EAL invites work on literary and cultural production in the Americas broadly conceived, through the early national period (about 1830). We welcome various types of submissions, including Articles, Inventions, Provocations, and Archives. See below for more specifics. All manuscripts should be submitted using our online submission portal, Submittable. Before you submit your manuscript, please carefully review our submission guidelines below.
We also welcome book reviews, review essays, resource (companion/teaching text) reviews, and conference/exhibit reviews. All reviews are commissioned prior to submission by the Book Review Editor; please send queries to ealbookreviews@gmail.com. Once the Book Review Editor has determined the review topic, more information is available at our EAL Review Guidelines.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions to EAL may fall under, but are not limited to, the guidelines of a category listed below:
Articles
These full-form essays present a scholarly claim based on evidence that intervenes in ongoing scholarly conversation. These essays range in length between about 8,000 and 10,000 words including notes and citations.
Inventions
An “Invention” features imaginative writing that can inform and become part of the conversion about early American literature. Whether poetry, prose, personal narrative, creative nonfiction, drama, or any combination of the above, the journal invites submissions that reframe how readers think about early America broadly conceived. Ultimately, an “Invention” represents new ways of understanding past lives and literatures.
Provocations
A “Provocation” is a short, suggestive essay that reconsiders existing scholarly narratives and challenges common approaches to the study of early American literature. In 6,000 words or fewer, these peer-reviewed contributions should encourage thought-provoking discussions and counternarratives. A “Provocation” aims to create a flexible forum for hosting the potentially polemic and undoubtedly controversial.
Archives
“Archives” are reserved for highlighting developments in early American archival practice, whether relating to print culture, textual criticism, archive theory, or the presentation of historical and textual discoveries. These peer-reviewed essays of under 6,000 words in length may take part in the unearthing of manuscripts, lost editions, critical discrepancies, literary connections, and more.
Send queries about a special issue, forum, conversation, roundtable, or another format to ealassistanteditor@gmail.com.
Formatting Your Essay for Initial Review
- All submissions must be in English, though they may treat works written in other languages.
- Authors must secure permissions for illustrations and quotations drawn from proprietary sources such as unpublished manuscripts or cultural productions. If you wish to use images, these are the requirements from UNC Press:
- Please provide images that are at least 5” wide, with a minimum resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi). Tif/TIFF files are preferred, with jpg/JPEG acceptable if that is the only format available from an archive or library. Please secure written permissions and provide a copy of permissions.
- When preparing the manuscript, authors should omit their name and institutional affiliation from the body of the essay. They should check the essay to ensure that there are no identifying features in the document.
Please send questions about completing a submission for EAL to the Assistant Editors at ealassistanteditor@gmail.com or contact Submittable’s support team (support@submittable.com).
Review Process
Once an author submits work for consideration, it undergoes initial review by the journal’s Co-Editors. The Co-Editors could ask for further development of the submission, decline the submission, or send the submission out for peer review. When Co-Editors request further development of a submission, they provide specific feedback designed to assist the author in strengthening the essay in anticipation of sending the essay out for external review.
Manuscripts that go out for peer review typically are evaluated by one or more outside readers and a member of the editorial board, and submissions take approximately four months to process. Please see our EAL Reader Review Guidelines below.
If an author is invited to revise and resubmit, the revised submission typically will go back to one of the initial readers for an additional review.
Final decisions about publication are made by the Co-Editors. For accepted manuscripts, it is not uncommon for the Co-Editors to request minor additional revisions before publication.
EAL Reader Review Guidelines
Readers provide essential assessments that help maintain the quality of the scholarship that appears in EAL and that assist writers in pursuing the greatest potential for their work.
When reviewing manuscripts, EAL Co-Editors ask readers to provide one of three basic recommendations: accept, reject, or revise and resubmit.
A recommendation to accept the essay may include a modest number of suggestions for revision. Very seldom are essays recommended for publication with no requests for revisions.
A recommendation to reject the essay indicates a fundamental issue(s) that could not be addressed even with substantial revision.
A recommendation to revise and resubmit is the most common response provided by reviewers of the journal because there is a range of possible kinds of feedback. On one end, this recommendation can be warranted in situations where an essay is close to publishable but perhaps needs to address one or two minor issues. On the other end, this recommendation is warranted when an essay might be rejected except for an element of the argument that is compelling and that could be developed over multiple rounds of revision.
In general, manuscript reviewers are asked to consider the following:
- What do you see as the central claim(s) of the manuscript? How would you summarize the claim(s)?
- How does the manuscript contribute new knowledge about its topic? Does the manuscript situate itself within the existing secondary literature relevant to its subject, both longstanding, influential scholarship and the most recent work? How does its central claim(s) contribute to the advancement of the field?
- Does the manuscript provide sufficient evidence for its claims? Is the manuscript’s argument grounded in relevant historical, theoretical, and/or interpretative issues?
- Is the manuscript written with clarity of prose that is effective given the subject matter and rhetorical situation? (Essays can be written in various academic styles.) Does the manuscript utilize bias-free language?
- In its conceptualization and orientation, does the manuscript utilize an array of sources, methodologies, and approaches? Does it use accessible examples and illustrations? Is the manuscript aware of structures of power and/or oppression? Does the manuscript engage in inclusive citational practices? Inclusive practices might include engaging the work of scholars from historically marginalized groups; drawing on, contributing to, and/or engaging methodologies from fields such as Black Studies, Native Studies, and Queer Studies; and/or quoting from scholars at different career stages and/or institutional contexts.
In addition to the above considerations, readers of Provocation submissions are asked to review the work in terms of its provocative elements. Is the submission’s primary claim(s) tenable but also contestable? How might it serve as a forum for further discussion? Does it prompt debate or controversy that promises to enliven critical study by its polemical nature?
In addition to the general considerations, readers of Archival submissions are asked to consider the extent to which the submission highlights developments in early American archival practice—whether relating to print culture, textual criticism, archive theory, or the presentation of historical and textual discoveries. Does the submission challenge scholars to reconsider the archives and/or point to newly discovered works?
In addition to the general considerations, Invention submissions are reviewed based on the quality of the manuscript’s imaginative elements. How well does the manuscript utilize creative craft to reframe early American culture? How well does the piece inform and become part of the conversation about early American literature? Does the manuscript offer new ways of understanding past lives and literature? Invention submissions typically are reviewed by journal Co-Editors. On occasion, Co-Editors may send out Invention manuscripts for external review.
Formatting the Accepted Manuscript For Final Submission and Copy Editing
As authors prepare their accepted manuscript for EAL, they should prepare the final manuscript according to MLA format and review the journal’s Preparing the final draft of your submission document to help ensure that their submission is consistent with current MLA practice and EAL house style.
Reprint Permissions
Requests to reprint manuscripts that first appeared in EAL are granted on a case-by-case basis and should be made directly to the journal Co-Editors.