In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • From the Editor
  • Laura M. Stevens

Readers of the journal's paper edition will be quick to see the reason for its late arrival in their mailboxes. With joy, pride, and some trepidation, I am happy to present Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature with a new spring cover, masthead, and modified page layout. There is also a new fall cover, which you will see with the next issue. This new look is the result of many months of discussion and contemplation of potential designs. Pixel Pros Media merits our profuse thanks for coming up with the beautiful imagery and for working with us so closely on the details of the new cover. I am particularly grateful for the work that Sarah Theobald-Hall, our managing editor, took upon herself in communicating with designers and printers, and I would like to thank the editorial board for their useful responses to early versions of the new cover.

The cover is not a change that Sarah and I have approached lightly, as we regard the original cover with great affection and have been reluctant to meddle with a design that has held up so well for so long. Since I began reading the journal many years ago I have been partial to the simplicity and beauty of its look, with the alternating light and dark red for spring and fall, the embossed saxifrage and rectangular frame on matte cardstock, and the listing of articles in white ink. These basic elements have graced thirty-four covers, with only two minor variations: the Fall 1987 "Woman and Nation" issue, guest edited by Nina Auerbach, which was blue with white ink, and the Spring 2007 Silver Jubilee Issue, "What We Have Done and Where We Are Going," which was white with red ink and no embossing. The stylistic consistency maintained between the first and most recent issue is an aspect of the journal that always has appealed to me, as it suggested a visual reinforcement of the journal's mission to advance feminist scholarship through an on-going engagement with the origins and histories—often yet undiscovered—of women's writing.

With this new cover we have tried to present a visually bold design that retains thematic elements of the original cover. We continue to feature a red background, white ink, the saxifrage flower, and the accompanying quotation from the third volume of William Turner's Herbal (1568): "The white saxifrage with the indented leafe is moste commended for the breakinge of the Stone." This quotation, previously placed inside the front cover, now is featured on the back of the cover. As before, there are different covers for fall and spring, now focused on a variation of the saxifrage. We hope that this new look establishes continuity with the old one even as it conveys renewal of and advancement in the feminist study [End Page 7] of women's literature. The interior contains a more expansive masthead to accommodate our growing editorial board, as well as some changes to the font and layout of the contents pages.

Our decision to alter the journal's appearance is largely a response to the practical realities of contemporary publishing. Embossing is an increasingly expensive and slow process performed by ever fewer printers, so a new cover will have the advantage of expediting our production time and slowing escalations in our print costs. Most journal-reading these days also occurs online, and the new design is meant to translate more easily into online media, as will be seen soon on our website: www.utulsa.edu/tswl. Some of the journal's new features, such as a footer on every other page with the journal's title, volume, and issue, and the inclusion of abstracts, respond to the fact that the majority of our readers now encounter our articles not within the binding of an issue but as the result of an online search and hence in isolation from the journal itself.

The web has altered the experience of reading profoundly, for better and for worse, with scholarly research and reading perhaps the form most dramatically changed. I believe that at least a generation will pass before we are able...

pdf

Share