Once hired, I actually didn't have much to do with it. Quite honestly, if you are teaching a 3/4 and having a kid, you don't seek out extra work! I did do a blind peer review for Reamer, but that was it.
In 2019, though, another professor in our department, Sarah Juliet Lauro, took over as editor, and one of the first things she did was expand the editorial board, recruiting anyone in our department (as well as some other within the college) that had an interest in the fantastic. This meant me, of course, though being on an editorial board is not a lot of work-- typically I attended meetings where SJL told us what she wanted to do, and we all said that sounded good, and I was now on the hook to do first reads of things.
Late last year, as SJL was finalizing the Winter 2020/Spring 2021 issue, I volunteered to take a look at the citations. If you know me, you will know that citation in general, and MLA particular, is something I am enthusiastic about; I think it's the engineer in me. Unlike many other aspects of writing, citations have correct answers, and I get some pleasure when I put together a particularly complicated citation. I ended up editing the citations on all the articles in the issue, as well as doing some other editorial work where needed.
SJL asked me how I wanted to be credited, but I really had no idea. Was a "citations editor" a thing? (It is in law journals, apparently.) To my surprise, I was credit as assistant editor when the issue came out. (You can see the page for the issue on the UT Press site here, and if you have access to Project MUSE via your library, the page for the issue is here.) Well, that was cool.
It turned out to be a trap.
A good trap, but a trap nonetheless, because now that I had a job title, SJL could ask me to do all kinds of work and I couldn't refuse! She of course handles the majority of the editorial work (going through submissions, organizing peer review, and so on), but I have been doing multiple editorial passes, as well as organizing things like book reviews. At some point, she started calling me "associate editor" in her e-mails... I am not sure how I got promoted!
I do enjoy it, though, and I think it's a good opportunity. I think it will be an even better opportunity when academic conferences come back; one thing I had promised to do as a member of the Editorial Board was shill for the journal at conferences, but I never got to do this because all of the conferences I usually go to were cancelled in 2020 and 2021!
The citations editing is fun. What is surprising to me-- but maybe should not have been-- is how bad at MLA style some academics with decades experience are. It gives me some sympathy for my students' own struggles (if someone with a Ph.D. can't figure out what kinds of titles get italicized, why should my students?) and understanding of why they are so bad (if the other professors grading their citations don't know what they should look like, of course the students aren't going to learn)... not that I am going any easier on my students as a result!
But if the citations were perfect, I wouldn't have as much to do.
Anyway, if you are an academic who works on the fantastic in any form (the Weird, science fiction, fantasy, and so on), we welcome submissions! Currently we're putting together a special issue on Lovecraft Country (and submissions for that are closed), but we take submissions on a rolling basis for our general-topic issues. The submission guidelines are here.
No comments:
Post a Comment