Literature & History

I have decided to submit my paper to the Literature & History journal put out by Manchester University Press.  It is a journal "concerned to investigate the relations between writing, history and ideology."  I have emailed a member of the editorial board explaining where I'm going with my writing and if he has any suggestions for how I could make it even more relevant to the aims of the journal.  I've been reading up on "pet peeves" people have with journal submissions, and a common one seems to be submissions that do not reference or demonstrate awareness of previously published articles by the journal, so I'm familiarizing myself with some of those and hopefully will be able to include them in my paper.

Update: I just received a response.  The editor said it sounds like my paper would be better directed to a life journal or creative writing journal.  I'm not sure where I should submit...

Update Update:  Turns out there actually is a journal called Life Writing.  Description is below, but I like that they accept both academic articles and reflection essays because I think in order for me to write something that I'm truly proud of and that is authentic to me and to how personal the inspiration for this paper is to me, the product will fall somewhere between academic and reflection.  Again, focusing on how literature functions as "letters" written to us from the past, connecting us to our ancestors and to other individuals from previous generations.

"Life Writing is one of the leading journals in the field of biography and autobiography. It has the unique and unusual policy of carrying both scholarly articles and critically informed personal narrative. The journal has three sections: Academic Articles, Reflections and Reviews. Reflections essays differ from academic articles in that we do not expect a high level of analysis and referencing. We do, however, expect that the reflexive "I" will filter the subject matter, and that on the continuum from discursive/analytical to creative, these essays will fall somewhere in the middle. In other words, we do not publish purely creative essays, ficto-criticism, or memoirs; we include essays which fall into the genre of autoethnography. Our editorial board comprises leaders in the field of life writing practice, such as Paul John Eakin, Sidonie Smith, Lila Abu-Lughod and Ruth Behar.

The journal aims to publish work from many disciplines as well as work that is interdisciplinary. Historically, life writing has been the preserve of literary studies. Now, however, many other perspectives use biography and autobiography as analytical tools, hence object biography, autoethnography, autofiction, and many other inter-generic codes are thriving.  Life Writing provides expert and sympathetic reviewing of such interdisciplinary work."