Time and Methodology

2011© 2011 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 23 No. 1, 7–12. Editorial Note Time and Methodology This Note opens our first issue as editors of the Journal of Women’s History . These are exciting times for us as we contemplate the promises and challenges of the next five years. Our visions for the Journal rest squarely on its twenty-year intellectual traditions, its accomplishments in bridging and negotiating women’s and gender history, its stretching of the international reach of scholarship, and its role in bringing forward new topics, theories, and methods. The Journal of Women’s History has shaped and reshaped the field while nurturing the work of new scholars within it. By maintaining its unique focus on the gendered histories of women throughout the world, the Journal has earned its well-deserved reputation as the premier journal in the international field of women’s history. We also recognize that our efforts rest on the creative and dedicated oversight of Antoinette Burton and Jean Allman, our immediate editorial predecessors. For the past six years, they have consistently and expertly steered the Journal to take the lead in promoting international and transnational dimensions of feminist history in increasingly comprehensive ways. Their record is permanent, found in the many published volumes they have edited. Our editorial team is committed to publishing a journal that reflects and expands the current state of the field. We will encourage a wider and more diverse geographic range of publications and more varied temporal dimensions, probe new understandings of comparative, transnational, and global contexts, and employ the internet to enhance the Journal’s contributions to the field. Since the Journal moved to Binghamton University, we have worked closely with authors as they develop their submissions, encouraging them to connect their work to wider historiographies. We will continue to publish substantive review essays rather than individual book reviews, but we have scaled back the number of books considered in each essay to encourage deeper analysis and greater coherence. We have issued a call for articles on the understudied but timely theme of human rights, transnational feminism, and the United Nations-sponsored world congresses of women—topics that lend themselves to examinations of theory, law, universalism, and cross-cultural advocacy, grounded in historical and contextual specificity. This special issue will be edited by Jean Quataert and the Journal’s associate editor, Benita Roth. Our visions for the Journal are ambitious and include a conference abroad with themes generated by local scholars to help overcome some of the conceptual limits that mark Western Journal of Women’s History 8 Spring scholarship. In addition, a number of web-based interventions will make the Journal more accessible to readers and scholars in the United States and around the world. As you may know, we have already introduced a major change in practice by taking the Journal’s submission and peer review process fully onto the internet through ScholarOne, the platform that coordinates the submission and production phases of other journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press. The transition has gone smoothly, if not entirely without glitches, and we have received many enthusiastic responses from colleagues in Australia, Turkey, France, and elsewhere. Yet we remain cognizant of the differences in technological access across the globe and maintain a hybrid system that accommodates paper submissions for authors and reviewers without access to the internet. We have also developed a permanent website, our Editorial Home Page (found at journalofwomenshistory.org). This site includes a link to ScholarOne, information about our editorial team, and a growing number of features, many of which will coordinate with the print version of the Journal. Benita Roth is overseeing these online projects. Our new project, “Beyond the Printed Page,” presents Wendy Shaw, a contributor to this issue, whose supplementary online essay and images offer additional ways of thinking about the method, evidence, and arguments employed by art historians. We are also creating an online feature, “Spotlight on Community Archives,” that will focus on local repositories that serve as centers for public involvement in women’s history. Considering these community projects will encourage us to think about where women’s history is “made,” who “makes” it, and what...