Reviews
The executive committee welcomes suggestions of works to review that include monographs, edited volumes, collected essays, journal articles, exhibits, and films from both the editorial board as well as the journal’s readers. Please send suggestions directly to lnf@sfu.ca.
Scope of Potential Works for Review
Reviews cover works primarily from publishers in North American and Europe, reflecting the original focus of John S. Conway’s newsletter, which devoted itself to reviewing scholarship about modern German (and later European) Christian church history. The current editorial board is committed to sustaining the journal’s engagement with this content. Most reviewed works are in English or German, though books and articles written in other languages may be eligible for review. Reviews summarize a work’s content and its contributions to the field in which it situates itself; assess the work’s strengths and weaknesses; and articulate its relevance and usefulness to a diverse audience of readers, both professional and amateur, united by broad interest in European church history.
Review Length and Reviewer Selection
Reviews of monographs are typically 1,000–1,500 words, though this word limit is a guideline rather than a hard rule. Monograph reviews that run longer than 2,000 words should be cleared with a member of the executive committee. Review essays that address multiple related works will be correspondingly longer, though typically will not exceed 3,000 words. Reviews of journal articles or book chapters – called Article Notes – are shorter, typically between 500 and 1,000 words. The executive committee keeps a master list of books and articles eligible for review, which is shared with editors twice a year; editors are encouraged at this time to identify works they wish to review. Reviews are generally written by members of the journal’s editorial board; on occasion the executive committee will solicit an external reviewer for a particular work. Board members may propose an external reviewer for specific works. The managing editor is always interested in adding new titles to the list as proposed by editors.
Obtaining Review Copies
Editors interested in reviewing a specific work for the journal should contact a member of the executive committee beforehand. The executive committee will accept both print and e-books for consideration for review, though preference is for print copies whenever possible. If you would prefer not to deal with e-books or digital copies, please let the executive committee know when committing to the review.
The executive committee will arrange for a review copy of the work in question to be sent to the reviewer unless otherwise specified (for instance, if a reviewer prefers to secure an exam copy on their own). When reviews are agreed to, the executive committee will assign that review to an upcoming issue. The reviewer should inform the executive committee as soon as possible if their review will not be ready in time for the appearance of that issue, and to plan for the review to appear in a subsequent issue.
Conference Notes
Contemporary Church History Quarterly also engages editors to write conference notes about scholarly gatherings whose subject is pertinent to the journal’s interests. In the past this has included panels from the annual meetings of the American Historical Association and the German Studies Association, and the biennial Lessons and Legacies conference on Holocaust scholarship, to name a few. Conference notes vary widely in length, and authorship is sometimes collaborative if multiple editors attended the conference together. A conference note formally identifies the papers and their authors; gives a brief overview of the content of the presented paper; and offers observations about the significance of the paper in terms of its contribution to the broader field(s) in which it situates itself.
The executive committee welcomes suggestions for upcoming conference notes from both the editorial board as well as the journal’s readers. Please send suggestions directly to lnf@sfu.ca.
Research Notes
On occasion, an editor may present a research note, or invite an external scholar to submit a research note. These contributions engender a different set of submission guidelines, which will be shared with the author when the research note is commissioned.
Formatting
All reviews are formatted and edited according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (Chicago, 2023).
- All reviews should have a title (the name of the work in question is sufficient, but reviewers may be more creative if they wish); reviewer’s name and affiliation should appear at the bottom of the review, right-justified.
- The entire manuscript must be double spaced.
- Page numbers should appear in the top right-hand corner of each page.
- Paragraphing may be indicated with indentations or with extra space between paragraphs.
- Italics should be indicated with an italic typeface, not underlining.
- Dates should be formatted as month-day-year—e.g., July 4, 1776. (Exception: dates in archival citations may follow the format used by the archive.)
- Quotation marks should always be double, not single; single quotation marks should be used only to set off quotations within quotations.
References
- Source information for books under review must be provided directly under the review title, left-justified, before the review begins.
- The citation should provide complete bibliographic information for all books under review, including full publication information, number of pages (preliminary pages + regular text pages, e.g., xiv+300), and price. ISBN is not necessary.
- Books should be listed alphabetically by author/editor.
- Subsequent references in the text to books under review should be given as shortened references in parentheses within the text, not in the notes.
- If only one book by a particular author is under review, the shortened reference may be the author’s last name followed by a comma and the page reference.
- For two or more authors with the same last name, the first name or initials must be included as well.
- If more than one work by the same author is included, the shortened reference should include the author’s last name and a short title, followed by a comma and the page reference.
- All other references should be provided in the form of footnotes or endnotes.