"Poetry's Parts" Keyword Series
Victorian Poetry
Brief Announcement
Victorian Poetry has undergone a few significant transitions over the last year. The journal has a new editor, Devin M. Garofalo (University of North Texas), and a new publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press. Scholars wishing to submit their work for potential publication should do so via the new Scholastica submissions portal, which includes guidelines for article manuscripts and information about special issues and the year’s work in review. Victorian Poetry is also pleased to announce our new early career essay prize and keyword series (more details below). Please direct any queries to the editor using the new journal email address: victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.
Call for Proposals: “Poetry’s Parts” Keyword Series
Victorian Poetry invites proposals for short keyword essays (ca. 1,100 - 1,300 words) exploring Victorian poetry’s parts, whether formal (“sonnet”) or figural (“apostrophe”), cultural (“cosmopolitan”) or critical (“lyricization”). Considered and published on an ongoing basis (as opposed to appearing in a designated special issue), essays should apprehend pressing conceptual, aesthetic, historical, cultural, political, archival, and / or methodological questions and problems that shape the field (or, alternatively, that have been neglected to the field’s detriment). As warranted, authors might also consider the ways the field (as revealed by the keyword under discussion) is animated by or animates other (sub)disciplines or genealogies of thought in ways recognized or unrecognized.
Keywords need not be limited to those that fall strictly within the specialist purview of Victorian poetry. For instance, essays exploring the resonances of broad concepts such as “atmosphere” or “race” as refracted distinctively by and through Victorian poetry (broadly construed) are most welcome. Because these essays should make arguments as opposed to offering handbook-style overviews, proposals revisiting keywords explored in prior issues will eventually be accepted as the series unfolds. Pedagogical discussion may be appropriate if it serves an illustrative purpose that keeps in view the series’ focus.
Proposals are subject to editorial review (with an eye toward giving deliberate shape to the series, especially in its early stages) and keyword essays to peer review. If contemporaneous appearance in print is necessary for offering substantive insight, the editor will consider joint proposals (ideally, featuring scholars of different ranks and affiliations, on and off the tenure track), whether on the same keyword from quite distinct vantages or on different but productively entangled keywords. Joint proposals should be limited to two or three scholars, as larger groups are difficult to accommodate in print outside the confines of a special issue. Direct queries and proposals to the editor at victorianpoetryjournal@gmail.com.