Editor's Introduction: Female Agency: Development, Resistance, Revision

We are titling this issue of jml "Female Agency: Development, Resistance, Revision." The essays cluster into three categories with a good deal of overlap. Two deal with a female subject as she undergoes a developmental passage: Tom Fisher's essay on Laura Riding's arrival at a renunciation of poetry and Elizabeth Savage's on Lorine Niedecker's poetry of female aging and menopause. Another group of essays deal with the representation, in literature and other media, of female roles or types—April Middeljans on the female telephone operator, Sofia Ahlberg on the American girl abroad and Lorraine DiCicco on the single thirty-something woman; these essays examine how the characters in question resist or creatively alter their restrictive roles. Finally, the remaining essays in this issue treat works that counter or revise an entrenched male subjectivity. These include Irmak Ertuna's essay on Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence as it contrasts Andre Breton's Nadja; Timothy Mackin's on Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse as it revises the epistemological ideas of Bertrand Russell; and Helene Meyers's on Rebecca Goldstein's treatment of Jewish home-making as a corrective to and bridge between opposing views of the Jewish homeland.

As this cursory overview suggests, the issue "hangs together," as Henry James might say. Although this is the result, in part, of serendipity, it also owes something to our editorial process. I'd like to explain this process to our readers now, as we move into the eighth year of our current editorial leadership.

In 2003, only a few years after jml began being published by Indiana University Press, the journal changed its editorial configuration. It moved from a single editor to multiple editors, starting with three co-editors and two senior advisory editors and expanding to our current six co-editors. This may seem a cumbersome arrangement, but it has worked surprisingly well for us. Our method is simple. Laurel Garver, jml's managing editor, e-mails us all as soon as a new article comes in. If the topic appeals to one of us, that person immediately makes a claim to be first reader. Another editor versed in the topic will usually volunteer to be a second reader should the essay warrant serious consideration. Once we have claimed a submission, we try to read the work as soon as we can—we encourage electronic submission to facilitate this (all submissions are also reviewed anonymously). As a result, we often have either an unequivocal rejection or acceptance, or a detailed "revise and resubmit" report, ready within two weeks of the submission, if not sooner. With six co-editors, we generally can find at least two of us knowledgeable in the subject at hand, and a third or fourth who can enter the fray if there is a split vote or an area of contention. Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Robert Caserio, Daniel O'Hara, and Jean-Michel Rabaté are our resident modernists, who also have a firm grasp of literary theory; Rachel and Dan comprise our "team poetry"; Ellen Rose is our awesome generalist; and I clean up with film, stray fiction and some pop culture topics. In the event that work comes in on subjects about which none of us knows much, we send the piece to one or more of the members of our diverse Advisory Board.

At the helm of all this is our executive editor, Ellen Rose, formerly professor of English, now retired. Ellen likes to say that in retirement she is able to do what she pleases, which means volunteering for Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater and the Ethical Humanist Society of Philadelphia, working in local politics, and overseeing jml. She sets the pace—which is lightning speed—and she nudges where necessary.

Our operational style has produced an amazingly efficient and (based on informal feedback) high-quality result. Since we move quickly getting work accepted—or revised so that it can be accepted—we tend to receive a large volume of submissions. Younger scholars who are building their résumés are especially appreciative of our turnaround time...