A Welcome from the New Editorial Team

On behalf of the new editorial team of the African Studies Review, it is my great pleasure to introduce Volume 61, Issue 1, of 2018. As the new Editor-in-Chief of the flagship journal of the African Studies Association (USA), I would like to begin this, my first editorial essay, by thanking the outgoing leadership of Sean Redding and Elliot Fratkin, joint editors over the past decade. Sean's and Elliot's conscientious stewardship of the ASR and their deft editorial hand have raised the journal's stature and left an indelible mark on the intellectual fabric of African studies in North America and beyond. Important gauges of a journal's significance and scholarly standing—its readership, its impact factor, and the submission volume—have all risen during their tenure, and I am pleased to be editing a journal with a preeminent academic profile and a very promising future. Over the past six months, and working closely with the departing Managing Editor, Ella Kusnetz, Sean and Elliot have generously guided the incoming editorial team through the mechanics of editing and producing a scholarly journal. Sean has graciously agreed to remain an active member of the Editorial Review Board, and while Elliot has elected to embrace the full fervor of retirement travels, we welcome him as the first of a new class of distinguished Emeritus Editors and look forward to his continued involvement. On behalf of the new team and the ASA membership, I would like to thank all three for their outstanding service to the ASR and to wish Sean, Elliot, and Ella every success in their future endeavors.

These are exciting times for the ASR and indeed for the entire membership of the ASA, as our distinguished journal, now in its sixty-first year, adopts new practices to accommodate the growing diversity and vitality of interdisciplinary African studies research in the U.S. and beyond. With the full support of the ASA Board of Directors, from January 2018 a new editorial collective takes the helm, comprising an Editor-in-Chief and eight Editors, a new Managing Editor (relocated from the Five Colleges, Inc. Consortium to the office of the African Studies Association at Rutgers University), an expanded Editorial Review Board (ERB), and the addition of the aforementioned new class of Emeritus Editors. This new expanded journal administration and management is envisioned as a way to ensure that the primary editorial role—the linchpin of a successful journal—remains a manageable and desirable position in the eyes of researchers and teachers. It also reflects an effort to recalibrate the volume of scholarly labor to something more commensurate with the standard service expectations of an average tenure-track faculty workload, or at least that is our hope; it is an experiment that will be periodically evaluated and adjusted as necessary. This shift to a larger and more diverse pool of editors, including editors based on the African continent, also takes into account the dramatic uptick in submissions to the journal in the past several years, the growth of African studies in African universities, and the increasing service demands placed on our vast cadre of peer reviewers, a primary source of editorial guidance and input.

As an editorial collective, we are committed to promoting transparency and accountability as part of the candid scholarly exchange accompanying the article submission and peer review processes. During the transition period, the incoming editors adopted a number of new policies and tools to aid the smoothness and timeliness of peer review and to promote the wider dissemination and accessibility of Africanist knowledge, in response to suggestions from members and contributors. This issue is the first to be published under the new journal masthead. In terms of editorial management, while all editors may review and comment on all submissions and revisions, weekly editorial meetings will involve several of the editors on a rotating basis. In collaboration with our publisher, Cambridge University Press, we have fully operationalized the online submission portal, ScholarOne, the utility of which streamlines and expedites the submission process. All new review assignments are now funneled through ScholarOne, and all new materials for consideration for...