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  • From the Editor: On Translation
  • Laura M. Stevens

With this issue I would like to discuss an upcoming change to our Book Review section: we have begun to commission reviews of recent translations of women’s writings into English with the expectation that they will start to appear in the issue after next (Spring 2012). We have no aspirations to become a major venue for reviews of translations, and most of the review section will continue to be devoted to monographs. We do hope, though, that this alteration in our review policy will signal the importance that the journal attaches to the international dimensions of women’s literature, to the labor of translation, and to the rich terrain that the activity of translation offers for feminist study.

Traditionally the Book Review section of Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature has focused on monographs, to the exclusion of a range of publications such as scholarly editions, anthologies, biographies, memoirs, and translations. I have followed my predecessors in adopting this policy with few exceptions simply because of the constraints of space and time. As a biannual, the journal cannot publish more than thirty reviews a year— twenty is more typical—without straining its print and postal budget, not to mention the energies of its staff. The Book Review Editor, therefore, is always making difficult decisions: every inclusion entails vast swaths of exclusion, inevitably ignoring important work that has been done in feminist literary study. Limiting ourselves to certain academic genres has been regrettable but necessary. Monographs have presented the obvious choice, given their centrality to literature as both a scholarly field and a profession, in spite of the longer shelf-life and greater influence that scholarly editions, biographies, or translations often have.

There are compelling reasons for devoting more space to any or all of these genres. They are crucial to the continued study of women’s writing, and they suffer from derogation in the academy, often not “counting” as scholarly labor in the way that criticism and analysis do. I have singled out translations, though, because attending to them is especially in keeping with the journal’s longstanding mission. Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, after all, proclaims itself to be a journal devoted to all women’s literature. This global scope has been part of the journal’s identity from its earliest years. In her first editorial preface, printed in the journal’s third issue (Spring 1983), Shari Benstock observed, “Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature will continue to publish criticism of women’s writing across a broad historical and international spectrum” (p. 5). When Holly Laird became Editor, she deepened this commitment, noting in her first preface [End Page 7] (Fall 1988), “I would particularly like to see more essays about Afro-American, Third-World, Western European, and other literatures beyond the borders of Anglo-American writing—by women—and will seek submissions in those areas” (p. 194). When I became Editor in 2005, one of the central goals I articulated was to extend Laird’s efforts—pursued throughout her editorship and seen, among other places, in the special topics issues Women Writing Across the World (Fall 2001) and Where in the World is Transnational Feminism? (Spring 2004, guest edited by Shirley Geok-lin Lim)—to increase the journal’s international purview.

I have been delighted over the past few years to have distinguished scholars from both inside and outside the United States agree to serve on the editorial board (some of these appointments will be announced in upcoming issues). The journal has benefited greatly from their insight. I also have been pleased to see an increase in submissions from outside North America even as we have continued to receive excellent work from scholars in the United States and Canada. Some of these international submissions have dealt with Anglophone literature, but many have not. With this increase, we gradually have been able to publish, or have forthcoming, more articles dealing with literatures outside of Britain and America. At the same time, we have remained attentive to important and exciting scholarship in our more traditional areas, as for example, in the special issue Kate Adams edited on U. S. Women...

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