Note from the Editors Chris Perreira, Editor and Sherrie Tucker, Editor This 2022 summer issue of American Studies marks several transitions. We would like to alert you to some farewells, announce news of an exciting transition in editorial operations, and share some very warm welcomes and introductions to our new team. We say farewell and goodbye to three valued colleagues: Randal M. Jelks, who co-edited the journal from 2009–2022; Elizabeth Wilhelm, who executed the myriad responsibilities of the managing editor position for the past five years (2017–2022), and who is finalizing her dissertation in the department of American Studies at KU—“Realizing Reformation: The Building of the American Correctional Association and the Carceral State”—as we write this Note; and media assistant Ashley Aranda, whose skills upped our blog and design game from 2020–2022. We wish these valued editorial team members all the best with their future endeavors and thank them for their dedication and brilliance which will have a lasting impact on the journal. American Studies has been housed at University of Kansas for over 60 years. The journal undergoes an external review every five years, and goes up for bid every 10 years. We are grateful to the College of Liberal Arts and Humanities for the generous support of these many decades that has enabled us to submit a competitive bid and sustain the journal at KU. However, this time around, when we began putting our bid together, we learned what other academic journal and book editors have been encountering: budget support for academic publishing has greatly diminished since the start of the pandemic in 2020. The College and [End Page 9] the Department of American Studies could continue to support a shared course release for the co-editors and office space, and the College agreed to continue media and layout, but other expenses, such as the funding for our graduate positions of Assistant Editor and Managing Editor and editor stipends, were no longer feasible. MAASA’s bidding process for the journal emphasizes institutional support for these important graduate student positions, and rightly so--these make it possible to produce an ambitious quarterly journal of high quality, and they also provide valuable training in the world of academic, peer-reviewed publishing. So we continued knocking on doors throughout the year, seeking other entities on campus that might be able to pick up some of what had previously been funded by the College. But every unit had been hit hard by budget cuts. When things were looking particularly bleak, we reached out to MAASA to inquire if there were other potential bidders lined up. We wanted to make sure AMSJ would not be left in the lurch. Another university had plans to submit a bid to house AMSJ: University of Minnesota. The KU editorial team reached out to Bianet Castellanos and Elliot Powell at UMN to see if we could offer any assistance and learned that they, too, were also struggling to produce a viable bid. The economics of research support had become increasingly limited by austerity measures at both of our institutions, and beyond. At the same time, the demands of peer-review articles for tenure and promotion are as high as ever. The need for interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journals that nurture scholarship in transnational American studies, ethnic studies, Indigenous studies, disability studies, and gender and sexuality studies is intensified at a time when scholars in these fields are experiencing reduced opportunities for research funding, academic employment, and job security. We decided to explore the potential for collaboration through a joint bid. Over a series of Zoom meetings (which we had all gotten quite good at), we began a series of conversations in which our cross-institutional relationship grew in unexpected ways. We began as competitors seeking to edit the journal for the next ten years, yet each attempt was stymied by our shared inability to secure 10-year funding commitments to edit a top-tier journal. Immediately, we delighted one another with discovering shared visions and values. For one, we all preferred to greet scarcity with abundance. While our proposal for a cross-institutional joint editing pilot project did not yield 10-year...
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Oct 21, 2022
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