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Intellectual, Institutional, and Technological Transitions: Central European History, 2004–2014

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2018

Kenneth F. Ledford
Kenneth F. Ledford*
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University
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Extract

Volumes 38 to 47 of Central European History, which appeared from July 2004 to June 2014, represented years of fundamental transition in the life of the journal and of its sponsoring society: then the Conference Group for Central European History, now the Central European History Society. This fundamental transition manifested itself in three forms: institutional formality, both of the journal and of the Conference Group/Society; publishing organization and technology—from the ways in which the editor produced the journal to the ways in which the audience consumed the scholarship it published; and, last but not least, the intellectual focus and content of the history of German-speaking Central Europe that Central European History presented to scholars and students alike. Although the decade presented some unexpected and surprising challenges, all these transitions were already visible in July 2002 when I presented my proposal to become editor of Central European History to the Editor Search Committee, which consisted of Konrad Jarausch, Kees Gispen, and then-editor Kenneth Barkin.

Type
Part I: Recollections and Reminiscences
Information
Central European History , Volume 51 , Special Issue 1: Special Commemorative Issue: Central European History at Fifty (1968–2018) , March 2018 , pp. 31 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2018 

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References

1 The leadership concluded that the Conference Group for Central European History was a confusing name, which led to the formal change in January 2012. After all, the primary task of the Conference Group was to publish the journal—it held no “conference,” despite its name! The thought was that the name “Central European History Society” led with the “brand” that was best known—i.e., the journal—and that it was simpler and less of a mouthful.

2 Van Tassel, David D., “From Learned Society to Professional Organization: The American Historical Association 1884–1900,” American Historical Review 89 no. 4 (1984): 940–41Google Scholar.

3 “News from the United States—The Journal of Central European Affairs,” Austrian History Yearbook 1 (1965): 294–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “From the Editors” [Unfug, Douglas A.], Central European History (CEH) 1, no. 1 (1968): 3Google Scholar. The latter is reprinted in full in this commemorative issue.

4 I note with some chagrin that, until the end of my term in 2014, the back matter of Central European History expressed a willingness to accept print submissions, preserving until that late date the antiquated language that “manuscripts submitted in printed form must be accompanied by a compact disk or diskette with the article in Word, WordPerfect, or pdf”! I do not recall having received a single submission in print through the mail at any time after 2005.

5 Brill had licensed the backlist for volumes 7 to 38 of Central European History to EBSCO Host, without consulting the editor or the Conference Group; those volumes became available in Academic Search Premier.

6 On the emergence of library consortia, see Bostick, Sharon L., “Academic Library Consortia in the United States: An Introduction,” Liber Quarterly 11, no. 1 (2001): 6–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Blackbourn, David, “Honey, I Shrunk German History,” German Studies Association Newsletter 38, no. 2 (2013–2014): 44–53Google Scholar; Epstein, Catherine, “German Historians at the Back of the Pack: Hiring Patterns in Modern European History, 1945–2010,” CEH 46, no. 3 (2013): 599–639Google Scholar; Port, Andrew I., “Central European History since 1989: Historiographical Trends and Post-Wende ‘Turns,’” CEH 48, no. 2 (2015): 238–48Google Scholar.

8 For an insightful exploration of the long history of the contestation of the boundaries of “Central Europe,” see Okey, Robin, “Central Europe/Eastern Europe: Behind the Definitions,” Past & Present 137, no. 1 (1992): 102–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Timothy Garton Ash, “The Puzzle of Central Europe,” New York Review of Books, March 18, 1999.

9 Port, “Central European History since 1989,” 246–47.