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Call for Book Reviews for Schuylkill Graduate Journal: (Re)constituting Publics -- Special Issue

Schuylkill Graduate Journal, Temple University
Contact email: skook@temple.edu
Deadline Extended to January 31, 2013

The Schuylkill graduate journal seeks submissions from all disciplines for our 11th volume of critical essays and book reviews to be published in Spring of 2013 (online and print). We are seeking book reviews on works addressing the theme of (re)constituting publics (broadly defined), 5 pages in length; double spaced; MLA format; no footnotes. Current graduate students should direct their work to Colleen Hammelman at skook@temple.edu by January 31, 2013; no simultaneous submissions please. All reviews will be anonymously reviewed by at least two staff members. Please e-mail submissions with author name and contact info on first page only.

The concept of “the public” as a singular community, bound by a particular national identity and empowered by access to and control of public space, has become increasingly contested. From battles over citizenship and public memory to occupy movements and the Arab Spring, people within and across national borders are engaging in efforts to redefine traditional ideas about the public sphere and who constitutes the public or publics. Additionally, information technology and the mass spread of social media have intensified this process of reconstituting publics. But even before the advent of telecommunications, communities within nations battled over issues of public identity and the power to define, control and exist in public space.
Because we want to provide an original and important angle to the discussion of new works, we will publish reviews by graduate students exclusively. Additionally, the reviews will explicitly address the reviewer's impressions of the importance of the work to future research as well as emerging fields, disciplines, approaches, etc.

To compliment the articles centered on this issue’s special topic of (re)constituting publics, the Schuylkill seeks book reviews of recent scholarship that in some way deal with this topic. Below is a list of suggestions, but the editors are open to other works provided they were published in the past three years.

A few suggestions (though the possibilities are by no means limited to this list):
Bruggeman, Seth C. Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commemoration, and American
Public Memory. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012.
Gordon, Tammy S. Private History in Public: Exhibition and the Settings of
Everyday Life. AltaMira Press, 2010.
Morphew, Christopher C. and Peter D. Eckel. Privatizing the Public University: Perspectives from across the Academy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Parkinson, John R. Democracy and Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance. Oxford University Press, 2012.

We welcome reviews focusing on any of the multi-dimensional aspects of (re)constituting publics and the meaning and function of public space. Please feel free to write with questions or proposals.

The Schuylkill is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal founded, edited, and run by graduate students at Temple University in Philadelphia. We are looking to publish the scholarly work of graduate students in the humanities from around the globe. We are especially interested in work that, in presenting a rich and nuanced perspective on the topic of (re)constituting publics, blurs the boundaries of the disciplines (literary theory; philosophy; history; political theory; religious studies; cinema studies; women’s studies; art history; etc.).