Submission guidelines

The Women Writers Project is creating a new Women Writers Online space to house small scholarly exhibits or mini-collections that extract manageable chunks of WWO texts, as well as searches and results, and present them in the context of scholarly commentary. The goal is to produce interesting and insightful pairings of texts, explore the development of historical concepts or literary forms (within genres, across genres, within or across historical periods or literary movements, etc.), and expose readers to important trends in current scholarship. We envision online exhibits as a medium for both emerging and established scholars to publish original work in a non-traditional format.

Form

Online exhibits should be topically focused and should allow you to write useful and briefly about a specific insight. We do not envision submissions at the scale of a full-fledged scholarly article. Exhibits may come in the form of a collection of material curated under a particular theme (war, science, biographical background, etc.) or they may be more like essays which, rather than quoting from primary sources, actually link directly to those sources. Keep in mind the goal of the exhibit is to direct readers' attention to the WWO collection and to suggest connections, patterns, and interpretations that increase their understanding of and interest in the texts. The ideal exhibit raises questions that bring the reader further into the WWO collection, and the distinctive feature of our exhibits is the linkages they provide to Women Writers Online. These might take several forms:

• links to entire texts
• links to quotations—that is, to specific passages from a WWO text or texts. The quoted material might appear in the exhibit itself together with a link to the full text, or the exhibit might simply offer the link (e.g. "As Margaret Fell argues [link], etc. etc.").
• links which execute searches, or which link to precompiled search results: for instance, a link that performs a search for a specific word of interest. (E.g. "Although the word 'feminine' is rare before 1600 [link]...")
• links to visualizations such as timelines, maps, etc., once these are available as part of the WWO exhibit framework. (E.g. "This group of authors were all working at about the same time in or near York [link]...")

Length

Think of exhibits as falling between a very short article to a full article in length, but with the added flexibility of the digital medium. Exhibits of almost any length may be submitted. A practical range might be from at least one substantial paragraph to a book chapter. On the shorter end, the paragraph would need to be very substantive and suggestive; on the longer end, the piece would truly have to earn the space by holding the reader's attention.

Audience

Our audience spans students and scholars of diverse levels. Online exhibits should engage readers across a spectrum of academic perspectives.

Images

Images and other multimedia may be included in submissions. In fact, contributors are encouraged to include images when possible, or at least to indicate how images might be used in conjunction with the submission. Permissions should be secured by the individual contributor, although the WWP may be able to offer assistance in some cases.

Credit

Online exhibits are formal, citable publications that can be listed on a CV or referenced in other works. Exhibits will be published with their contributor's name in the public part of the WWP site (rather than being access-protected).

Review

All submissions will be reviewed by the WWP editors, who will approve published material and may suggest revisions.

Timeline

The WWP will be accepting its first round of exhibit submissions through June 1, 2009. However, submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis thereafter. Please contact WWP_exhibits@brown.edu if you would like to submit an exhibit but are unable to meet this deadline.

How to Submit

Submissions should be sent in plain text or Microsoft Word format. Please do not send PDF. Submissions should be mailed electronically to WWP_exhibits -at- brown -dot- edu.

If you have futher questions, or would like to propose an idea for an exhibit, please contact Anna Fisher, the WWP's Exhibits Editor, at annawfisher -at- gmail -dot- com.