The History Teaching Alliance
The HTA is proud to announce the organization of nineteen new collaborative projects that have been accepted as part of the Alliance. These new collaboratives will join our five projects begun in a year-long series of seminars. The new Alliance collaboratives are:
Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque City Schools and the Law-Related Education Project of the State Bar of New Mexico; Amherst, MA: Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and secondary school systems in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties; Charlotte, NC: University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Schools; Cleveland, OH: Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland schools; Detroit, MI: Wayne State University and the Detroit City Schools; Garden City, KS: University of Kansas, Lawrence and the Garden City Schools; Greenwood, SC: Lander College and Greenwood County Schools Districts #50, 51, and 52; Kansas City, MO: University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City Schools, Center School District, North Kansas City Schools, Raytown, and Independence, MO schools; Los Angeles, CA: California State University, L.A. and the Los Angeles Unified School District; Middletown, PA: Pennsylvania State University and Middletown area schools; Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota and five surrounding school districts, the Minnesota Historical Society, and Minnesota Council for the Humanities; Missoula, MT: University of Montana and School District # 1, Missoula County: Ogden, UT: Weber State College and the Ogden City and Davis County Schools; Omaha, NE: Creighton University and two surrounding school districts; Pembroke, NC: Pembroke State University and eight surrounding districts; San Antonio, TX: University of Texas and the Northside Independent Schools; Wausau, WI: University of Wisconsin and the Wausau City Schools; Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University and the Forsyth County Schools.
Felix Gilbert Honored
The first AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction was presented to Felix Gilbert, Institute for Advanced Study, at the 1985 Annual Meeting in New York. In making the award, AHA President McNeill remarked, “It is fitting that the first Award for Scholarly Distinction be accorded to Felix Gilbert. Few among our number have so completely incarnated the virtues of history as a vocation. Master of a variety of fields, from the Italian Renaissance through eighteenth-century America to modern Europe, Professor Gilbert has contributed in each, works that stand as models of historical scholarship, rich in empirical specificity, yet resonant with a wider significance for understanding history as a whole.
“. . . For Felix Gilbert, history can no more be finally fixed in thought than it can be firmly chan11eled in actuality. The spirit of creative adaptation to refractory reality—to the otherness of past experience—is the secret of historical understanding. Openness must accordingly be the basic posture of the historian.
“Felix Gilbert has lived by this open ness not only in his own scholarship, but in his relation to the work of others. . . . As teacher no less than as scholar, Felix Gilbert exemplifies the judgment of Jacob Burkhardt: ‘The experience of history can make us not so much smart er for tomorrow as wiser forever.'”
Authors vs. Editors
Two cases concerning relations between an author and journal editors have come to the attention of the AHA Professional Divison.
In one, the author had submitted an article for inclusion in a festschrift to be published as an issue of a journal. According to the author, “the copy editor made substantive changes—changed meanings, paragraphs, even added gratuitous comments.” The author returned the edited copy with a letter stating that the text was not to be published in that form. However, the text was published anyway—a fact the author discovered inadvertently since the publisher did not send an author’s copy of the issue.
The second case concerns an editor of a journal who had invited the participants in an AHA annual meeting session to submit their papers as part of the proceedings to be published in an issue. The author sent in her session commentary. The copy editor, according to the author of the comment, took “great liberties . . . with my writing, skewing meaning.” The result “was not what I was saying.” The author returned the copy and requested that part of the text be restored. The editor called the author to say there was not time to make any changes in the edited copy and send proofs for the author’s review. Either the author was to trust the editor to make any changes needed, or the comment would not be published. The author decided not to publish. The situation remains, however, that she would not have been permitted to review proofs prior to publication, and that because of the nonpublication of her comments the session’s papers were published without benefit of the session’s commentary.
In each case, there was little the Professional Division could do, as the stage of mediation had passed before the complaints were received. However, the Division does believe the grievances sufficiently serious to warrant publication as an “alert” to authors and editors. The rights of both have been set forth from the editor’s point of view in Guidelines for Journal Editors and Contributors (Modern Language Association, 1984), developed by the Conference of Editors of Learned Journals. These guidelines reflect an “evolving set of practices that many editors share.” There are a number of references in the guidelines that extend to the cases discussed, but those following seem especially apt:
Journal publication is a cooperative enterprise. Authors and editors are collaborators who share essentially the same concerns: to publish the best and most useful research and commentary concerning literary, professional, and pedagogical issues raised by the reading and teaching of modern languages and literatures. The relation is symbiotic; the editors cannot produce a worthwhile journal without the interest, support, and trust of authors who send manuscripts for evaluation, while authors need knowledgeable, efficient, and sympathetic editors.
Consequently, authors and publishers should communicate with one an other regularly during the evaluation and publication of manuscripts. Reviews of submissions should be both reasonably speedy and fair. Publishers have a right to outline certain conditions for such evaluations (such as no multiple submission or no author identification) and for publication (such as house style), and authors, in turn, have a right to expect information from publishers and respect for their manuscripts. Just as potential authors may spend long hours conducting research and writing and revising, so editors seem never to be free of the various demands placed on them—demands that are not always consistent or congruent—by authors and potential authors, editorial boards, printers, subscribers, advertisers, and funding agencies. Mutual understanding and patience between authors and editors are crucial to the publishing process. (Pages 1-2.)
Preparing copy for publication. Editors should copyedit work carefully—correcting minor errors, improving clarity and cogency of argument if necessary, bringing the work into alignment with house style, noting special instructions to the typesetter (such as typeface or point size)—and then return the styled essay to the author for final review and for the possible addition of notes or allusions to relevant work published after the essay was first written. The scope of editorial work varies among journals and even among essays styled by a single journal; some publications hire copy editors and may suggest extensive changes and perhaps even rewriting. Authors and editors should be prepared to work together in such instances. In all cases, however, a journal will impose on a submission the publication’s own house style to bring all works into agreement on certain basic practices; the author tacitly agrees to accept house style when submitting an essay. The editor is always responsible for keeping the author informed of this process and clearing any substantive changes with the author before sending the essay on to the typesetter; the author is responsible, in turn, for supplying a current address at all times, reviewing any substantive changes and approving or disapproving of them promptly, and noting or incorporating any later relevant scholarship. (Page 7.)
In cases where authors and editors are unable to come to agreement, and when one or the other wishes to lodge an appeal, the Conference of Editors of Learned Journals attempts to mediate between the parties, using the above guidelines. Editors or authors are invited to write, in such instances, to the president of the Conference of Editors of Learned Journals, care of the Modern Language Association, 62 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011. Copies of the guidelines may also be obtained at the same address.
In Remembrance
The American Historical Association wishes to pay tribute to the memory of Sharon Christa McAuliffe, who died with the other six crew members of the space shuttle Challenger, January 28, 1986. A history and social studies teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, she earned the respect of her colleagues and a nation for her exuberant courage and commitment to teaching.
