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  • Introduction

At the beginning of this issue, we want to take this opportunity to inform our readers and potential contributors about some of the exciting changes that have taken place recently at the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies (JEMCS), changes that will make the journal more compelling by building on its strengths and giving it a new institutional base in the University of California system. Under new and expanded editorial leadership, JEMCS will continue to fulfill its mission and purpose as the leading journal that takes a cultural studies approach to early modern studies.

Since its launch fifteen years ago, JEMCS has come a long way. The journal was founded by Bruce Boehrer in 2000 in association with the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies and the annual conference held by that organization (Bruce deserves much credit and applause for his hard work and intellectual vision, and he will continue to play an important advisory role in the years ahead). In 2010 the journal gained in stature by changing publishers (JEMCS now appears under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania Press, a leading publisher of academic books and periodicals) and by expanding from semi-annual to quarterly publication. During the last year or so, we have made a transition to a new editorial structure and new location, moving the journal from its former institutional support base at Florida State University to its present and future home at the University of California, San Diego.

This transition is now complete, and we are very pleased to announce that a newly expanded Editorial Group will be leading JEMCS into the future. At the helm are a group of distinguished scholars with a shared vision. We are now working together to sustain the journal’s proven commitment to innovative new scholarship that is interdisciplinary and transnational. This new editorial collective includes the following scholars: [End Page 1]

Editorial Group:

  • Jody Blanco, University of California, San Diego (Literature Department)

  • Ivonne del Valle, University of California, Berkeley (Department of Spanish and Portuguese)

  • Martin Huang, University of California, Irvine (Department of East Asian Studies)

  • Susan Maslan, University of California, Berkeley (French Department)

  • Babak Rahimi, University of California, San Diego (Literature Department)

  • John Smolenski, University of California, Davis (History Department)

  • Ulrike Strasser, University of California, San Diego (History Department)

  • Daniel Vitkus, University of California, San Diego (Literature Department)

Associate Editor:

  • Sarah Nicolazzo, University of California, San Diego (Literature Department)

Founding Editor:

  • Bruce Boehrer, Florida State University (English Department)

Book Review Editors:

  • Pre-1660: Tommy Anderson, Mississippi State University (English Department)

  • Post-1660: Patsy Fowler, Gonzaga University (English Department)

Currently, Jody Blanco and Daniel Vitkus are serving terms as Senior Editors in charge of overseeing the day-to-day operation of the journal.

Our new mission statement indicates our strong commitment to the subject matter and theoretical approaches that have defined the journal during its first fifteen years of successful publication. We hope to build on that accomplishment and to take the journal in some exciting new directions as well. Our new statement reads:

The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies is a home for new interdisciplinary scholarship on the early modern world that roots its inquiries in current theoretical and political debates. JEMCS understands the “early modern” in its broadest possible scope, and welcomes studies on political theology, philosophy, economy (labor, slavery, class), aesthetic currents, and the intellectual and cultural world of the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Since its founding in 2000, JEMCS has served as a venue for theoretical approaches that have, in recent decades, reshaped early modern scholarship: queer and feminist theory, postcolonial theory, histories of race and empire, transnational studies, histories of globalization, [End Page 2] and cultural materialism. JEMCS reflects these stimulating possibilities by providing a common venue for scholars in such diverse fields as anthropology, art history, economics, history, literary criticism, political science, and sociology. JEMCS challenges the boundaries that separate traditional scholarly disciplines while bringing those disciplines into dialogue with each other.

In the spirit of this mission, we already have two special issues planned for the near future. One, entitled “Desiring History and Historicizing Desire,” explores recent controversies in the study of sexuality in the early modern period...

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