[Sca-cooks] New Journal for historic clothing and textiles

[Sharon Gordon]

Hopefully, this will give an opportunity to find out more about what cooks
wore as well as all sorts of other interesting info.
***************


Forwarded from another list...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Robin Netherton" <robin at shell.nightowl.net>
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 9:17 PM
Subject: [h-cost] Good news on the publications front

> Many of you know that each year, Gale Owen-Crocker and I (under the
> auspices of DISTAFF) organize several sessions on medieval dress and
> textiles at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo and the Medieval Congress
> at Leeds. And many of you have asked me over the years whether you can get
> published versions of the papers from these sessions, many of which
> present groundbreaking new findings in this field.
>
> I have always answered that question by explaining that the Congress does
> not publish proceedings, and individual presenters are responsible for
> finding publication venues on their own. However, because there is no
> journal specifically devoted to dress/textiles topics of this period,
> publication can be a real problem both for scholars trying to find a
> publishing venue and researchers interested in their work. New findings
> are often scattered piecemeal in journals in tangentially related areas
> (literature, art, archaeology, women's studies, etc.) or in volumes of
> "collected essays," often on some particular period or place. Too often
> they go unpublished.
>
> This situation is about to change.
>
> Boydell and Brewer, whom many of you know as a publisher very prominent in
> medieval studies and with a strong specialty in dress & textiles and
> material culture topics (they've reprinted the MOL books, for instance)
> are adding an academic journal, provisionally titled "Medieval Clothing
& Textiles,"
> to their extensive journal lineup. This journal will serve the
> dual purpose of providing a place for scholars in this area to publish
> interdisciplinary work that doesn't fit so neatly into more standard
> academic areas, and of making it easier for researchers to learn of new
> scholarship in this field.
>
> Like many of the other academic journals Boydell publishes, Medieval
> Clothing and Textiles will be annual. The first volume is targeted for
> publication in late 2004 or early 2005.  Each volume will cover a range of
> places, periods, and disciplines - literature, art, documentary research,
> archaeology, trade/economics - and will include at least one paper
> concerned with experimental reconstruction of medieval techniques. t will
> also be peer-reviewed, of course; at this point the editorial board
> includes Frances Pritchard and John Hines from the UK, and Monica Wright,
> Miranda Haddock, and Shelly Nordtorp-Madson from the US (with further
> additions likely). Editors will be Gale Owen-Crocker and me.
>
> Boydell also are quite aware that non-academics make up a good proportion
> of their purchasing audience in material culture topics, so they will be
> marketing the new journal equally heavily to living historians,
> re-enactors, and independent scholars. (Some of you may remember me asking
> on this list a few months ago for names of organizations with an interest
> in this field; that was for use in our discussions with Boydell regarding
> mailing lists and marketing possibilities.)
>
> To begin with, we'll be drawing most of our papers from the DISTAFF
> sessions at Kalamazoo and Leeds, which include anywhere from 12 to 18 new
> papers each year. It is quite something to realize we're facing a new
> journal not with the typical worry of "will we get enough papers," but of
> "where will we put all the ones we have?" We have at least enough
> submissions promised to fill two or three volumes already, not counting
> the new ones generated from each Congress.
>
> It looks like I will be very, very busy in the coming months. Wish us
> luck! I'll keep you posted of developments. (And yes, I hope to have a
> paper of my own in the first volume, assuming I pass peer review ;-) )
>
> You are welcome to forward this announcement to appropriate lists, but
> please drop me a note to tell me where it's going. I may eventually want
> to send follow-up announcements, and it's useful to know who's already
> heard.
>
> --Robin
> Co-Editor, Medieval Clothing & Textiles