Dr. Marnin Young, associate professor and chair of art history at Stern College for Women, has co-edited a special issue of Nonsite, an online peer-reviewed journal, devoted to new research on 19-century art.
“Editing a special issue of an academic journal,” said Dr. Young, “is a laborious process. Dr. Bridget Alsdorf, my co-editor from Princeton University, and I solicited contributions and sent all of them for peer review (where they were each read and evaluated by different scholars in the field). We sent the evaluations to the authors, who revised their articles, then sent the revised articles to a copyeditor, who cleaned up language, citations, formatting and so on. We also commented extensively on the style and format of the articles. We then had to assist authors in obtaining the high-quality reproductions that complement art history publications. Once the authors had approved the text and imagery, we formatted them for the website, including producing thumbnails and abstracts. All in all, the process has lasted over a year.”
But the quality of what they have produced more than rewards the effort put into producing the work. “We both felt a need for a site online for serious scholarship on 19-century art. All the contributions are by art historians working on new topics or new theoretical angles in the field. None of the articles has been published before. Some of the articles break ground by presenting new objects of inquiry or by reframing the way we look at established artists, while one essay attempts to rethink the very nature and significance of 19-century art from the roots up.”
They are already at work on second set of articles for a follow-up issue scheduled for early 2019. “We hope efforts like ours will be a regular part of the Nonsite publication.”
