Introduction: The Journal of European Studies at 50

The launch of a new academic journal in any field is far from straightforward, even hazardous. Its inception, as well as its continuation, requires careful forward planning. Essential is a sufficient flow of suitable contributions not only of quality in themselves, but which, taken together, create the journal’s distinctive identity. In the editorial preface to the first issue of JES in March 1971 this was clearly recognized. While the Humanities may have had an

overwhelming majority of publications in a single field and are frequently concerned with the building of barricades between the various disciplines rather than with the dismantling of old ones, the Journal of European Studies seeks to promote studies of an interdisciplinary kind relating to the Literature, History and Thought of Europe.

To have had this ambition in the late 1960s was appropriate but also challenging. If not strictly cultural, courses on European Studies emerged in the school curriculum and were central to the Humanities faculties at the universities of Sussex and East Anglia, two of the new institutions created respectively in 1961 and 1963. By 1980 this fundamental shift was recognized by John Cruickshank the late Professor of French at Sussex when, in the Times Higher Educational Supplement in a survey of new journals published during the previous decade he wrote:

The Journal of European Studies, founded in 1971, reflects in many ways the changed attitudes to the study of foreign cultures which emerged during the 1960s. This is the period of brave new academic ventures, the redrawing of the ‘map of learning’, particularly in the arts.

The Journal of European Studies (and Europe included the United Kingdom) was the brainchild of Anthony Cross, Franz Kuna and John Burrow who were among the first appointments at East Anglia. Burrow subsequently moved to Sussex in 1969 and was a member of our Advisory Board until 1990. Kuna was appointed to a post at the University of Klagenfurt in 1976 and became our continental editor from 1977. I arrived at East Anglia in 1969. The groundwork had already been laid, and during a 20-minute walk across the campus to the University Arms one lunchtime I was persuaded to become the general editor. The search for a publisher proved to be relatively easy and an offer from Seminar Press, a branch of the Harcourt Brace group, was accepted. In both layout and content, the first issue established the model that would be maintained during the following decades – critical articles, review essays and conference reports, and short book-review notices. The lead article by Peter Stern, the late Professor of German at Cambridge, is a wide-ranging reflection on ‘Realism’ embracing, among others, Goethe, Wittgenstein and Pascal. The three other principal contributions are devoted to the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the Nazi control of the German film industry and the French Catholic pamphleteer and novelist George Bernanos. The issue is completed by two review essays and over a dozen notices (approximately 500 words each at Kuna’s insistence) tantalizingly signed by the reviewer’s initials only. By volume 2 an international Advisory Board of nine members from seven different countries was announced. Over the years, membership has changed periodically and by 2019 numbered 19. The contributions in the form of reviewing or refereeing of many of its members have been invaluable.

The journal’s first years successfully realized editorial ambitions by publishing an impressive range of interdisciplinary contributions: for example, ‘Levels in poetic convention’ (March 1972); ‘The intellectuals and the coming of war in 1914’ (March 1973); ‘Byron and Islam’ (December 1974), ‘Dostoievskii and Camus: similarities and contrasts’ (March 1975). As is often the case, however, academic success did not produce the financial rewards the publishers must have anticipated, and in 1974 they announced they would no longer support us. Fortunately, it was possible to negotiate a year’s grace, allowing articles already accepted to appear in what might have been the journal’s last volume when, quite fortuitously, we received a pamphlet from a small publishing house, Alpha Academic, inviting proposals for new journals. JES was adopted and a happy and successful collaboration lasted until 2003 when we were approached by Sage with whom we have remained.

While the basic original size (approximately 400 pages per year), format and style of JES remained, there have inevitably been a number of changes, some relatively superficial, others more substantial relating to content. Initially proposed by Alpha Academic, a brighter more attractive cover with a map of Europe firmly announces the focus on ‘Literature and ideas from the Renaissance to the present’, for example. A ten-year index allowed easy research; review notices were gradually replaced by more substantial reviews and became subdivided according to national focus and with the full name of the reviewer revealed. From 2003 Sage also advocated that each article should be preceded by a brief abstract and keywords. And conforming to the general practice of English-language journals internationally it was decided in 2015 that the journal should also be in English, but if quotations in the original language were necessary, they should be accompanied by translations. (This commemorative issue has deliberately retained the earlier style.)

A random survey of issues to the present clearly shows that the original ambition of JES has been sustained. Articles – sometimes richly illustrated – focus not only on topics and figures from literature, but also from cinema, dance, music and architecture. For example, from the earliest numbers we find ‘Malraux’s debt to Dostoievskii’ (September 1976); ‘Voltaire’s view of England’ (June 1977); ‘The image of the black in the German colonial novel’ (March 1978). Twenty years later ‘Dickens in Denmark’ (June 1996); ‘The fascist body and the imperial crisis in 1930s British writing’ (March 2009); ‘Linguistic cosmopolitans: Arendt, Capek, Orwell’ (June 2013); and ‘The art of nothingness: Dada, Taoism and Zen’ (March 2018). Special editions, usually but not always double, have also significantly contributed to the journal’s stature. Since the publication of the first in 1979 there have been over a dozen, presented by a guest editor: Dada (March–June 1979, edited by Richard Sheppard); Faust (March–June 1983, edited by Michael Palencia-Roth); The New Reactionaries: Cultural Controversy in Context (September–December 2007, edited by Hugo Frey and Benjamin Noys); Orientalism within Europe: Differences, Minorities and Division (October 2016, edited by Elisa Segnini); European Photography Today (December 2013, edited by Frances Guerin). Of these the first two were subsequently republished as books. In November 2018 the journal also devoted a double issue to the culture of Romania (Romania 100: Nation, Identity, Global Challenge, edited by Lenuta Giukin and Adriana Cordali Gradea), which explores memory and the shaping of national consciousness, focusing in particular on the New Romanian cinema.

Since 2010, there have been various surveys of journals in which JES has regularly been ranked among the most successful. While some submissions cover subjects too far afield for acceptance by a journal devoted to literature and ideas in Europe (for example, the socio-economic union of Europe, political shifts, agricultural policies such as milk quotas in Sicily, and even military activities in Ukraine) one on ‘The ideology of slow food’ (June 2012) proved to be the most downloaded article for several years.

Whatever the changes that have been introduced, the quality of JES has remained consistent, as witnessed by nearly 800 refereed articles by colleagues from 33 countries across the world, over 70 review essays and conference reports, and nearly 4000 book reviews. Inevitably, the internet and access to on-line resources have had a major impact on research methods, but they have also opened up a vast readership, an innovation which Sage has successfully exploited. None of this would have been possible, however, without the commitment of many colleagues who have generously and freely given their time to advise, referee and review. We have invited some of them to contribute an original piece to this commemorative issue – whether personal or related to specialist interests. As a result, we have 13 articles exploring different aspects of the history, culture, philosophy and politics of France, Germany, Hungary, the Soviet Union, Poland and the United Kingdom, from the seventeenth century to the present. Some are sharply focused, concentrating on a single text or problematic; others are more broad-based, exploring and even inviting reassessments of periods of cultural challenge and change. Each, in its own way, stimulates further reflection.

This brief preface would not be complete, however, without an acknowledgement of the role played by our Continental Editors who have ensured the genuine European dimension to our activities. Even more central to JES’s international status and impact has been the role of Tony Cross as our Reviews Editor who has masterminded the section with much success, encouraging colleagues to produce their critiques within a year of a book’s publication. Invaluable too over the years has been the critical eye of our copy-editor, Frances Nugent, and the invaluable support and sometimes legal assistance from our in-house editors at Sage.

We hear from our publishers that 50 years under the direction of the same editorial team is today unheard of. Although the work has at times been trying, it has always been interesting and rewarding. May our successors be as fortunate.