Essays in History (EiH), the annual peer-reviewed journal of the University of Virginia’s Corcoran Department of History, is currently soliciting articles, book reviews, and historiographical essays for its fifty-second issue, to appear in the fall of 2018.

EiH is a journal for emerging scholars that has been staffed and published by graduate students at the Corcoran Department of History since 1954. Each year we publish peer-reviewed articles, as well as book reviews and historiographical essays in all fields of history.

In recent years, we have published the work of scholars from all across the country, including Berkeley, Brown, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Rice, UNC-Chapel Hill, UPenn, UVa, Yale, as well as from institutions around the world such as Delhi University.

Our most recent issue can be found here: Volume 51: 2017

The deadline for article and book review submissions is May 2, 2018.

Article submissions should include a copy of the author’s curriculum vitae and an abstract of roughly 100 words in length. Authors interested in submitting book reviews and historiographical essays should provide a current curriculum vitae and contact the journal prior to their submission in order to confirm the monograph to be reviewed. Our submission guidelines are available at: http://www.essaysinhistory.com/submissions/

All submissions and any questions can be emailed to: essays_in_history@virginia.edu.

The French Journal of Medieval English Studies / Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes (BAM) is seeking submissions for a special issue focusing on the notion of “revolution”. The papers, written in French or English, should be submitted to Nolwena Monnier by October 30, 2018 (see more information below). Authors who wish to submit a paper are advised to get in touch and submit a title with a brief description of content as soon as convenient.

The papers will be published in issue 93 of BAM. The text below offers suggestions for how this topic can be interpreted, but contributions on other relevant topics are welcome.

The word “revolution” does not appear in English before the 14^th century. The word is borrowed from French revolucion, derived from the Latin revolvere. In medieval Latin the meaning of revolutio becomes both scientific and religious as it describes the movement of celestial bodies and the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis). The first known occurrence of the word “revolution” to describe an abrupt change in social order dates from 1450. However, that use does not become common until the end of the 17^th century.

It would seem, then, that the use of the word “revolution” in a medieval context is anachronistic. However, one may argue that some confrontations leading to major changes in the established social or political order of Medieval England can indeed be called revolutions or revolutionary a posteriori. Could the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt be seen as a failed revolution?

As regards religion, the topic brings to mind the reformatio: one can think for instance of the various reformist ideas within the Church which, between the 11^th century and 4^th Council of the Lateran (1215), advocates libertas ecclesiae and tries to get rid of corruption. From the 14^th century onwards, Lollards also try to bring profound changes to the Church. Some of their ideas, like the translation of the Bible in the vernacular and the end of celibacy for priest, considered heretical then, could be called revolutionary.

Less polemically, “revolution” can also be understood as a renovatio in English culture. The word suggests both an abrupt departure and a return to an initial position, not unlike the concept of renaissance, which has been used to describe all at once an intellectual upheaval, a rejection of the immediate past and the rediscovery of a distant idealized past. This could lead us to re-examine the various “renaissances” of the Middle-Ages: the Northumbrian, the Alfredian or the 12^th century renaissance in particular.

Orality and literacy also undergo massive changes in the Middle-Ages. Some historians describe the multiplication of texts between the 11^th and the 14^th century as the “first revolution of writing” and of course the invention of printing at the very end of the medieval period constitutes a revolutionary event, which can be studied from a cultural and/or technological standpoint. Before that, the professionalization of the production process of manuscripts can also be considered a great upheaval, even if it was more gradual.

As regards language, one can consider the various foreign influences on the English language throughout the period: was the “natural” evolution of English disrupted by historical events? Can the return to the vernacular in literature be considered a renaissance? Can the shift from a flexional language with a relatively free word order to a more and more isolating one with a fixed word order be called a revolution?

One can also think of the end of anonymity for authors, which signals an important change in how the past and its canonical authors are considered, as well as a form of liberation.

As well as revolutions that did take place, revolutions that might have been are also worth considering, especially those that did occur in other European countries: how come English authors favoured verse over prose in narratives for much longer than some of their neighbours, for instance?

The papers, written in English or in French, must be sent before October 30, 2018 to Nolwena Monnier: nolwena.monnier@iut-tlse3.fr.

The BAM uses double-blind peer review. The stylesheet to be used may be found on our website: http:/ /amaes.org/publications-de-l-amaes/notre-journal-bam/soumettre-un-article/