Early Vision for Diálogo (and Influence from Areíto): An Interview with Félix Masud-Piloto

INTRODUCTION

As with the previous two interviews with founders of early journals, we asked the founder of Diálogo, Félix Masud-Piloto, how this journal was first conceived and organized. Upon working with other faculty at DePaul University to create and first publish it in 1996, Masud-Piloto began a publication that was different than the form it currently assumes. However, its goals and design were in many ways similar to those of journals such as De Colores and El Grito, with full-color layout for artistic work, collecting and highlighting oral histories not previously seen in publication. It also sought to fill a vacuum created after the departure of an earlier journal with the previous director of the Center for Latino Research (CLR) at DePaul. Like earlier journals, this new journal focused on region, seeking to address histories, populations, and issues of the Midwest. A historian and professor at DePaul University, Masud-Piloto was involved with the Midwest Consortium for Latino Research (MCLR) at the time, which drew faculty directors of programs in Latino research from across the Midwestern states to review and coordinate on upcoming plans. His journal was not peer reviewed in the current era's manner, but instead, each contribution was considered and edited by a Contributing Editors board, which included faculty and graduate students in History and Social Work in the Chicago area.

In 2012, under new editorship, Diálogo expanded to biannual publication and double-blind peer-review status (making this journal more viable for academic scholars), but at the same time retained sections for community and non-academic contributors, as well as full-color presentations, inviting Latino artist participation. The new biannual status expanded the name of the journal, encouraging a hemispheric outlook, and moved to an expert Editorial Board, together with a local committee drawn from the CLR advisory board. The size was altered slightly, and a process of Guest Thematic Editors begun, who also recruit and at times perform peer review. Its new interdisciplinary focus gained full-text indexing in major databases, and its transformation earned an important award—the Phoenix Award granted by the Council for Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) in late 2015 for major transformation and revitalization over a three-year period.

But these changes were possible because of Diálogo's ongoing continuity and roots as a publication that seeks to bridge barriers between community and the academy. The 14 annual volumes of Diálogo's earlier nature are now available in Open Access through the DePaul University Librar y: http://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/.

Masud-Piloto arrived as a professor at DePaul in 1990. During his early college and graduate school experience, he was influenced by another important journal, Areíto, founded in Florida in 1976 to address Cuban-American issues, and which published primarily in Spanish. That journal ceased publication in 2000, but all issues were recently put into special collections at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Following this interview are two covers from the interesting Areíto trajectory, please peruse these issues at: http://openarchives.umb.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15774coll8/id/376/rec/1.

Diálogo:

During the 1990s, how was the journal conceived—the impulse early on, to create the journal? Were you working with a group of people, and what were their backgrounds and strengths?

Félix Masud-Piloto (FMP):

Diálogo was created to replace the Latino Studies Journal, a publication founded by Félix Padilla and published by the Center for Latino Research at DePaul University from 1990 to 1994. When Padilla and the Latino Studies Journal left De-Paul, a group of faculty and community organizers began the long, and at times difficult, discussions that ultimately crafted the mission for the new publication that the Center for Latino Research began publishing in 1996. Our mission was simple: to build a bridge that would link the academy and the diverse Latino communities in Chicago and the United States. Our group was as diverse in disciplines and nationalities as the communities we hoped to serve. We had historians, sociologists, political scientists...