Editorship as mentoring, collaboration and peer support
Academic editing can provide kinship and learning, not just judgement followed by celebration or tears.
Do you remember your very first academic publication?
I was in the third year of my PhD. I’d earned an A+ on a term paper I really liked, and the prof had scrawled, simply, “publish this” alongside the grade.
So I did what I thought I was supposed to do: I sent it to the top journal in my field.
Shortly afterward I got a kind but curt rejection from the editor, and promptly fell into despair. [...]
Kim Solga is a professor of theatre studies at Western University, where she holds an Arts and Humanities Teaching Fellowship (2021-24). She is the co/editor of nine books and journal issues, as well as the Bloomsbury Methuen series Theory for Theatre Studies (with Susan Bennett). Her editorial mentor is professor Joanne Tompkins at the University of Queensland. She writes about activism, performance, teaching, and editing at http://theactivistclassroom.wordpress.com.