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ELN is delighted to announce that, as of the publication of our April 2018 issue, the stellar Duke University Press Journals has become the publisher of both print and online factions of our journal. Our digital content is hosted by Duke UP and Project Muse. English Language Notes is available online to approximately 1.5 million readers worldwide. The print version now boasts a dramatic makeover in formatting and cover art, and our publication schedule has changed to an April/October calendar. Our new 鈥淥f Note鈥 section showcases exciting new pathways and trends in methods, theories, scholarship, and creative work.

colorful bird feathers

Expanding Black and Indigenous Ecologies

This issue navigates the intersections of Black and Indigenous ecologies. Colonial epistemologies still marginalize Black and Indigenous peoples in discussions about ecologies: they neglect Black and Indigenous peoples鈥 disproportionate environmental dispossession and the effects of environmental racism while 鈥渘aturalizing鈥 Black and Indigenous peoples as closer to the natural environment. The contributions to this issue draw on convergences between environmental inequality, sonic ecologies, and the legacies of colonialism to shape ongoing conversations. The issue traces historical as well as contemporary relationships and attends to the linkages and disruptions at work in Black and Indigenous ecologies, especially in the midst of climate change, which continues to affect those who are least responsible for the planet鈥檚 degradation. The articles in this issue make visible entwined histories in Black and Indigenous ecologies, as well as histories of oppression, that may trouble territorial boundaries and expand relationalities.

boot stepping on flowers

Kashmiri Futures

This special issue inaugurates a scholarly and creative conversation that seeks to detach the future of Kashmir from the narrative, aesthetic, and political frames of powerful nation-states that have sought to keep Kashmiris confined to a long and seemingly enduring colonial present. It seeks, moreover, to inspire radical imaginations of possible futures in danger of foreclosure by occupying states, and asks us to think about occupation as a temporal as well as spatial regime.

ceramic sculpture of six medical masks hanging in a row on wooden pegs

Pandemic! COVID-19 and Literary Studies

What does the study of literature bring to our understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic? In this ELN issue the contributors reflect on and seek to make sense of one of the most disorienting and tragic phenomena of our lives. Much has been written about the pandemic from a scientific point of view, but as scholars of language and literature, the contributors investigate the meaning that literature and culture can add to our evolving understanding of the profoundly human dimensions of a crisis that has taken millions of lives and caused lasting physical, emotional, and psychological damage to millions more. The issue examines new literary narratives and frames them in relation to the longer history of cultural responses to the influenza pandemic of 1918-20, the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and of SARS in 2002-4, and other public health crises. It explores narratives of environmental collapse and engages with scientific data, public health issues, and national and global policy making. Finally, it addresses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on literary studies in the academy.

a woman and two mannequins in a clothing atelier

Fashion鈥檚 Borders

This issue takes up the complex relationship between clothing and place and examines the transcultural flow of styles, materials, garments, and accessories within and across national borders. With essays on topics that range from the global clothing chain in Mauritius to the significance of Emily Dickinson鈥檚 shawl, the issue seeks to illustrate how fashions are culturally redefined when they travel and what role the circulation of sartorial objects plays across historical periods, disciplines, and cultural traditions.

A respected forum of criticism and scholarship in literary and cultural studies since 1962, the recent incarnation of English Language Notes 鈥 ELN 鈥 is dedicated to pushing the edge of scholarship in literature and related fields in new directions. Broadening its reach geographically and transhistorically, ELN鈥檚 semi-annual issues provide a wide-ranging print and digital forum of topical clusters, roundtable debates, artistic collaborations, reviews, and traditional scholarly essays.

PLEASE NOTE

We are not accepting unsolicited submissions at this time. 

Forthcoming Issues
  • Personhood, Spirit, Afterlife
    62.2, Fall 2024
    Ruth Ellen Kocher, Special Issue Editor