OUROBOROS is a journal exploring the publishing industry’s innovations and reinventions envisioned, designed, and published entirely by students in Dr. Shannon Finck’s ENGL 3140 course.
ENGL 3140, or Editing for Publication, is an early class for students pursuing a Publishing & Editing minor or certificate. Students in the class spend their semester brushing up on their editing skills as they learn about the history of print publishing in the US. Then, they put their skills and knowledge to into practice, creating this open-access journal that reflects their interests in the publishing industry and the status of editing as a profession.
Our journal is modeled on cluster-based online platforms like Post45’s Contemporaries series, Modernism/Modernity‘s Print+, and ASAP/J. Working together in editorial teams, the students organize thematic clusters, submit essays to a cluster of their choice, and then edit and publish their clusters to the site. In addition to copyediting each others’ work, each student in the class also serves as a developmental editor or production editor for the journal, trying on different editorial roles along the way to publication.
The ouroboros, our journal’s colophon, symbolizes an endless cycle of death and rebirth, which is what we believe the publishing industry does, as it constantly reinvents itself to stay relevant as the media ecology changes. As our journal’s expansive treatment of the field(s) of publishing bears out, print publication supports and dovetails with other forms of media (for example music, film, television, and social media) in ways that many media consumers could be more aware of. For example, people who love The Godfather on film might not know it was first a novel. We also consider new genres and realms in print publishing that didn’t exist in years past, like the phenomenon of dystopian young adult novels–just one subject our journal explores. Many of the journal’s clusters explore the afterlives of authorship, tracing literary and creative work from its inception, through its publication, to its distribution and reception. People editing and publishing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work a hundred years ago wouldn’t recognize the current landscape of publishing, as we likely won’t recognize the landscape a hundred years from now. We believe that studying the publishing industry’s many cycles of renewal, the changing roles of editors over time, and the enduring cultural significance of literary publishing alongside other forms of creative media, we can become better prepared to enter editorial professions and carry on the legacies of those who came before us.