Do you know that Mentalities/Mentalités was
resurrected a couple of years ago, thanks to some friends in Australia, and now
comes out as an online journal?[1] Among other things
we have been able to do, aside from [printing articles and reviews as we have always
done, is to publish proceedings from various scholarly conferences in Europe
and the USA, collections of essays that the "regular" commercial and
academic journals and presses won't touch without subsidization. There are
important names and well-known authors involved.
There are still a few of us
with scholarly standards and principles still left, so we have to help one
another. In a sense, things are easier than they were when Outrigger
Publishers began various series such as Ocean Monographs,[2] Crosscurrents and Rim
These days, thanks to the internet, we can get a wider circulation than
before--though hardly one that registers on the radar of those who do
statistics--and more like the 18th century circulating system of formal letters
between academic societies and isolated individuals. Or even like the passing
of midrashic commentaries and responsa among rabbis in pre- and early-modern
Europe.
If anyone wants to start up a
series of separate publications, books and monographs, the kind that have “fit
audience though few”, as Milton said, let us know your interests, talents and
experience. This is an invitation not
only to independent scholars and poets, novelists and writers of essays,
translators and critics, but also to people with skills and experience in
business, publishing and online communications.
The purpose will be not
commercial but cultural, not to enhance academic careers but to enjoy the
intellectual and aesthetic pleasures that a cruel and hard world make ever more
difficult to achieve.
No comments:
Post a Comment