Notes from the Field

Welcome to JMPS 5.2, the final issue of our fifth year of publication. The year 2014 has seen a number of significant events in modern periodical studies. We are delighted to note the launch of an exciting interdisciplinary project, Modern Magazines Project Canada, with its goal of “building an international and interdisciplinary network for the study and promotion of periodicals.” Take a look at http://modmag.ca/. Organized by Hannah McGregor (University of Alberta), Faye Hammill (University of Strathclyde), Paul Hjartarson (University of Alberta), and research assistant Clare Mulcahy (University of Alberta), the project held a workshop, “Magazines and/as Media,” August 15–16, 2014, and a public symposium, “Canadian Magazines: Past, Present, Future,” and will be publishing a paired set of journal special issues edited by Hammill, Hjartarson, and McGregor. JMPS 6.2 will be one of these special issues, “Magazines and/as Media: Periodical Studies and the Question of Disciplinarity.” English Studies in Canada will publish the other special issue: “Magazines and/as Media: The Politics and Aesthetics of Periodical Form.” JMPS 6.1 will be a general issue.

There is much to report from the Modernist Journals Project. Seven years of the MJP’s 1900–1910 run of McClure’s Magazine and several issues from Smart Set (1912–22) and Camera Work (1903–17) are now available on the MJP site: http://modjourn.org.

Even more significant, though, the MJP announces the appointment of Jeff Drouin, assistant professor of English at the University of Tulsa, as codirector of the MJP as Sean Latham steps down from that position to direct the new Oklahoma Center for the Humanities at Tulsa. Latham has been a major source of the vision and ambition of the MJP since its creation in 1995 at Brown University under the direction of Bob Scholes. Quickly becoming codirector of the project, Latham brought the University of Tulsa on board as a co-host in 2003 and began using the resources of the McFarlin Library at Tulsa to expand the MJP’s archives. Latham has been crucial to the MJP’s pioneering use of new digital technologies to expand the research and pedagogical opportunities in periodical studies and in modernist studies more broadly. He has been much in demand as a speaker on the intersection of digitalization and the history of print culture. As Latham is not only a coeditor of this journal, but also a fellow researcher and teacher in the field of modern periodical studies, Mark Morrisson wishes to acknowledge the crucial groundbreaking work Latham accomplished with the MJP. We all owe him a debt of gratitude, even as we look forward to watching that archive continue to flourish under Jeff Drouin’s new co-leadership. Job very well done, Sean!