Welcome to our quarterly Journals UPdate where we tell you all of the news surrounding journals at the University of Illinois Press. The “UP” in the title of this blog series is a nod to our pride at being a university press, part of a great community of scholars sharing knowledge across many disciplines. It’s been a busy couple of months, so we’d better get right to it!

Special Issues

• “Swedish-speaking Culture in Finland,” guest edited by Scott A. Mellor and Hilary Virtanen. Journal of Finnish Studies Volume 26, Issue 2. 

The editors of this special issue of the Journal of Finnish Studies gathered a group of scholars from various fields who wanted to explore issues for the Swedish-speaking minority culture within Finland as we find ourselves at the one hundredth anniversary of Finnish independence, Åland’s semi-autonomy, and the confirmation of its demilitarized status. 

• “Polish American Foodways,” edited by Anna D. Jaroszynska-Kirchmann. Polish American Studies Volume 81, Issue 1. 

In this special issue, scholars from such disciplines as ethnography, cultural studies, folklore, nutrition studies, and history highlight their research into the foodways of the Polish diaspora, bringing to the table, if you may, diverse methodologies and interests. 

• “America the Beautiful? Regionalism and Indigeneity,” guest edited by Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden. American Literary Realism Volume 56, Issue 3. 

Guest editors Monika Elbert and Wendy Ryden present articles that chart and analyze the ways Regionalism aspired to American authenticity through its efforts to reindigenize, and how that idea influenced the representation of American character and experience.  

• “Transatlantic Modern Consumerisms,” guest edited by Simone Cinotto and Cristina Iuli. Italian American Review Volume 14, Issue 1. 

Original and cutting-edge, this issue of Italian American Review broadly interprets the Made in Italy idea to explore how it also manifested as a public discourse on Italian identity and a historical-cultural construct in the making. 

• “Asian American Disability,” guest edited by Naoko Wake. Journal of American Ethnic History Volume 43, Issue 3. 

The articles cover a century of history while discussing the major problems with archives and debates over the medical versus social models of disability. As the contributors show, questions about source material and the models of understanding disability go to the heart of the model minority trope and the issues of racial democracy and colonialism that have shaped Asian American history and immigration history more generally. 

• “Effective Altruism,” guest edited by Theron Pummer. Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 38, Issue 1. 

Thousands of supporters and billions of dollars in donations continue to fuel a dynamic social movement aimed at confronting problems from diseases of poverty to animal suffering to existential threats like artificial intelligence. A philosophical consideration of a high-profile social movement, this special issue takes readers inside the still-evolving debates that surround effective altruism. 

New Cover: Journal of Film and Video

In our Q1 UPdate, we teased that a new cover was coming soon and, with the release of Journal of Film and Video Volume 76, Issue 1, here it is! Front and center atop a few previous issues with the former cover design, this issue and new cover came together under the guidance of current editor Cynthia Baron.

Blogs

We celebrated National Classics Week in April with Illinois Classical Studies. We featured articles from recent special issues of the journal. Check it out now for some reading celebrating the anniversary of the founding of Rome over 2,700 years ago.

Public Affairs Quarterly Volume 38, Issue 1, was a special issue, guest edited by Theron Pummer. We sat down with Theron to ask him about creating the special issue and learning more about its featured topic: effective altruism.

With the recent release of Polish American Studies Volume 81, Issue 1, on Polish American Foodways, we decided to take a look at some of the previous special issues and themed forums that appeared in the journal. In addition to featuring 5 previous issues, this blog post also links to our recent podcast with editor Anna D. Jaroszynska-Kirchmann and our blog post on Polish journals at UIP.

If you’re looking for your next article or book to read, the following blog posts might help you find it: 

• Founding of Mormonism Reading List
• Latino/a/x Books Month Reading List
• Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Reading List
• Labor History Month Reading List
• National Biographer’s Day Reading List
• Pride Month Reading List
• African American Music Appreciation Month Reading List

Featured Top Articles

What’s been a highly read article in these journals for the past three months? Many of our journals have content on several different online platforms, so this feature section is only highlighting one top article from one platform (in the case of the below, these are top articles from the Scholarly Publishing Collective, which hosts most of our current content).  

• Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education: “Three Black Gospel Music Experts on Preparing, Teaching, and ‘Being’ in the African American Aural-Oral Tradition” by Whitney A. Covalle
• Connecticut History Review: “Lucy Sheldon’s Music Books and Student Artifacts: A Cultural Glance at Litchfield Female Academy and Nineteenth-Century Litchfield, Connecticut” by Jewel A. Smith
• Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought: “Leave of Absence” by Dixie Partridge
• Diasporic Italy: “Carefully Considered? Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009) and Embodied Representation” by Lisa DeTora
• History of Philosophy Quarterly: “Later Medieval Psychology Deliberation, Love, and Mental Causation” by Michael Szlachta
• Italian American Review: “‘Mussolini’s Column’: Fascist Memorials and the Politics of Italian American Identity in Chicago” by Fraser M. Ottanelli
• Journal of American Folklore: “Speaking the Truth with Folk and Fairy Tales: The Power of the Powerless” by Jack Zipes
• Journal of Olympic Studies: “Viva Mexico! The Cultural Politics Behind the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Bid” by Edgar Jesus Campos and Douglas Hartmann
• Mormon Studies Review: “No Poor among Them: Poverty and Mormonism’s Trek toward Secularism” by Cristina Rosetti
• The Pluralist: “Philosophical Pragmatism and the Challenges of Information Technologies” by David L. Hildebrand
• The Polish Review: “In Stanislaw Lem’s Orbit” by Joanna Trzeciak Huss

Journal Highlight: Process Studies

Do you know about Process Studies? Edited by Daniel A. Dombrowski, it’s the leading international journal in its field, dedicated to the study of the thought and wide-ranging implications of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and his intellectual associates. These most notably include Charles E. Hartshorne (1897–2000), and others like William James (1842–1910), Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914), and Henri Bergson (1859–1941). 

The mandate of Process Studies is to explore Whiteheadian-Hartshornean process thought at an advanced level and as it appears in related philosophies and theologies (as noted above), applying the Whiteheadian-Hartshornean conceptuality to a wide range of other fields:

If you’re interested in learning more, check out these articles: “Whitehead’s Ethics: Fill in the Blanks” by Daniel Bella and Milan Stürmer, “Cooking and Eating with Love: A Whiteheadian Theology of Meals for Planetary Well-Being” by Thomas G. Hermans-Webster, and so much more. Then, click here if you’d like to subscribe or recommend this journal to your library.

What’s Next UP?

Are you looking for a new podcast to listen to? Well, we have two upcoming episodes of The UPside forthcoming that you’ll want to hear. First, we talk with three-time The Pluralist contributor Scott R. Stroud about his research on John Dewey and Bhimrao Ambedkar. Then, we sit down with editors and guest editor of a special issue of Journal of Appalachian Studies on Black Appalachia. Check back on Soundcloud for these to be released this summer. As always, we’ll also post transcripts on our blog if you’d prefer to read the interviews (read The Pluralist interview here!). 

Speaking of reading, if you’re looking for some free to access articles, Journal of Film and Video and American Journal of Theology and Philosophy have you covered for an entire year of rotating free to read articles, starting in July 2024. Find these reading lists on our blog soon to see what is available. 

Finally, Italian Americana will be welcoming a new editor for Volume 43: Alan J. Gravano. We’re excited to introduce him to you, stay tuned!