French Professor Marianne Hirsch will take over next month as editor of the PMLA Journal, published by the Modern Language Association of America and often described as the leading journal of modern languages and literary studies.
Hirsch cited her unusually broad scholarly background as a resource that will serve her well in her new position. She pointed out that the journal receives submissions from scholars working in fields ranging from "medieval Spanish literature to contemporary American fiction."
She herself has taught courses in no less than four different departments while at Dartmouth -- French, comparative literature, women's studies and Jewish studies.
Hirsch's first book, published in 1981, took a theoretical approach to examining the development of the modern novel. In it, she compared the works of the 19th century American novelist Henry James with those of contemporary French avant-garde novelist Michael Butor and contemporary German novelist Uwe Johnson.
She then became interested in studying feminist theory and psychoanalysis. The publication of her 1989 book, "The Mother/Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism," reflects this turn in her scholarly career.
Since then, Hirsch has explored how family photographs reflect the construction of cultural memory and how theories on these subjects affect our understanding of the Holocaust.
When describing her newest assignment at the PLMA Journal, Hirsch said that she has been especially impressed by the publication's distinctive peer review procedures.
The journal forwards all submissions to a central office in New York, where it assigns them random numbers for tracking purposes. These anonymous prospective articles are then sent out to recognized experts in its field for review. Any details that might identify the author -- for example, references to his or her prior work -- are excised by the New York editors.
Even after articles are accepted, the identities of their authors are not made public until after the journal's publication.
"It's a very democratic system," Hirsch said, since relative unknowns' works and the most eminent scholars' works are evaluated in the same way.
Still, the acceptance rate for submissions to the Journal is "low -- about five percent," Hirsch said.
Peer reviewers working for the PLMA Journal are also known for writing thorough, in-depth critiques of the submitted works, Hirsch said.
The PLMA Journal has been in print since 1889. Some recent well-known contributors include Henry Louis Gates, Wole Soyinka, Umberto Eco and Stanley Fish.
Hirsch became a member of the Dartmouth faculty in 1978. She recently led the French Department's Foreign Study Program in Paris.
Hirsch's husband, Leo Spitzer, is a Dartmouth history professor.
