much more modern. We want to get people who are doing medieval work or late antique work to think of us as well, since we definitely are a highly ranked scholarly publishing venue.

How do you see the journal developing over the next few years?

KAY: I would like to see us broadening the journal not just chronologically and in terms of international content, but also in terms of broadening it to more of an international academic audience. We currently are getting more and more submissions from German and Scandinavian lands, we've always gotten a few French, but we’d like to broaden our European, East Asian, African, Latin American base.

CAROL: I think we have a couple of ideas or projects on board now that are also about reminding the rest of the historical profession of how important French history is and how important French historians are to the rest of the profession. So I would say Michael Breen’s forum for instance. We have a group of articles by young French social historians that we’re arranging to translate into English to publish in the journal. I think this is important because social history is a much more lively tradition in France right now than it is in the Anglophone world. These are scholars who unless you work in French history and read French and keep up with things in France, you probably don’t know about. I think scholars outside of French history should read this forum to find out what’s going on in French history, and particularly in French social history. Similarly, we’ve got a special issue coming up in 2017 that we've just started planning on archives so we’re recruiting scholars who will be writing about archives not just as neutral repositories where the facts are, but as institutions that shape the way history is written, so as active participants in the writing of history. I think that’s the kind of special issue that will remind the rest of the profession that French historians are really crucial to shaping history.

Speaking of special issues, are there any other forthcoming special issues that you would like to talk about? How do you select special issues?

KAY: There is a French food special issue coming out that is primarily a project of the past editors. It is about food very broadly defined in French history. There is an article on coffee, another about WWII and food allocations and foraging, a wide variety of what defines food--not just a recipe book--particularly because France is so strongly associated with food culture.

CAROL: There will be articles on wonderful food, the introduction of coffee, there will be articles on lack of food, hunger, there’s an article on late 19th-century shop girls and their relationship to food, you know where they ate lunch and if they ate lunch. So that’s going to be a very exciting issue. And then further down the pipeline--this is more speculative--but 2018 is the 50th anniversary the events of May 1968. This is another one that I think will be important for FHS and I hope for non-French historians. Nineteen sixty-eight having obviously had a global reach, but the events in France were central. So that’s another one where we’d like to put together articles on France, on the Francophone world outside of France, and think about this anniversary. We would like FHS to lead the way a bit in talking about the German ‘68 and Mexico City ‘68 and Berkeley ‘68 and pull it together.

What would you like researchers to know about the submission process?

KAY: Don’t be afraid to send all different types of articles. Just because we’re FHS doesn't mean we only, as Carol said, do the metropol. There’s probably going to be a conception that we only do cultural stuff because that’s what France is. And the whole point is that we’re trying to get a wide variety of methodologies and subjects and approaches.

Who should be submitting to this journal that hasn't been?

KAY: A lot of early modernists and pre-modernists don’t think they should submit to FHS, in part because the name implies a very national framework that sometimes work and sometimes doesn't.

CAROL: They may be working on a territory that was not in fact called France. But if it’s Francophone, we’d like to see more early modern, medieval, and more French scholars! We do publish in French.

KAY: It does not have to be a translated work. In terms of material, I just want to see diversity. I really don’t want people to assume that because it’s French that it must be cultural or that it must have theoretical work. I have nothing against theoretical work, but I think there may potentially be stereotypes. I would like to see a reconstruction of environmental drainage, as long as this is something that hasn't been done.

CAROL: One thing our predecessors started that I think we want to continue is publishing more editorial pieces. Instead of very closely researched monographs, single author traditional research articles, FHS has been publishing these editorial pieces that are often reflections on the profession. We've published a recent one by David Bell that’s thinking about global history and reflections on the profession generally, on French history, and its role in the globalizing historical profession. I think there is room for developing that kind of editorial piece. We invite people to submit not just the research articles, but editorial articles that reflect the state of the field and the kind of the research that’s being done.

Call for Papers: French Historical Studies issue on Archives

The editors of French Historical Studies seek articles for a special issue on the theme of archives and archival practice in French history to appear in the spring 2017. Recent transnational scholarship on archives has alerted us to the ways in which archives are not neutral sites but ones where knowledge is constructed and negotiated. Discussions about whether or not cultural history has lured historians away from the archives have missed an underlying reality: historians of France and the French empire now use a wider range of public and private holdings beyond national, departmental, defense, and colonial archives. These archives often require different strategies for entry and use. To note only the most obvious differences: finding aids have not always been compiled by trained archivists and classificatory schemes vary considerably depending on organizations’ needs. Access to outsiders and the communication of documents may be limited or restricted. Technology is also transforming both the archive itself and access to the archive.

The editors invite articles that situate these issues in the context of French history and historiography. More than just tales from the archives, articles will reflect authors’ experiences in archives that illuminate both archival practice and ways of doing French history. Among the various types of non- traditional archives, we invite authors to consider church and missionary archives, corporate archives, associations’ archives, mayors’ offices and communal records, hospital archives and medical records, private papers, and colonial archives outside Aix. We also welcome articles on non-traditional ways of using traditional archives, on the impact of digitization and other technologies on archival practice, and on the encounter between historians and archivists.

Queries about submission and other matters regarding this special issue should be addressed to the guest editors, Sarah Curtis (scurtis[at]sfsu[dot]edu) and Stephen Harp (sharp[at]uakron[dot]edu).

To submit an article, please visit www.editorialmanager.com/fhs. After registering, follow the submission instructions under “Instructions for Authors” on the website. Articles may be either in English or in French but must conform to French Historical Studies style (for details, see www.dukepress.edu/fhs) and must be accompanied by titles and 150-word abstracts in both languages. Manuscripts should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words excluding notes and no longer than 10,000 words including notes. For the inclusion of illustrations, written permission must be obtained from the relevant persons or institutions for both print and online publication. The deadline for submissions is July 15, 2015.

Duke University Press at the 2014 IFLA World Library and Information Congress

L to R: IFLA Attendees Elizabeth Chapman (University of Sheffield) and Lauren Smith (University of Strathclyde) with Library Relations & Sales Manager Kim Steinle at the Duke Univesrity Press booth at IFLA.

Last week we attended the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Lyon, France. This year's IFLA Congress was the best attended in the last several years, with 3,900 delegates from all over the world, including France, Korea, Kazakhstan, China, Japan, Uzbekistan, Uganda, Nigeria, Russia, Trinidad & Tobago, Scandinavia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

We attend this conference in order to meet librarians from around the world, learn about issues that affect or are important to the global library community, and to promote our Press internationally. Next year's Congress will be held in Cape Town, South Africa and the 2016 Congress will be held in Columbus, Ohio.

Frances Pinter, Executive Director of Knowledge Unlatched, accepting the 2014 IFLA/Brill Open Access Award at IFLA

IFLA/Brill Open Access Award
Congratulations to Knowledge Unlatched for winning the IFLA/Brill Open Access Award! Knowledge Unlatched "depends on many libraries from around the world sharing the payment of a single Title Fee to a publisher, in return for a book being made available on a Creative Commons licence via OAPEN and HathiTrust... The Title Fee represents the basic cost of publishing a book. Because the Title Fee is a fixed amount, as more libraries participate in Knowledge Unlatched, the per-library cost of ‘unlatching’ each title declines." Knowledge Unlatched was chosen as the most outstanding and game-changing initiative in the field. Read the full press release here.

Duke University Press is very excited to be a part of this program! We've included four books in the Knowledge Unlatched pilot program: Bilogical Relatives by Sarah Franklin, In Search of the Amazon by Seth Garfield, My Voice is My Weapon by David McDonald, and Ever Faithful by David Sartorius. 

Editor of Duke Mathematical Journal wins Chern Medal Award

Congratulations to Duke Mathematical Journal editor Phillip Griffiths! He was awarded the 2014 Chern Medal for his work in complex geometry, particularly his work in Hodge theory and periods of algebraic varieties. The prize is given at the International Congress of Mathematicians, which is being held currently in Seoul, South Korea.

To read the official press release, click here.

Several contributors to DMJ have also been awarded the Fields Medal, including Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the medal. Other winners include Artur Avila and Manjul Bhargava. See a list of their contributions to DMJ below. Congratulations to all!

For more information on Duke Mathematical Journal, visit dukeupress.edu/dmj.

Contributions to DMJ from Fields Medalists include:

Maryam Mirzakhani, co-author of "Lattice point asymptotics and volume growth on Teichmüller space," here; Artur Avila, co-author of "Cohomological equations and invariant distributions for minimal circle diffeomorphisms," here and "Generic Singular Spectrum For Ergodic Schrödinger Operators," here; and Manjul Bhargava, co-author of "Error estimates for the Davenport-Heilbronn theorems," here.

Honorable Mention for American Literature Digital Open Access Piece

Congratulations to Curtis Marez, who received an honorable mention for the Don D. Walker Prize sponsored by the Western Literature Association! The prize is given annually to the best essay published on western American literature during the previous calendar year. The award committee found Marez's American Literature piece, "Cesar Chavez's Video Collection," "an exciting, innovative work of interdisciplinary scholarship that reflects the aspirations of the Walker Award in demonstrating the untapped possibilities of our still unfolding field."

The digital piece was a collaboration between the journal and Scalar, a multimedia authoring and publishing web platform developed by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture. Read more about the piece in a previous guest blog post by American Literature managing editor Emily Dings entitled "Chavez Behind the Camera," here. “Cesar Chavez’s Video Collection” is an offshoot of Marez’s book Speculative Technologies: Migrant Workers and the Hidden History of New Media (forthcoming, Duke University Press), and is available on the Scalar platform here.

Check out the rest of the American Literature special issue, "New Media and American Literature," which includes three additional open-access digital projects, here.

Digital and New Media Issues from Duke Journals

 

Within the past year, several journal issues have tackled the topic of digital and new media in literature, humanities, and culture. Sample these articles and issues below.

The most recent issue of differences, "In the Shadow of the Digital Humanities," includes articles on opening the genealogy of the digital humanities, gaming the humanities, and working the digital humanities. Read an excerpt from Fiona M. Barnett's article, "The Brave Side of the Digital Humanities," featured in this issue:

While standing against the wall in a windowless conference room and scrolling through the tweets for the "Dark Side of the Digital Humanities" conference session, the tone of the real-time digital conversation was so counter to my understanding of the panelists' discussion that I briefly wondered if I was in the wrong room or following the wrong Twitter stream. Even after confirming the correct hashtag for the session, the uncertainty persisted until I recognized the same scholars in the room and in the Twitter stream. The concept of recognition and misrecognition has provided a useful framework for many questions in feminist theory, gender studies, and political theory, and it continues to offer a useful framework for considering disciplinary boundaries and the conversations that thake place in the lore of field formation.

Read the rest of "The Brave Side of the Digital Humanities," made freely available, here.

Other journal issues on this topic include American Literature's "New Media and American Literature" and Radical History Review's "Radical Histories in Digital Culture." Read the introductions to these special issues, made freely available, by clicking the links above.

For further reading on American Literature, check out "Chavez Behind the Camera," a guest post by Emily Dings, managing editor of American Literature, here. The post details the relationship between several articles in "New Media and American Literature" and Scalar, a multimedia authoring and publishing web platform developed by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture.

North American Serials Interest Group, May 2014

Kim Steinle, Library Relations Manager, and Amber Cary, Customer Relations Representative at NASIG 2014

Last week our library relations and customer relations staff attended the North American Serials Interest Group 2014 annual meeting in Ft. Worth, Texas.

We always enjoy meeting our customers face-to-face and library conferences give us a great opportunity to do that. These meetings bring together publishers, librarians, consultants, and vendors and create unique conversations that often lead to big ideas, both for libraries and for us.

If you see Duke Press at a conference, we hope you'll stop by and say hello. We would love to meet you and have a conversation about challenges, successes, new trends, and what we can offer to lighten a burden or be more helpful in the future.

The next library conferences we will be attending are the Canadian Library Association annual meeting, International Federation of Library Association annual meeting, and the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Library Meetings: Bigger than Small Talk

Our Library Relations team: (L to R) Kendall, Beth, and Kim

Our Library Relations team travels to conferences around the globe, including the United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference (UKSG), the International Federation of Library Associations Annual Conference (IFLA), and the Frankfurt Book Fair. If you come across a Duke University Press booth in your travels, we hope that you'll come say hello.

Kim Steinle, Library Relations and Sales Manager

"One of the nicest things about library conferences is the opportunity to finally meet a librarian in person after years of e-mails. Face-to-face conversations about usage reporting or budget constraints can be so productive. The frank exchange of information helps us be as responsive as possible to librarians' concerns." Kim's next meetings are North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) and IFLA.

Beth Hoskins, Library Relations Coordinator

"I'm always struck by how easily small talk leads to big ideas at library meetings. I remember chatting with a librarian who was frustrated by all of the time she spent sorting through massive site licenses. As a result, we trimmed our e-collection site licenses down to two pages. It was great to learn about a specific way that we could lighten a burden for our customers."

Kendall McKenzie, Data and Project Specialist

"Conferences give me the chance to absorb the library culture. We love to learn about librarians’ challenges, successes, new trends, and what they want most out of their content. It’s exciting to have these conversations in person and really witness their energy." Kendall's next meeting is UKSG.

UKSG

If you'll be attending UKSG, please look for Kendall and Leslie Eager at Stand 74. Leslie is returning for her second UKSG and Kendall is looking forward to attending for the first time. 

We'd love to see you while we're in the UK. If we can meet either at the conference or on a campus visit, please contact us!

Association for Asian Studies, Philadelphia, March 2014

We enjoyed meeting authors and selling books at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Philadelphia last week.

 

Congratulations are in order for Akhil Gupta, whose book Red Tape won the 2014 Coomaraswamy Prize!

 

Here he is celebrating with his daughter, who holds her mother Purnima Mankekar's recent book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Purnima Mankekar, with Media, Erotics, and Transnational Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were happy to meet Robert Stolz, whose new book, Bad Water, came out just in time for the conference!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was great to visit with Michelle Bigenho as well, pictured here with her book, Intimate Distance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to everyone who came by our booth this year. We'll be looking forward to sharing more great books with you next year in Chicago!