Letter from the new editor (original) (raw)
Related papers
Foreword by the Incoming Editor
The China Quarterly, 2002
This issue heralds another changing of the editorial guard at The China Quarterly. In his six years at the helm, Rick Edmonds has done a sterling job of keeping up the scholarly standards of The China Quarterly and has seen the journal through increasingly interesting times: the institutional retrenchments that have hit academic publishing across the board, the switch from Oxford University Press to Cambridge University Press in 2001, and an increasing diversity and volume of submissions. Rick deserves a great deal of credit for all that he has given and done for the journal over the past six years, and I would like to open my statement with an enormous “thank you” to Rick.
CHINOPERL
This year, 2019, marks the fiftieth anniversary of CHINOPERL, The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature. In celebration, this year's two special issues of the journal aim to suggest the wealth of perspectives that CHINOPERL welcomes. CHINOPERL has been published continuously since 1969, and it is the only Western-language journal in its field. One of CHINOPERL's strengths is its interdisciplinary nature. Scholars in such diverse fields as cultural studies, history, literature, linguistics, language, music, theater, dance, folklore, anthropology, and sociology have found a common interest in CHINOPERL. We also have been expanding into media studies, gender studies, religion, and digital humanities. Recently many scholarly disciplines have been pushing to de-center our understanding of nations, of modernity, and of history, in favor of a more global approach that focuses on flows of culture, information, and material things. CHINOPERL is part of that new wave. The special issue on Chinese Opera and New Media (CHINOPERL 36.1 [2017]) showcased innovative approaches to the impact of new technologies and ideas of modernity in China. Other articles have focused on non-Han traditions within China, such as Tibetan crosstalk (kha shags; CHINOPERL 32.2 [December 2013]), or on Chinese traditions in diaspora, such as gezai xi in Singapore (CHINOPERL 37.1 [July 2018]). This year's special issues in celebration of CHINOPERL's fiftieth anniversary emphasize China's participation in a global web of cultural transmission, focusing on cultural flows both within China and between China and the United States, Russia, and Central Asia. The approaches in these articles are not only profoundly interdisciplinary, they also work to break down the perceived boundaries between "China" and "the West," and to suggest a more nuanced understanding of "China." In this issue, Bell Yung's account of the early conferences makes clear that CHINOPERL has always been interdisciplinary by nature. It foregrounds the importance of performance; in the words of Catherine (Kate) Stevens from the first meeting of CHINOPERL, the emphasis is on "that literature in which performance makes a difference." Karl Reichl focuses on the interplay of orality and literacy in Turkic epics of Xinjiang. He provides a thorough overview of the oral and written folktale traditions of three major Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia: the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, China; the Kazaks of Kazakhstan and Xinjiang; and the Kyrgyz of Kyrgyzstan. The substantial exchanges between these traditions show both the fluidity of oral traditions and the arbitrariness of geographical boundaries, although clearly policies in each state have had impact on the transmission of these traditions. Anne McLaren explores several other facets of the complexity of defining what "Chinese" means: the many regional languages and performance traditions within China, and the interaction of traditional cultural forms with Western-influenced ideas. Specifically, she examines the publication of vernacular texts in regional
Foreword by the Outgoing Editor
The China Quarterly, 1996
The publication of this issue signifies the changing of the editorial guard at The China Quarterly. Although I will guest-edit the forthcoming special issue on Contemporary Taiwan (No. 148), it is time to hand over the editorial chair to my successor. This transition is occasioned by my move to the George Washington University to take up the positions of Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, and Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies.
Looking Back, Looking Ahead: An Interview with Professor ZhaoHong Han
2021
On April 8, 2021, we had the great pleasure of speaking over Zoom with Professor ZhaoHong Han, the founding editor of SALT, which was originally called Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. In celebration of the journal’s 20thanniversary, we discussed the motivation and vision behind establishing a web journal, future directions, essential qualities of an outstanding original research article, and advice for early career scholars and graduate students who are starting out to get their work published in journals.
A statement from the incoming editor
2011
The first version of the JRAI (named the Journal and Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London) was established in 1848. It was quite a year. Important as it was for ethnology, 1848 has become better known as the 'Year of Revolution' , a reference to the waves of political unrest that spread from Sicily and France to other parts of Europe and further afield. Since then, anthropology has undergone its own radical transformations, displaying complex relations with wider forms of political economy that it has both exemplified and critiqued. As a discipline, anthropology has moved within and beyond both colonial and post-colonial fields, and in more recent decades has explored ways in which to conflate 'field' and 'home'. Moreover, the connections between the sub-disciplines of socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, and archaeology have shifted over the years, forming and reforming intellectual alliances that have never remained stable. All of these transformations have been reflected in the pages of this journal, which has itself undergone a few changes of name over the years. But the location of anthropological fieldwork has increasingly been complemented by another spatial shift in the discipline, which also embodies wider political and economic orders. Ethnography is now written by members of a discipline whose practitioners, and not just informants, are spread around the globe, promoting numerous academic sub-cultures but with notable common points of interest and approach. I therefore want to encourage submission of the very best papers from all parts of the expanding world of anthropology, from long-established but also from newly developing institutions of research. JRAI aims to publish the best anthropological work, whatever its provenance, but also work that can appeal across the numerous sub-fields of the discipline. A sense of readership is key here. Ideally, submissions should aim at the specialist in a given region or field of inquiry but also provoke interest from other anthropologists, attracted by the clear exposition of an idea or approach that, in many cases, will bridge old and new sub-fields. Such dialogue can be created by a journal in a number of ways. My predecessor, Glenn Bowman, was careful to note that alongside the 10,000-word articles that form the staple of this journal, other forms of communication are also encouraged: 'Shorter Notes' , 'Correspondence' , and 'Comment to the Editor' can all be sent directly to the email address given below. In addition, I would like to continue to encourage the submission of 'State of the Art' essays that both review and assess the value of a given