Slow Writing; or, Getting Off the Book Standard: What Can Journal Editors Do?

Lindsay Waters has argued elsewhere that the dominant position of the book in humanities scholarship is ripe for challenge. If this is so – if there are signs that the essay form is poised to take the ascendant – what might be the journal editor’s role in this venture? In this essay, adapted from the keynote address presented to the Council of Editors of Learned Journals at the 2007 MLA Convention, Waters argues persuasively for a move to “the well-wrought, slowly gestated essay” as the gold standard of scholarship and for a return to fundamentals – to careful thought, to the well-constructed sentence, to judgement – in the humanities, where, he contends, the productivity problem is not one of quantity but one of quality.