[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/humanitiesjournal.jpg” caption=”Eighteenth-Century Fiction received the runner-up Best Special Issue Prize for War/La Guerre in an annual competition hosted by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals.”]The Council of Editors of Learned Journals has awarded Eighteenth-Century Fiction the runner-up Best Special Issue Prize for War/La Guerre in the CELJ annual competition.

Co-edited by Julie Park and Peter Walmsley, professors in McMaster University's Department of English & Cultural Studies, and produced by managing editor Jacqueline Langille, the quarterly Humanities Faculty journal is in its 20th year of publication.

War/La Guerre was organized by Park, who wrote a preface to the volume, and was co-edited by Walmsley. The special issue features a bold new design created by Park and Langille that uses eighteenth-century military images.

“It was a big, but very pleasant surprise to hear that the
special issue had won the runner-up prize,” said Park. “It is an honour to have a journal that specializes in eighteenth-century studies win the recognition it has, and it is an enormous boost to the Faculty of Humanities, demonstrating that the research it fosters and produces makes a significant impact in the North American academy.”

Since 2003, the journal has been working to diversify its vision. Aiming to reinforce the journal's reputation as the leading publication of scholarship on the early novel while reaching more readers, the Eighteenth-Century Fiction editors have been encouraging submissions that conceive of “fiction” in a broader sense and expand the frameworks for discussing it.

“I considered the special issue a chance for the journal to demonstrate its new editorial vision of promoting more expansive and innovative scholarly approaches to the study of 'fiction' in the eighteenth century,” said Park. “Indeed, the special issue demonstrates this more expansive vision as its articles cross different genres, medias and national boundaries in their considerations of 'war' in the eighteenth century, and its relationship to emerging ideas about fiction.”

War/La Guerre was selected from 40 submissions for
the Council's most competitive award.

According to the CELJ judges, “each essay in this special issue is
interesting, fresh, and grounded in original scholarship. The movement between texts that deal with real fighting, texts that deal with the memory of battle, texts that use military images to describe
social relationships, and texts that describe the influence of a military culture on civilian life keeps the issue fresh and diverse as well as unified and the illustrations are apt to the subject.”

The Council of Editors of Learned Journals, an Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association, is an organization of more than 450 editors of scholarly journals devoted to study in the humanistic disciplines.

War/La Guerre (Fall 2006) features nine articles and 10 book
reviews, with a preface by Julie Park. Working with different media, genres and national boundaries, as well as languages, the authors are at different stages in the profession, from graduate student to senior scholar. Topics covered in the issue include Technologies of War and Narration, Allegory and Critique, Men of War and Eighteenth-Century Image, a new section in the journal.

For the complete table of contents, visit the journal's website.
The editors can be reached at ecf@mcmaster.ca.