Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
Call for Papers and Submission Guidelines
Call for Papers
Special Issue of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology
“The Folklore and Ethnology of Antisemitism, Old and New”
The editors of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology (JFE) invite submissions for a special issue on “The Folklore and Ethnology of Antisemitism, Old and New.” JFE is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary annual journal published and distributed internationally in print and online versions by Wayne State University Press. It features innovative, original analytical studies, essays, and commentaries in English on the diverse ways in which Jewishness is expressed, conceived, transformed, and perceived by Jews and non-Jews through folklore, tradition, material/visual culture, and sociocultural practice.
Reports of the rise of antisemitic incidents in the twenty-first century frequently link hate speech, desecration of Jewish sites, and violence toward Jews to the emergence, and in many cases resurgence, of beliefs, sayings, and narratives that can be categorized as folklore. Folklore functions frequently to persuade public culture to racialize/demonize Jews but can also serve to defend Jews. Although scholarship has analyzed older folkloric patterns both attacking Jews (e.g., blood libel legends, wandering Jew beliefs) and defending them (e.g., Golem legends, Cossack jokes), critical discourse has arisen in the twenty-first century regarding a “new antisemitism” and the sociocultural practices that manifest it. Under the rubric of the new cultural antisemitism, scholars discuss concepts of anti-Zionism, anti-Americanism, Holocaust denial, pan-Russification, structural discrimination/racism, and neo-Nazism. New social platforms that invite ethnographic attention to the invention and spread of rituals, beliefs, and narratives include social media, college campus organizations, protest rallies as media events, and professional societies. The editors seek studies that use the evidence of folklore and ethnology to analyze the platforms, practices, processes of material/visual culture, and contents of cultural antisemitism in recent and historic situations.
Prospective authors can send advance queries directly to the editor, Simon J. Bronner.
The editors welcome individual contributions for an open table of contents and proposals for special issues. They seek original analytical studies on the diverse ways in which Jewishness is expressed, conceived, transformed, and perceived by Jews and non-Jews through folklore, tradition, and social/cultural practice.
JFE’s coverage includes but is not limited to genres of narrative, song, music, speech, custom, ritual, belief, art, craft, architecture, dance, dress, and food; practices and performances of the body, faith, home, and community in the past and present; and ideas of tradition, identity, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, education and culture. JFE invites submissions from varied disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and methodologies/approaches. JFE strives for an international reach in content and authors and values engaging academic writing that will be of interest to lay as well as scholarly audiences.
Proposals for special issues should be sent as an e-mail attachment in MS Word to editor Simon J. Bronner.
JFE succeeds previous international serials of Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review and Jewish Cultural Studies sponsored by the Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Section of the American Folklore Society.
Guidelines for the Submission of Manuscripts
Analytical essays in English (6,000–8,000 words, double-spaced, in MS Word) should be submitted through the Digital Commons platform. Submissions should be accompanied by a separate file that includes the title of the manuscript and a 100-word abstract.
JFE follows the in-text citation style with a reference list at the end according to the guidelines of the Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Notes should be kept to a minimum and if necessary included as a list before the reference list. Disable automatic footnoting. When citing Hebrew, Ladino, Russian, Arabic, and Yiddish titles, the title should appear in transliteration. If the original has an English translation include that title with the original language indicated in brackets (e.g. “[in Hebrew]”). For guidance on transliteration from Hebrew and Semitic languages, see the standards for the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The titles of works in other foreign languages should appear in the original language or in transliteration from non-Roman scripts. To facilitate the review process, authors should avoid identifying references in their submissions.
The editors reserve the right to decline to send any submission for external review that does not meet JFE’s criteria or is deemed inappropriate. The decision to send submissions for external review is entirely at the discretion of the editors.
Style
Submissions should include a 100-word abstract. JFE accepts black and white illustrations and photographs if they are relevant to the text. They should be included in separate files with a caption list. In the review stage, jpg formats are preferred. Only original essays that are not simultaneously under consideration by another journal will be considered. Submissions should not have been previously published in any language unless negotiated with the editors in advance.
Requirements upon Acceptance
Authors whose work is ultimately accepted for publication must submit the following three items prepared on a common word-processing program such as MS Word or as an RTF file:- (1) the final manuscript (6,000–8,000 words);
- (2) a 100-word abstract; and
- (3) a 50-word biographical note.