WITH this special volume of Philament, edited by Blythe Worthy and myself, the journal moves into a new stage of its life. For our last published volume, number 22, “Precarity,” we decided to print a small number of physical copies, largely to satisfy our own curiosities about the cost of the printing process, but also to see whether the aesthetic value of these digital pages, lovingly typeset as they are, would carry over to the parchment. Happy with the results of our experiment, we have decided that we shall this time print a few more copies than the last time, an opportunity made possible thanks to Blythe Worthy’s strong advocacy of the journal and the resultant support we have received from the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC). Recently, Philament has been fortunate enough to harvest other strong voices of support from within the University of Sydney’s Department of English, as well as from SUPRA, the University’s Student Postgraduate Representative Association. Zushan Hashmi, SUPRA’s Director of Student Publications, has ably publicised Philament’s mission—to facilitate the publication of excellent postgraduate scholarship in the arts broadly defined—in two issues of the student newspaper Honi Soit. We look forward to working with our supporters to continue refining and developing the journal, which is now in its fourteenth year. [END PAGE V]
And a final note. We have decided from this volume forward to describe issues of Philament as “volumes,” seeing as though we might, at some point in the future, produce multiple “numbers” or issues within the same single volume. This decision is in some respects problematic. We are aware, for instance, that, most of the time, an academic journal’s volume number will correspond to the number of years for which that journal has been published; a journal that produces a “volume 3,” for instance, will usually have been in production for some three years, regardless of the total number of discrete issues or numbers it has published in any of those years. And, alas, Philament has been in production only for fourteen years—not twenty-three. Nevertheless, we are encouraged to make our decision because, as noted in the Chicago Manual of Style’s “Books and Journals” section, “some journals . . . publish two or more volumes in one year, depending on the frequency and length of issues.”1 Given, then, that there is some historical precedent for organising a journal by volume numbers in the way that we propose (that is, by volume numbers that are not denotative of the years for which the journal has been published), we shall forge ahead on our instincts, and designate this issue of Philament volume 23. Of course, it is a matter for future editors whether this organising principle is to be maintained or discarded—and perhaps another matter again whether future scholars, citing this journal in their own works, will recognise or indeed consider this eccentricity. In any case, our adoption of this system should not affect the standard citation of our journal as recommended by rule 14.187 of the Chicago Manual of Style for special issues, according to which this volume may be cited as follows: Worthy, Blythe and Rudge, Chris, eds. “New Waves: Twenty-First-Century Feminisms.” Special issue, Philament 23 (2017).2
About the Author
Chris Rudge is managing editor of Philament. He holds degrees in arts and law, a PhD in the literary history of psychiatry, and works in Sydney Law school on the ethics and regulation of medicine.
