English Literature. Theories, Interpretations, Contexts was founded within the National Association of Teachers of English Studies (ANDA) in 2014. Presently, the journal is run by an independent board of scholars in English literature. It provides room for a critical analysis of issues and themes concerning English literature, also in a comparative view. The journal wants to promote a multidisciplinary approach to literature, to its relations with the various fields of knowledge, with culture, society, science, and the arts. It is also proposed as a privileged place for the discussion of the tools and strategies used by literature, according to various theoretical perspectives. The journal promotes the discussion and exchange of ideas among researchers, teachers and young scholars at both an international and national level.
The article processing charges are regulated by the Publisher. For more information please visit: Publish with us.
Every article published by ECF was accepted for publication by no less than two qualified reviewers as a result of a process of anonymous reviewing (double-blind peer review). The reviewers are independent of the authors and not affiliated with the same institution.
The Journal’s Editor-in-Chief guarantees the proper execution of the peer review process for every article published in the Journal.
Peer review policies for the different sections:
To be published all manuscripts must comply with the following guidelines. In case of blatant violation of the guidelines, the editor (ECF) can suspend at any time the manuscript’s publication.
The instructions for the preparation of your manuscript, its abstract and its bibliography, are an integral part of the requirements for the manuscript submission. They are downloadable from the menu ‘Publish with us’ at the item ‘Editorial Guidelines’.
To find out more, please contact Edizioni Ca’ Foscari’s editorial staff at ecf@unive.it.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The journal English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts, published at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, invites scholars to send to send article proposals for a special issue on
Solidarity—Responsibility—Culpability—Cooperation
Generations and the Environmental Crisis in Literature, Film, and Other Media
edited by Roberta Maierhofer (University of Graz, Austria) and Michael Fuchs (University of Innsbruck, Austria)
When Amitav Ghosh identifies “a crisis of the imagination” and suggests that climate fiction creates thought experiments that challenge the status quo, he positions cultural representations as voices of political resistance. As linguist Arran Stibbe has shown, the discourses of our everyday lives are permeated by stories that either endorse our destruction of the natural world or foster care and respect for our environment. Scholars such as Kathryn Yusoff have rightly emphasized that the use of the first-person plural (which we consciously employ in the previous sentence) in these discourses is a knotty issue, as it produces a universalism that erases inequalities and masks differences when it comes to past accountabilities for the environmental crisis and present as well as future obligations for mitigating its catastrophic consequences. In short, climate discourse often relies on binaries instead of emphasizing the potentials of overcoming them (and scholars such as Yusoff are not entirely excluded from this tendency).
Drawing on sources including Rob Nixon’s notion of the “slow violence” caused by anthroturbations and similar environmentally destructive activities, Adeline Johns-Putra’s observation that the discourse of the environmental crisis “is peppered with [...] references to parental obligations to posterity”, and Jonathan Schell’s reflections on cross-generational and cross-species concerns triggered by the heating-up of the Cold War in the early 1980s, this special issue will explore (human and nonhuman) generations in the context of the environmental crisis.
In contemporary discourses, boomers are often considered responsible for the climate emergency, while zoomers and millennials are the (more or less) innocent victims of past mistakes; boomers created a Texas-sized island of floating plastic in the Pacific Ocean; and boomers occupying positions of power stymie millennials’ suggestions for mitigating the effects of environmental destruction, as they do not have to think beyond 2040. Of course, this blame game overgeneralizes and oversimplifies matters. But perhaps most importantly, such binary constructions radicalize discourse and curtail progress by ignoring the potentials of intergenerational cooperation.
Therefore, we would like to call for articles on English or American literature or literatures in English, also in their relationship with cinema and other media, that explore the role of age and generations, and questions of intergenerational solidarity, responsibility, culpability, and cooperation in view of the superhuman scale of geological/deep time that the environmental crisis confronts us with.
Please send a proposal by May15th, using the form on the journal's website: English Literature,
Once the proposal is accepted you will be assigned a position in the journal's platform, where you can upload the article and see the peer review.
The deadline for uploading the article is September 15h.
The article must be composed using the house style. The editorial guidelines can be read here: Editorial guidelines.
All proposed articles will go through double-blind revision by two peers. The outcome of the revision can be accessed on your personal page within 45 days from the submission of your article.
English literature started its publication in December 2014 and is a fully open access journal. It is indexed in Scopus, ERIH-plus, MLA Directory of periodicals, Crossref, DOAJ.
In full compliance with open-access policies, the journal applies no costs for publication of articles. The journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Contributors can keep their articles’ copyrights and are allowed to re-use their articles for further publication, provided they do not publish the same or modified version before one full year from its publication in English Literature.
English Literature’s policy is inspired by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) ethical code.
If you have any query concerning the Journal or the present call, please write to english.lit@unive.it.
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
ERIH PLUS - European Reference Index for the Humanities
MLA - Modern Language Association
Scopus
WorldCat
Ethical Code of English Literature
English Literature is a peer-reviewed scientific journal whose policy is inspired by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) Ethical Code. See the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
Publisher’s responsibilities
The Publisher must provide the Journal with adequate resources and the guidance of experts, in order to carry out its role in the most professional way, aiming at the highest quality standard.
The Publisher must have a written agreement that defines the relationship with the owner of the Journal and/or the Editor-in-Chief. The agreement must comply with the Code of Behavior for Publishers of Scientific Journals, as established by COPE.
The relationship among the Editor-in-Chief, the Advisory Board and the Publisher is based on the principle of publishing independence.
Editors’ responsibilities
The Editor-in-Chief and the Advisory Board of English Literature alone are responsible for the decision to publish the articles submitted.
Submitted articles, after having been checked for plagiarism by means of the anti-plagiarism software Compilatio that is used by the University and is made available to us, will be sent to at least two reviewers. Final acceptance presumes the implementation of possible amendments, as required by the reviewers and under the supervision of the English Literature Editor-in-Chief.
The English Literature Editor-in-Chief and Advisory Board must evaluate each submitted paper in compliance with the Journalʼs policy, i.e. exclusively on the basis of its scientific content, without discrimination of race, sex, gender, creed, ethnic origin, citizenship, or the scientific, academic and political position of the Authors.
Allegations of misconduct
If the English Literature Editor-in-Chief and Advisory Board notice (or receive notifications of) mistakes or inaccuracies, conflict of interest or plagiarism in a published article, they will immediately warn the Author and the Publisher and will undertake the necessary actions to resolve the issue. They will do their best to correct the published content whenever they are informed that it contains scientific errors or that the authors have committed unethical or illegal acts in connection with their published work. If necessary, they will withdraw the article or publish a recantation.
All complaints are handled in accordance with the guidelines published by the COPE.
Concerns and complaints must be addressed to the following e-mail ecf_support@unive.it. The letter should contain the following information:
Authors’ responsibilities
Stylesheet
Authors must follow the Guidelines for Authors to be downloaded from the English Literature website.
Authors must explicitly state that their work is original in all its parts and that the submitted paper has not been previously published, nor submitted to other journals, until the entire evaluation process is completed. Since no paper gets published without significant revision, earlier dissemination in conference proceedings or working papers does not preclude consideration for publication, but Authors are expected to fully disclose publication/dissemination of the material in other closely related publications, so that the overlap can be evaluated by the English Literature Editor-in-Chief.
Authorship
Authors are strongly encouraged to use their ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. This will ensure the authors’ visibility and correct citation of their work.
Authorship must be correctly attributed; all those who have given a substantial contribution to the design, organisation and accomplishment of the research the article is based on, must be indicated as Co-Authors. Please ensure that: the order of the author names is correct; the names of all authors are present and correctly spelled, and that affiliations are up-to-date.
The respective roles of each co-author should be described in a footnote. The statement that all authors have approved the final version should be included in the disclosure.
Conflicts of interest and financing
Authors, under their own responsibility, must avoid any conflict of interest affecting the results obtained or the interpretations suggested. The English Literature Editor-in-Chief will give serious and careful consideration to suggestions of cases in which, due to possible conflict of interest, an Author’s work should not be reviewed by a specific scholar. Authors should indicate any financing agency or the project the article stems from.
Quotations
Authors must see to it that all works consulted be properly quoted. If works or words of others are used, they have to be properly paraphrased or duly quoted. Quotations between “double quotes” (or «angled quotation marks» if the text is written in a language other than English) must reproduce the exact wording of the source; under their own responsibility, Authors should carefully refrain from disguising a restyling of the source’s wording, as though it was the original formulation.
Any form of excessive, inappropriate or unnecessary self-citation, as well as any other form of citation manipulation, are strongly discouraged.
Ethical Committee
Whenever required, the research protocols must be authorised in advance by the Ethical Committee of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
Emendations
When Authors find a mistake or an inaccuracy in their own article, they must immediately warn the English Literature Editor-in-Chief, providing all the information needed to make the due adjustments.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
Goal
By means of the peer-review procedure, reviewers assist the English Literature Editor-in-Chief and Advisory Board in taking decisions on the articles submitted. They are expected to offer the Authors suggestions as to possible adjustments aimed at improving their contribution submission.
Timing and conflicts of interest
If a reviewer does not feel up to the task of doing a given review, or if she/he is unable to read the work within the agreed schedule, she/he should notify the English Literature Editor-in-Chief. Reviewers must not accept articles for which there is a conflict of interest due to previous contributions or to a competition with a disclosed author (or with an author they believe to have identified).
Confidentiality
The content of the reviewed work must be considered confidential and must not be used without explicit authorisation by the Author, who is to be contacted via the editor-in-chief. Any confidential information obtained during the peer review process should not be used for other purposes.
Collaborative attitude
Reviewers should see themselves not as adversaries but as advocates for the field. Any comment must be done in a collaborative way and from an objective point of view. Reviewers should clearly motivate their comments and keep in mind the Golden Rule of Reviewing: “Review for others as you would have others review for you”.
Plagiarism
Reviewers should report any similarity or overlapping of the work under analysis with other works known to them.