Philosophy and Literature

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Update from the Editors:

A large number of submissions to Philosophy and Literature were under review at the time we announced our hiatus, and some have been accepted. As indicated previously, the issues for October 2025 and April 2026 are replete, and now over half of the October 2026 issue is also full. Because the point of the hiatus is to significantly reduce the amount of time from acceptance to publication, we are extending the pause on submissions through the end of August 2025. 
Submissions are welcome, with all operations returning to normal, on SEPTEMBER 1, 2025. We thank our many contributors for their patience, and we look forward to reviewing work in all categories starting in September.

Special Note to Contributors:

We are announcing a hiatus on submissions to Philosophy and Literature from October 15, 2024, to April 15, 2025. This six-month moratorium will allow us to catch up with accepted articles and reduce the time from acceptance to publication back down to one year or less. This decision does not affect any contributions already accepted or under review. 

We are not alone in having an unprecedented backlog; many journals received an unusually high number of submissions during the pandemic. As of this writing, Philosophy and Literature is already full for the next three issues (through April 2026). 

We especially do not want to put younger scholars, under evaluation for tenure and promotion, at a disadvantage because of a very long delay between acceptance and publication, or our UK colleagues, who labor under the regrettably unavoidable system of the Research Excellence Framework with its publish-or-perish deadlines. 

We remain deeply grateful to our authors for making this journal the contribution to humane scholarship that it is, and we look forward to resuming normal operations on April 16, 2025. 

With thanks and best wishes to our contributors and our loyal readers, 
Garry L. Hagberg, Editor
Cynthia Werthamer, Managing Editor

SUBMISSIONS:

Articles should be submitted as email attachments. Please include a 100-word abstract (required for articles only; instructions below).             
Address submissions to: [email protected]             
Submissions may be emailed in any bibliographical, footnoting, or end-noting style or format; if accepted, we will ask you to bring your article into conformity with the Style Guide below.

We welcome submissions in these categories:

1. Articles of between 6000 and 8000 words;
2. shorter pieces for our Notes and Fragments section column of between 1500 and 4000 words;
3. Critical Discussions (review essays) of approximately 3000-4500 words;
4. Book Reviews of approximately 800-1200 words;
5. Creative Directions, which we have published at lengths between one page and 7000 words;
6. Lines of Thought, multiple-book review essays, assessing an intellectual trend or development, of 4000-5500 words; and
7. Coda articles of any length up to 6500 words, discussing a broad cultural issue.

In the subject line of your submission, please include the category of submission, with your last name placed first, e.g., “Werthamer, Article submission,” or “Hagberg, Notes and Fragments submission,” etc. All submissions of any length go through editorial review.

In addition, the editor will on occasion bring articles together into either Symposia, a set of four or five articles that speak to each other on a given topic or author, or In Focus columns, with two or three articles on a specific and narrowly defined topic.

PLEASE NOTE: Address all correspondence concerning Philosophy and Literature to [email protected] only: using other email addresses at Bard College or Johns Hopkins University Press will only complicate and delay matters. We receive an extraordinary number of submissions and emails from around the world, and we try to reply as quickly as humanly possible. Patience is a virtue—one that we particularly appreciate. If a delay is longer than what you regard as reasonable, please resend your email.

Style Guide

PLEASE NOTE AGAIN: This Style Guide is relevant ONLY for ACCEPTED submissions; you are welcome to submit your piece in any format.  

Philosophy and Literature follows the specifications of the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Authors who are unable to locate this valuable book should carefully study the bibliographic style of previous issues of the journal. Among the most important aspects to note: The journal uses endnotes rather than footnotes, and does not use Works Cited lists.

We urge authors to cooperate in careful manuscript preparation and adherence to this guide and the Chicago Manual. Such assistance will expedite the appearance of your manuscript.

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Your abstract: some friendly advice. We like to see abstracts, of 100 words or fewer, with submitted papers (though some sections of P&L do not include abstracts). Please give us an abstract that entices, or intrigues, or even exerts a special conceptual magnetism. We want an abstract that people will read and think of your article, “I simply cannot go on without reading this!”

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(1) Quotation. Please check and double check all quotations. In general, avoid very long block quotations; readers come to your article because they want to know what you have to say. Never begin an article with a quotation of longer than one sentence. Quotations of up to seven lines in typescript should be run in as part of the main text. Quotations of more than seven lines should be set as block quotations.

(2) References. Where the same book is to be referred to more than once in your article, use an endnote for the first citation (with all relevant bibliographic information, including principal city of publication). Subsequent citations should appear in the text in a shortened form, using either the name of the author or (preferably) an abbreviated form of the book title. Here is an example, complete with references to two books by the same author.

1. E. D. Hirsch Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); hereafter abbreviated VI.

2. Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 60.

3. One should also consult Jesse Kalin, “John Barth and Moral Nihilism,” Philosophy and Literature 1 (1977): 170–82.

4. One of the most interesting criticisms of Hirsch is that of Monroe Beardsley in The Possibility of Criticism (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), esp. pp. 24–31. Joseph Margolis criticizes Beardsley’s ideas in “Robust Relativism,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 (1976): 37–46; hereafter abbreviated “RR.”

5. E. D. Hirsch Jr., The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976); hereafter abbreviated AI.

And here is how the references appear in the main text:

He calls this “the only practical norm for a cognitive discipline of interpretation” (AI, p. 7). Again, “the object of interpretation is no automatic given, but a task that the interpreter sets himself” (VI, p. 25). For Margolis, on the other hand, “a relativistic conception of interpretation . . . may well be required” (“RR,” p. 44).

When only a single book is being discussed in your text, the bibliographic endnote should say “hereafter cited by page number,” and used thus in the text:

Critical modes are treated “not as positions to be defended but as locations or openings to be explored” (p. 339). Whatever you do, don’t rule your opponent out of the community (p. 28); follow Booth in his “simple effort to be a good citizen in the republic of criticism” (p. 34).

Be careful that the quotation “is followed by the page number in parentheses before the period” (pp. 23–24), except following a block quotation, where the period precedes the citation. Don’t pepper your page with numbers: if you have many separate quotations from a one- or two-page stretch of text, a single reference at the end of the paragraph will suffice. When citing the same book multiple times in a single paragraph, use the shortened form in the first reference, then page number only for subsequent references in that paragraph.

(3) Bibliographic style. Again, the aim is simplicity and clarity, consistent with Chicago style. Avoid “ibid.” and never use “op. cit.” or “loc. cit.” Here are some examples of bibliographic citations:

(4) Reference to a webpage. We request that authors only cite URLs when absolutely necessary, since URLs can change. An adequate solution is simply to say that an article already identified and quoted is on the internet. Readers can then go and find it for themselves.

(5) Miscellaneous matters.

Section headings within the text are simple roman numerals (I, II, III), not titles. We trust you will make your point without needing spotlights.

Wherever possible, avoid passive subject/verb phrases such as “there were” or “it is.” The sentence in (4) above holds more immediacy by stating, “An adequate solution is simply to say. . .” than “It should be enough simply to say. . .”

The editors have noticed the increasing misuse of “cf.” “Cf.” stands for “confer,” and it means “compare with.” It is never italicized. Do not use “cf.” when you mean “see also.” “See” and “see also” are perfectly acceptable. We also do not use “ff.”; please indicate full range of page references.

All commas and periods “fall within quotation marks.” The only exception is where a page reference is given “at the end of the sentence” (pp. 463–64). (Note en-dash instead of hyphen in page citation.)

When you cite an article or a book for the first time in a numbered endnote, do not supply only partial information about the source, even if you repeat some of what is already given in the main text. Provide complete information, including author’s full name and the work’s full title, in the citation’s first endnote appearance. In other words, we do not want a reference to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn to take the reader to an endnote that reads: “17. (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958), pp. 132–33.” Give all the normal information about author and title in the note.

Avert the need to place a capital or lower-case letter in brackets. “[T]edious, academic bracket-mongering must be avoided!” A way around such nonsense is almost always available, as for example quoting in mid-sentence the editor proclaiming that “tedious, academic bracket-mongering must be avoided!” Rarely in the history of this journal have we been driven to this pedantic fussiness—and in those cases only because we didn’t have the original source material to accurately recast the quotation ourselves.

Also, please note that Chicago Manual of Style allows for insertion of capital or lower-case letters in quotations if warranted in the context.

If possible, avoid references to current political or other fleeting contemporary events that would tend to date your article in a way that might obscure its broader relevance and longer-range significance.

Provide English translations of all but the most obvious quotations in foreign languages; of course, cite the source, and if the translations are your own, please say so.

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Finally—and a matter definitive of the spirit of this journal: jargon. The natural home for jargon is the natural sciences, where the need for technical language is undisputed. But the farther we move into the humanities, the more does a reliance on jargon become a matter of trying to attain prestige by using big words, or big phrases borrowed from what some regard as a social science. “Mutually interactive dyadic postdictive social interaction processes” can be translated into untortured English as “two people talking to each other.”

Of course, specialized language does have a place in humanistic studies—in the history of grammar, rhetoric, linguistics, and philosophy generally, to name some instances. Where necessary, use it and explain it. In some quarters of literary theory, however, within recent decades the reliance on it became a form of what our much-missed founding editor called intellectual kitsch and, whatever its name, a replacement for hard thinking. Since Philosophy and Literature deals with technical philosophers from Aristotle and Kant to Husserl and Heidegger, we do not “outlaw” jargon as some popular publications might. On the other hand, we do not appreciate where it is used to obscure and mystify. In our opinion, the most erudite, sophisticated, interesting, elegant, and intellectually disciplined writers in humanistic studies find fresh ways to articulate their views in voices that are their own. Conceptual clarity remains central among our ideals.

A remark that the elderly Kant made about jargon is as good today as it was when he wrote it, about 1790: “One doesn’t know whether to laugh harder at the charlatan who spreads all this fog . . . or at the audience which naively imagines the reason it cannot clearly recognize and grasp the masterpiece of insight is that new masses of truth are being hurled at it” (Critique of Judgment, section 47). Our readers are not the audience to which Kant is referring, and the editors of this journal ask authors to keep this in mind when preparing their final drafts for submission.

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found at the ethics-and-malpractice page.

PHL Peer Review

All submissions are read initially by the editor; some are declined at that stage as inappropriate or unacceptable in their present form. A larger number of submissions move to a second stage of closer and more detailed review by the editor, often but not invariably in consultation with members of the editorial board or, in some cases, other experts. Following this second-phase consideration, the editor makes the final decision. Intellectual depth, conceptual power and clarity, quality of writing, insightfulness, and sense of serious humane engagement are the only criteria allowed to enter into the consideration of a given submission; no external considerations of stature, academic affiliation, reputation, or of political, social, or religious identity ever come into play. We try to get answers back to authors within approximately four months of the date of submission; while we do send letters in response to all submissions, we regret that we cannot provide readers’ reports. All authors of accepted pieces are first sent a set of requests by the editor, and following authors’ revisions according to those requests, all pieces of every category are then worked through carefully and in detail with our managing editor in preparation for publication. Our acceptance rate varies depending on the number of submissions, but ranges between 6 percent and 9 percent.

Editor

Garry L. Hagberg, Bard College

Founding Editor

Denis Dutton (1944–2010), University of Canterbury, New Zealand

Editor Emeritus

Patrick Henry, Whitman College

Managing Editor

Cynthia Werthamer, Bard College

Editorial Advisory Board

Garry L. Hagberg, Bard College (ex officio), Chair  
Cynthia Werthamer, Bard College (ex officio), Vice Chair

Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley  
Eva T. H. Brann, St. John’s College, Annapolis  
Anthony J. Cascardi, University of California, Berkeley  
Nancy Easterlin, University of New Orleans  
Richard Eldridge, Swarthmore College  
Kathleen M. Higgins, University of Texas  
Walter Jost, University of Virginia  
Deborah Knight, Queen's University, Canada  
Joshua Landy, Stanford University ​  
Ray Monk, University of Southampton  
Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University  
Alex Neill, University of Southampton  
Martha Nussbaum, University of Chicago  
Thomas Pavel, University of Chicago​  
Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University  
Steven Pinker, Harvard University  
Gerald Prince, University of Pennsylvania  
Martin Puchner, Harvard University 
Wang Ning, Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University   

Journal editor Garry Hagberg has joined JHUP for both a video and a podcast about the journal's importance in the field. 

Send books for review to:

Prof. Garry Hagberg
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-5000

Email: [email protected]

Please send book review copies to the contact above. Review copies received by the Johns Hopkins University Press office will be discarded.

Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• Clarivate Analytics
  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index
  • Current Contents
  • Web of Science
• De Gruyter Saur
  • Dietrich's Index Philosophicus
  • IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur
  • Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
• EBSCOhost
  • Academic Search Alumni Edition, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Complete, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Elite, 4/1/2005-
  • Academic Search Premier, 4/1/2005-
  • Current Abstracts, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities International Complete, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities International Index, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities Source, 4/1/2005-
  • Humanities Source Ultimate, 4/1/2005-
  • International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance with Full Text, 4/1/2005-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • Poetry & Short Story Reference Center, 4/1/2005-
  • Russian Academy of Sciences Bibliographies
  • The Philosopher's Index
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 4/1/2005-
• Elsevier BV
  • Scopus, 2002-
• FRANCIS
• Gale
  • Book Review Index Plus
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• OCLC
  • ArticleFirst, vol.14, no.1, 1990-vol.34, no.2, 2010
  • Electronic Collections Online, vol.19, no.1, 1995-vol.34, no.2, 2010
  • Periodical Abstracts, v.24, n.1, 2000-v.34, n.1, 2010
• Ovid
  • The Philosopher's Index
• Peeters Publishers
  • Repertoire Bibliographique de la Philosophie (Online)
• Personal Alert (E-mail)
• ProQuest
  • Art, Design & Architecture Collection, 04/01/1996-
  • Arts & Humanities Database, 04/01/1996-
  • Arts Premium Collection, 4/1/1996-
  • Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (Online), Selective
  • Literary Journals Index Full Text
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • Periodicals Index Online
  • Philosophy Collection, 04/01/1996-
  • Professional ProQuest Central, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest 5000, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest 5000 International, 04/01/1996-
  • ProQuest Central, 04/01/1996-
  • Religion Database, 04/01/1996-
  • Research Library, 04/01/1996-
  • The Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL)
  • The Philosopher's Index

Abstracting & Indexing Sources

• Children's Book Review Index   (Active)  (Print)
• Abstracts of English Studies   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Index to Book Reviews in the Humanities   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Literary Criticism Register   (Ceased)  (Print)
• MLA Abstracts of Articles in Scholarly Journals   (Ceased)  (Print)
• Social Planning - Policy & Development Abstracts   (Ceased)  (Print)

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

<0.1 (2023)
0.1 (Five-Year Impact Factor)
0.00013 (Eigenfactor™ Score)

Rank in Category (by Journal Impact Factor):
Note: While journals indexed in AHCI and ESCI are receiving a JIF for the first time in June 2023, they will not receive ranks, quartiles, or percentiles until the release of 2023 data in June 2024.

© Clarivate Analytics 2025

Published twice a year, in April and October; each issue is approximately 250 pages. 

Readers include: literature scholars, teachers, and students; academics throughout the humanities and the arts; philosophy scholars, teachers, and students; and general readers.

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