Publishing the Southwest: 50 Years On

Publishing the Southwest: 50 Years On With this Winter 2008 issue of Journal of the Southwest, we celebrate fifty years of scholarly publishing at the University of Arizona. Since 1959 we have represented and developed the University’s foundational interest in Southwest regional studies. Founded by John Alexander Carroll as Arizona and the West—the first journal of Western American history in the United States—and continued under the editorial leadership of Harwood Hinton until 1986, the journal began publishing as Journal of the Southwest in 1987 as a multidisciplinary, broadly historical quarterly dedicated to an integrated regional study. There has been nothing else quite like it in Southwest publishing. Even as trends in scholarship change and develop and we look to weave new strands of inquiry and expression, in our publishing we have chosen to be faithful to the singular legacy and tradition of a venerable Southwest community of knowledge. We will, as I quoted Jack Carroll in 1986, continue to burn our own cigarettes. To celebrate this golden anniversary, we have dedicated a small section of the issue to a reflection on place—the consciousness of which, I would argue, grounds regional scholarship and, at its best and deepest, informs the wide research Journal of the Southwest publishes. These pieces are personal and are offered as exemplars of how place intersects with history and how biographical meaning is found in those crosscutting boundaries. Attention to this grounding in place and time is our scholarly project; it distinguishes us; and it shall guide us forward. < —Joseph Wilder ...