In December, I submitted an article for what was then intended to be the “Winter, 2010″ edition of the University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, an online (but peer-reviewed!) postgraduate history journal.
Well, eight months and one change of editorship later, the piece has finally been “published” (in what has now become the “Summer/Autumn” edition of the journal). The introduction to the current issue is the very apex of bush league. It manages to spell the name of my article’s principle interlocutor, Martin Barker, incorrectly on two occasions and in two different ways. It also finishes with a statement of the journal’s refreshingly modest commitment to “a decent level of historical research quality.” (Though, admittedly, the “open mic night” feel is compounded by a generous sprinkling of SPAG and formatting errors in the main text, for which I & my editors share mutual responsibility, I guess).
So, yes, it is difficult to imagine a more inauspicious start to life as a published historian.
In any case, the article concerns elite discourse surrounding the 1985 Handsworth “riots”. It engages with theoretical work, particularly that of Barker as articulated in his 1981 The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe, regarding manifestations of racist ideology. My piece originally began as an undergraduate dissertation of 10,000 words, and was heavily revised (& truncated) for publication here.
Here’s a direct link (will open / start the download of a .pdf file).
