Professors Mitchell and McRuer Receive Award for Outstanding Journal Reviewers

The Journal of Literary and Cultural
Disability Studies

Have you ever wondered how those scholarly articles that you use in your research papers make it into print?  Perhaps you’ve even wondered what would happen to one of your own projects if you pursued it beyond the end of the semester and attempted to place it in an academic journal?

Most journals in literary and cultural studies utilize a process called “peer review.”  This means that when you send your work to a journal, the editor-in-chief or a board of editors send your piece, in turn, to experts in the field.  The process is usually anonymous; your name and identifying characteristics (such as your university) are removed as the piece is sent out to these experts.  The article is then read and commented upon.  The peer reviewers also make recommendations: accept, revise and resubmit, etc.  The process, at its best, is a generative one for the scholar whose work is being considered for publication.  Even if the journal ultimately decides not to accept your piece, you receive thick feedback that might include ways to improve the piece, other scholarly work to consider as you continue working on it, or other venues that might be amenable to its publication.

GW English is happy to announce that Professors David Mitchell and Robert McRuer have received an award for their work as peer reviewers.  Both professors are on the board of the prestigious Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies (JLCDS), published by Liverpool University Press.  The press announced last week that Professors Mitchell and McRuer had received an inaugural Award for Outstanding Journal Reviewers from JLCDS.  You can read the announcement from Liverpool University Press here.

GW English and American Studies students and alums have, over the years, published important pieces in JLCDS.  In issue 5.3, Kathleen Brian published “The Reclamation of Anna Agnew: Violence, Victimhood, and the Uses of Cure” and Reed Cooley published “Disabling Spectacles: Representations of Trig Palin and Cognitive Disability.”  A year later, in issue 6.2, Julie Passanante Elman published “‘Nothing Feels as Real’: Teen Sick-Lit, Sadness, and the Conditions of Adolescence.”  Most recently, Naomi Lesley’s “Disability, Giftedness, and Race in Cynthia Voigt’s Tillerman Novels” appeared in issue 8.1.