Call for Papers

• General Call for Papers
• Proposals Invited for Special Forums

General Call for Papers

The Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS) is a peer-reviewed online journal that seeks to broaden the interdisciplinary study of American cultures in transnational contexts. JTAS functions as an open-access forum for Americanists in the global academic community, where scholars are increasingly interrogating borders both within and outside the nation and focusing on the multiple intersections and exchanges that flow across those borders. JTAS is a new critical conduit that seeks to bring together innovative transnational work from diverse but often disconnected sites in the U.S. and abroad. In order to facilitate the broadest possible cultural conversation about transnational American Studies, the journal will be available without cost to anyone with access to the Internet. JTAS is sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's American Cultures and Global Contexts Center and Stanford University's Program in American Studies and supported by the CUNY Graduate Center's American Studies Certificate Program. JTAS is hosted on the eScholarship Repository, which is part of the eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library.

In her 2004 presidential address to the American Studies Association, Shelley Fisher Fishkin noted the growing recognition that understanding the United States requires looking beyond and across national borders. This "transnational turn" has emphasized the multidirectional flows of peoples, ideas, and goods, and in the process has thrown into question the "naturalness" of political, geographical, and epistemological boundaries. The Journal of Transnational American Studies seeks new and innovative scholarship that mines and pushes the plural and global possibilities of American Studies. We encourage contributions from a variety of fields and disciplines, including cultural studies, media studies and new media, literature, visual arts, performance studies, music, religion, history, politics, and law.

We particularly welcome scholarship—both from within and beyond the U.S.—that engages in American Studies in a critical and self- reflective manner. For instance, how does one distinguish transnationalism from past and present discourses of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and globalization? Has American Studies always been transnational, or has this "turn" come about through the pressures of global capitalism? What are the implications of the transnational turn for theorizing ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, and class? Can one speak of a set of reading practices and of concepts that compose a research methodology for transnational American Studies?

Proposals Invited for Special Forums

The Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS) invites proposals for Special Forums in upcoming issues. Each Special Forum will be a cluster of articles that speaks to a critical issue in transnational American Studies; we are particularly interested in innovative scholarship that is presented by coalitions of scholars from around the globe and which critically examine the geographical, topical, and ideological parameters of American Studies.

Each Special Forum should include:

• a cover letter that briefly explains the significance of the special focus and introduces the prospective guest editors
• a draft of the Call for Papers for the Special Forum (300-word limit).

The Editorial Board will consider Special Forum proposals on a rolling basis. Proposals should be submitted in a Word document to Brian Goodman, the Associate Managing Editor for Special Forums, at jtas.special.forum@gmail.com.

If the Special Forum proposal is accepted, the forum's guest editors will

• send out the CFP and field all submission queries.
• read each manuscript to determine its suitability for publication.
• send each promising manuscript to two scholars for anonymous review.
• solicit revisions from potential contributors based on these reviews.
• select a roster of articles they believe to be the strongest.
• submit those articles (in final copy edited form), along with the reviewers' reports (and the reviewers' names and titles), to the Editorial Board.
• prepare an introduction to their collection of essays that serves as an interdisciplinary account of the topic, offering not simply a summary of the articles selected but establishing for readers the critical and historical context of the ideas and materials under examination in the forum.

The Editorial Board will make all final decisions on whether specific articles passed along by the Special Forum editors meet JTAS's standards to be published in the journal. While not a hard and fast rule, the Editorial Board recommends that Special Forum editors limit their forum to a maximum of 10 essays, not including their introduction.

Special Forums are an occasion to develop the scholarship in a specific area of transnational American Studies. The Special Forum's editors' own expertise and authority in the area should guarantee the quality of the introduction, and while this is usually the case, the Editorial Board reserves the privilege of making suggestions or changes to the Special Forum introduction, in keeping with the journal's policy with regard to any piece published in JTAS.