We also want to take this opportunity to thank Brian Maxson for his extraordinary generosity as Articles Editor in 2022–2024. Part of the initial trio of Articles Editors, Brian was a model of collegiality and constructive thinking as he helped establish many of the procedures under which we operate today. RSA members will doubtless have noticed his commitment to making the journal as welcoming as possible at convention sessions both formal and informal, where he shared with all his profoundly kind and inclusive vision. We are immensely grateful for all his work over the past three years.

In the not-so-distant past, many journals sent submissions to their editorial board only (some journals still operate this way or do so with most submissions). Tapping a broader range of readers is both more inclusive and more productive: like our RQ predecessors, we try to send to the readers across the world who are best informed about topics, whatever their relationship to RQ. But this requires that potential readers accept our invitation, bound only by professional obligation and/or a sense of reciprocity.

We wanted to write to urge all authors and potential authors to accept any invitations they receive to participate in the peer-review process by serving as readers, whether from us or from other journals, or indeed from scholarly presses. At present, when we invite readers for a submission, we give the potential reader about two weeks to respond, and only after we receive a response or after that time has elapsed can we reach out to the next potential reader. If multiple people do not respond, as can be the case, this process to simply find readers goes on for weeks or even months. Once found, each reader has about six weeks to write a report. All told, it is normal for this process to take upwards of four to six months, mostly because of the challenges of finding readers in the first place.

We would love to hear from you on what would make it easier for you to accept invitations to serve as readers. Would a certificate or letter to your department or dean help make the work more visible? Should we ask authors to check a box committing to reading for us in the future when they submit a manuscript to RQ? Should we give readers longer?

All of our peer-reviewed publications are the product of somebody’s willingness to serve as a peer reviewer after we submitted our work --please consider the reciprocal obligation to read the work of others, even if the timing is not great for you. If you truly cannot read for us, please make sure to respond as quickly as possible so we can move on to a new potential reader. Ultimately, we all hope that when we submit our work for peer review the process will be fair, prompt, open, and inclusive, and that goal depends on each of us: when it comes time for your essay or book manuscript to go out for review, you will want others to say yes.

Upon selection, the special editor(s) will announce to the RSA membership a call for abstracts for essays. The special issue editor(s) and the article editors will vet the abstracts based upon their quality, fit with the themes of the special issue, and ability to speak to different parts of the readership for Renaissance Quarterly. Special issues will include 6-8 essays of 7000-9000 words, with an introduction by the special issue editor(s). Although special issue editor(s) may not write an essay for their own issue, they will be able to choose, if they wish, to write an up to 10,000-word Introduction. All components of a special issue will undergo the same rigorous double-blind peer review process as other articles appearing in Renaissance Quarterly.

Please submit your proposal for a special issue as an attachment to rq@rsa.org by March 1, 2024. Each 500-1000 word proposal should include a description of the envisioned special issue and its relationship with the current literature on the topic, as well as a statement about how the issue will appeal to and include different constituencies within the RSA. The proposal should also include a two-page c.v. from each editor.

Please note that, although anyone is able to contribute to a special issue, the editors for special issues must include at least one person who has received the PhD or other terminal degree in their field.

We also want to take this opportunity to thank Mihoko Suzuki for her extraordinarily generous and constructive labors as Articles Editor in 2021-23. Mihoko first served as one of the acting editors during RQ’s transition to its new editorial model, and then agreed to stay on as part of the initial trio of Articles Editors. We are immensely grateful for her collegiality, editorial judgment, and vast experience, which have proven invaluable as we established new structures and procedures for the journal.

White’s research uncovered Henry VIII’s marks in the Psalms or Prayers  (1544) of Katherine Parr—his sixth wife, who survived him—revealing his turn to religion as he was physically failing and faced death. In addition, these marks flesh out the importance of Katherine as Henry’s last queen and the nature of their relationship as a collaborative one, in which he both distributed the texts she produced as gifts to his subjects and engaged with them as a reader. 

White’s scholarship is a fine example of the history of the book, which focuses on the physical attributes of particular books that reveal how people reacted to what they read, through what they marked, underlined, or annotated. Because the reader was Henry VIII and the book he was reading was produced by his wife,this discovery, which challenges our idea of him as a brutal, tyrannical husband, has clearly engaged the public imagination. The editors congratulate Professor White on the remarkable reception of her marvelous article.

Resource Landscapes: Ecologies, Labor, and Investment in the Early Modern World

Renaissance Quarterly invites proposals for contributions to a special issue, “Resource Landscapes.” By “resource landscapes,” we refer to arenas that witnessed the entanglement of natural processes with the human practices and belief systems that often sought to control them. Ecologies captures premodern notions of influence and dependency between humans and nature, both terrestrial and celestial.Labor and investment refer to the systems of exploitation, appropriation, and commodification developed during the period to manage human and natural resources.

This special issue aims to explore the entanglement of raw materials, nature, bodies, and landscapes by centering the material and cultural histories of peoples in dialogue with the colonizing and transforming of landscapes. The late medieval and early modern periods witnessed an acceleration in the exploitation and use of natural resources driven by technological innovations, new labor regimes, colonialism, and a rapidly expanding global market. Despite the increasing attention to issues of resources and environment by humanities scholars, especially in the context of Anthropocene, Indigenous, and climate studies, this longer pattern of resource exploitation remains underexplored. The issue aims to decenter and critically illuminate humanist contributions to the Anthropocene debate (which has largely proceeded through a modern, Western framework of analysis) by focusing on premodern European and non-Western case studies.

We invite contributions from scholars working across the geographical, chronological, and disciplinary reach of the RSA. Our aim is to bring together scholarly contributions that collectively

• adopt a historically sensitive approach that seeks to recover premodern conceptions of resources, landscapes, natures, and bodies in a way that hews closely to premodern actors’ experiences;

• go beyond European- or Western-centric approaches by including European colonial and non-Western case studies alongside those centered on Europe;

• approach the concept of “resource landscapes” on a number of different levels and from multiple disciplinary perspectives, such as: concrete studies of the way nature and its materials were obtained, transported, and used by premodern actors; studies of how nature, humans, and materials were represented in textual, literary, visual, and other forms; studies of the conceptual frameworks in which nature and its material riches were studied, understood, and harnessed, as well as governed and distributed;

• explore the entanglement of humans and nature through an explicit attention to issues of labor and understandings of the human body in relation to the transformation of natural and political landscapes.

We seek proposals for contributions from any interested members of the RSA. Proposals will be considered by the current RQ articles editors and the invited editors of the special issue. Participants will be expected to share preliminary drafts in January 2024 and will be invited to participate in a workshop or roundtable at RSA 2024 in Chicago. Final drafts of the contributions will be due April 30, 2024 and will undergo RQ’s standard peer review process.

The deadline for proposals is September 1, 2023. Proposals should be sent to RQresourcelandscapes@gmail.com. They should be 300–500 words long and include a 2-page CV. Submitters will be notified about initial decisions about inclusion by the end of September.

Here is what the judges had to say about Dr. Powell’s article:

"Extensive research with manuscripts and incunables allows Austin Powell to demonstrate how Observant Dominicans used Jerome’s letters and saintly exemplarity to justify their pastoral relations with women in an era when that role, as well as women’s spiritual activity, was often treated with suspicion.  We were impressed both by his codicological work, as well as the ways he builds on earlier scholarship to extend models of Dominican vitae Fratrum into the later Middle Ages.”

The Hagiography Society invites future submissions for the prize:

This prize is awarded in alternate years to a scholarly essay or article written on any disciplinary subject that makes an outstanding contribution to the study and understanding of saints, holy men and women, virtue traditions, and the concept of sanctity in ideational, literary, artistic, and sociohistorical dimensions in the pre-modern period. Articles concerning all geographies and religious systems are eligible.  Any authors who might be eligible for the 2025 prize (for articles published in 2023 and 2024) are encouraged to submit a copy of their article per instructions on the website:  https://www.hagiographysociety.org/?page_id=265

Special issues will include 6-8 essays of 7000-9000 words, with an introduction by the special issue editor(s). A call for abstracts for essays to be included will be sent to the membership; the special issue editor(s) and the article editors will vet the abstracts. The full essays will be submitted for peer review.

There will be an annual deadline for special issue proposals. The next deadline is April 30, 2023. Please submit your proposal as an attachment to rq@rsa.org.

We would like to express our deep appreciation to the many RSA members who volunteered to contribute their expertise to the journal, and hope that you will apply again. We anticipate a call every three years. The next call to join the Advisory Board will go out in 2025, for positions in 2026, 2027, and 2028.

The initial cohort of 12 will serve terms of 1 to 3 years:
Zoltan Biedermann
Katherine Butler
Mariana Françozo
Jessica Goethals
Andrew Hui
Fernando Loffredo
Joyce MacDonald
Fabien Montcher
Renée Raphael
Brian Sandberg
Ana Plosnić Škarić
Tamara Walker

The following members will join the committee in 2024:
Stefan Bauer
Frances Gage
Kaya Şahin
Jyotsna G. Singh

The following members will join the committee in 2025:
Ana Saez-Hidalgo
Stuart Michael McManus
Elisabeth Narkin
Joshua Reid

Thank you for your support of the journal. We look forward to working with the Advisory Board.

Welcome to the new Renaissance Quarterly newsletter! Ever since we started our term as editors, the three of us have been hoping to establish a more direct channel of communication with readers. We will use this space to share news, introduce issues of the journal as they are published, and invite your contributions on various fronts. We hope also to include interviews with contributors and other interactive formats. 

It is a great privilege for us to serve as editors, inaugurating an interdisciplinary and collaborative editorial structure for RQ. We are excited about building on the journal’s strong foundation, about the changes we are introducing, and about sharing our progress with you. Watch this space for our newly constituted Advisory Board, our upcoming San Juan session on how to publish in the journal, and our call for proposals for special issues.

Barbara Fuchs, Brian Maxson, and Mihoko Suzuki

Renaissance Quarterly Articles Coeditors