From the Editor

With every volume we publish, I find the need to thank all those who contribute to our pages as authors, jurors, and editors. With this volume, I have the bittersweet task of thanking two dedicated colleagues who have guided La corónica for many years, and will be stepping down in 2017: Associate Editor Emily Francomano, and Book Review Editor Mark Johnston. We have already announced our search for editors through social media, and you can read the calls for these positions in the back matter.

Mark joined the editorial staff in 1994 as the editor of a new section on “Information Technology and Hispanic Studies”, and he took over as Book Review Editor in 2007. Mark will be retiring from DePaul University in 2018, after forty years of teaching, research and service to our profession. He has always been a model of professionalism, with a keen eye for clarity and substantive critical commentary in the reviews he has edited for our pages. Many of our readers also know Mark from our annual La corónica International Book Award sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. His work organizing the awards and our special sessions has been invaluable, not only for the editorial staff who rely on him every year, but especially for all the recipients whose books are celebrated and promoted at the Congress, announced in our journal, and disseminated through our social media outlets. I am sure our readers will agree that we all owe Mark a debt of gratitude for the many years of service he has so generously provided.

One of the most helpful decisions made by the previous Editor, Sol Miguel-Prendes, was to bring on Emily Francomano as Associate Editor of La corónica. I have repeatedly called on her sound judgment, expertise and advice ever since I joined the staff. Our profession could not have a more creative and intelligent advocate, and Emily’s work as Associate Editor has greatly improved the quality and visibility of La corónica, particularly through her planning of Critical Clusters and our participation in national and international conferences. Fortunately for us, Emily will not be far away, and we can look forward to more of her outstanding scholarship, hopefully published right here, where she has already established an award-winning record.¹ Furthermore, I am delighted to announce that she will be serving on our Editorial Board as one of its founding members.

Our Managing Editor, Isidro Rivera, is not going anywhere (¡gracias a Dios!), but I want to thank him again for keeping the journal on course and on budget. He has also been busy creating the new La corónica Commons, which is an online space for dialogue and collaboration, sponsored by the University of Kansas (http://lcc.ku.edu/). I want to encourage all of our readers to register and join the conversation on all things related to Ibero-medieval research, teaching and the profession. Lc Commons has many useful resources, such as calendars and job postings, but it is also a space for fora and articles on teaching, like “The Urgency of Teaching Medieval Iberia” by Maureen Russo Rodríguez, and “Why Study the Literature of Mester de Clerecía” by Mary Jane Kelley. I want to thank Isidro again for creating this space, as well as the Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas, Prof. Santa Arias, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University and The Ohio State University, College of Arts and Sciences, for their on-going support, without which this journal could not continue.