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September 2011
In July of last year, we reported that in response to a proposal made by the editors of this website, the Modern Language Association of America appointed a committee (chaired by George Levine) to study the feasibility of launching its own online review of books on language, literature, and literary theory. Having carefully studied this proposal, and having fully investigated the online book review site launched over ten years ago by the College Art Association, the MLA has decided not to launch its own online book review. Its reasons are stated in two emails sent to me in July by Russell Berman, President of the MLA. Below I present both sides of our correspondence.
As we begin our third year of operation (since launching on 1 September 2009), I am happy to report that we have posted 181 reviews, drawn 49,386 visits and 31,652 unique visitors.
By the end of this calendar year, I very much hope that our reviews will be fully accessible though NINES, the premier website for nineteenth-century scholarship online. In any case, I hope you will continue to visit us regularly for timely reviews of the latest books on English and American literature of the nineteenth century. For information on other online book review sites, scroll down to the end of this report.
My warm and continuing thanks to our advisers, editors, and above all our reviewers--well over a hundred now--who have proven themselves indispensable to this project. I am also grateful to the members of the MLA Executive Council--and in particular to George Levine--for the time and careful consideration they gave to our proposal.
Finally, special thanks to my colleague Thomas Luxon, our technical advisor; to Geethmala Sridharan, who built the site; and to the three site managers who have kept us going so well: Sam Lloyd, Sean Warnecke, and now Andy Foust.
Finally, we remain grateful to the Office of the Provost of Dartmouth College, which has been generously funding this project.
James Heffernan
THE MLA AND ONLINE REVIEWING: AN EXCHANGE OF EMAILS
From Russell Berman, President of the MLA:
19 July 2011
Dear Professor Heffernan,
George Levine has prompted me to reply to your proposal for an MLA online book review. The tardiness in responding is due in part to the fact that the Executive Council gave a great deal of thought, over the course of several meetings, to your ideas. And some of the fault for the tardiness is my own. I apologize for the delay.
In fact, the Council convened a subcommittee to evaluate the options and sought feedback from some members who serve on relevant MLA committees. In addition, since the Council is actively engaged in ongoing strategic planning, the idea of reviews of scholarly material has come into play in a number of ways. The MLA has appointed a new director of scholarly communication [Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Professor of Media Studies at Pomona College and co-founder of the digital scholarly network MediaCommons]. Among her duties will be to analyze ways to facilitate the circulation of scholarly communication among members and the larger academic community. To my mind, the challenges to our current review culture are cut from the same cloth as are the challenges to scholarly journals in general. At stake really is the evolving (or unraveling) character of the academic public sphere. I am hopeful that the MLA's emerging scholarly communication agenda will be able to intervene productively.
Unfortunately we cannot at this point take on the project of the online review that you have so admirably initiated. Since there are thousands of titles published every year in the modern languages, the MLA does not have the staff that would be necessary, if we want to maintain our standard of quality. Nor can we add the necessary staff, since the current state of the economy makes it crucial that we manage our resources carefully.
We do however have the ambition to be able to provide more access to reviews to our members and to promote their engagement in producing scholarly reviews. We have a number of nascent ideas in mind. So while you won't see the realization of your project under the auspices of the MLA in the near future, you will, we hope, note a greater effort to facilitate the kind of scholarly exchange that you practice and value.
With best wishes,
Russell A. Berman
MLA President.
James Heffernan responds:
19 July 2011
Dear--if I may--Russell,
Thank you for your considerate response to the question I put to George Levine, and--not incidentally--belated congratulations on your ascent to the presidency of the MLA.
While I understand your reluctance to lead the MLA into online book reviewing, I hope you will allow me to observe that the arguments against doing so strike me as both all too familiar and all too underwhelming.
As I have repeatedly said to George Levine, Sidonie Smith, and many others, the review site of the CAA has decisively demonstrated that a large academic organization CAN launch an authoritative, selective, carefully edited online review of books. And I should add that in a little less than two years, and on a total budget of less than $4500, Review 19 has posted 157 reviews of academic books published in 2009-11. If you don't think book reviews can be adequately edited on such a limited budget, I urge you to sample some of ours.
The MLA could readily spend far more than $4500 on an online review, and if this proposal were put to a vote of the Delegate Assembly, I am willing to bet that it would overwhelmingly pass. The question, then, is not whether or not the MLA is capable of launching an online book review, but whether or not its Executive Council wishes to do so. For reasons that must be obvious by now, I regret that the Council has chosen not to launch a book review now, and I can only hope that it will eventually change its collective mind--or allow the Delegate Assembly to vote on the matter.
Yours truly,
Jim
Russell Berman writes again:
20 July 2011
Dear Jim,
I appreciate your commitment to the project. Let me make sure to clarify how we have come to our decision.
You reported 157 reviews of books published in 2009-2011. I understand that that's a lot of reviewing and coordination.
However, we reviewed evidence that in the fields the MLA represents (language and literature), there are 7,000-8,000 publications annually. A comprehensive review organ that would guarantee all scholarly books a serious review would be an undertaking on a much larger scale.
You point to the CAA as a model. According to information provided by the CAA, the association receives around 700-800 books per year and reviews a fraction of them, currently about 22%. Their entire active backlist to 1998 includes 1236 reviews, less then one hundred per year on average. That is a tiny number compared with what the MLA would need to do.
We concluded that one single centralized review organ would not be feasible. That is why our line of thought currently points toward locating a review function in specific fields, such as the divisions, and in new structures, such as a radically revamped Web site.
Although we do not plan to mirror your model, we have clearly been influenced by your reasoning. As we move ahead to exploring new models that meet the needs of our whole field in the context of new technological opportunities, there will more discussion within the MLA. We are at this point not prepared to launch a major new initiative, but when we are, we will rely on the commitment and energy of members like yourself.
Best wishes,
Russell
James Heffernan responds:
20 July 2011
Dear Russell,
Thanks very much for your message. You have now plainly defined the difference between what the CAA does with its review and what the MLA would have to do to launch a comparable review. And I confess myself astonished that the CAA is posting no more reviews per year than we are at Review 19.
Obviously the MLA cannot review anything like 7000 to 8000 titles a year. But I continue to think that reviewing even a small fraction of these titles would be better than reviewing none at all. PMLA itself, after all, publishes only a small fraction of the articles it receives--even though many are worthy of print. In and out of the classroom, in and out of the world of academic journals and departments, we habitually practice the art of selection. Why should any review be obligated to review all the books published in the field(s) it covers? Why can't it be rigorously selective?
But since Review 19 confines itself to the literature of just one century, I see great merit in your suggestion that the MLA encourage reviewing in specified fields, and I very much hope the organization will find ways to do so.
Meanwhile, I stand ready to help in any way I can--especially by continuing to show, on a small scale, what online reviewing can do.
Best wishes,
Jim
ONLINE BOOK REVIEWING IN THE HUMANITIES, SEPTEMBER 2011: ELEVEN SITES
CAA Reviews treats about 100 books a year on art and art history, but to read a complete review, the site visitor must join the College Art Association. The Victorian Web reviews about six books a year on Victorian literature and art. H-NET REVIEWS promptly reviews over 200 books a year in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but most of the books it treats are on history, and it presently offers no reliable way to search for titles on literature or the nineteenth century. The Electronic Book Review posts a long list of university press "books received" on the humanities and the internet during the past dozen years, but it has so far reviewed none of them. Romantic Circles Reviews "offers thoughtful, thorough reviews of key works of scholarship in [English and American Romanticism] that also take advantage of the particular strengths of the Internet." To this date (September 2011) it has posted two reviews of books published in 2011 and five reviews of books published between 2004 and 2010. The Medieval Review (TMR) reviews current work in all areas of Medieval Studies, a field it interprets as broadly as possible. So far this year (up to 3 September 2011), it has reviewed 182 books, most of them published in 2010 or earlier. The North American Society for the Study of Romanticism (NASSR) briefly describes what it calls "recent publications," but virtually all of them are least three years old. The Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature, published four times a year, reviews about six books per issue. Its "current" issue (Spring 2011) treats one book published in 2010 and five others published between 2005 and 2009. The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies reviewed books on contemporary media and culture from 1997 to December 2009, when it ceased its reviewing. All of its reviews remain online, however, and so far as we know, it's the only site that sometimes posted more than one review for a book. Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net reviews about 15 books in each of its quarterly issues, but as of September 2011, its latest issue is dated November 2009. The Newsletter of the North American Victorian Studies Association (NAVSA) announces and briefly describes recent books on Victorian literature.
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