Enfilade

From ABO: Journal on Twitter:

Write with Aphra: A Summer Writing Community
22 June — August 2020

New research has made clear that accommodations for the covid-19 pandemic have had a negative impact on women scholars and their research productivity. With the added imperative to participate in protests demanding justice for black lives, for many the emotional and intellectual energy to write and research has been understandably low. Despite this reality, many universities have not extended tenure clocks or graduate student funding and contingent scholars continue to receive no additional support. For many of us, publishing is a necessity for career advancement.

As a feminist journal, we want to create a space to allow scholars who are struggling to find the support they need to publish so their careers are not further damaged by the many, many challenges of 2020. In a recent statement, the journal recommitted to its mission of publishing work that “interrogates and reveals the causes, histories, and narratives of the harmful intersections of patriarchy, sexism, racism, slavery, colonialism, and gender discrimination.” As a material way of engaging with this mission, we are committing editorial time to help foster scholarship in progress and a structure to improve its chances of timely publication.

Toward that end, this summer we invite you to a writing community called Write with Aphra that is focused on starting, progressing, or finishing a scholarly article. For eight weeks, we will send weekly emails with tips and accountability measures and offer the guidance and feedback of our editorial board with weekly drop-in ‘office hours’. These will be themed around certain kinds of drafts (scholarly article, pedagogy, digital humanities, etc.) and sessions for discussing different experiences (contingency, early career scholar, etc.).

Participants are asked to commit to the following minimum goals:
• Commit to writing about 500 words a week from June 22 to August 14 with the overall goal of 4,000 words
• Share your progress using the hashtag #writewithaphra on Twitter (if you use Twitter) or via our email list with weekly check-ins
• Attend, if able, a Zoom meeting on Tuesday, June 23 at 2.00pm EST where we will answer your questions and set goals together; there will be a midway meeting and a wrap-up meeting as well
• Attend, if able, at least one office hours session with an editor in the area you are working with and seek feedback on your work in progress; for a current list of section editors, see here.

All participants will be invited to submit to the journal, but you are not required to do so. ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830 (ISSN 2157-7129) is an online open-access journal that serves as a forum for interactive scholarly discussion on all aspects of women in arts between 1640 and 1830, especially literature, visual arts, music, performance art, film criticism, and production arts. The journal features peer-reviewed articles encompassing subjects on a global range, with a global readership, and is intended for scholars and students. The journal comprises five departments: Scholarship; Pedagogy; Digital Humanities; Reviews; Notes and Discussions. Our editorial policies cultivate responsive, supportive academic work, highlighted by an open review process.

To join, sign up here»