MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

ABSTRACT: This brief, small-scale historiographical review argues that even as the definition of the Orient as reflected in Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) has expanded, the lack of change in author demographics makes the journal unrepresentative of a variety of perspectives. The author analyzes compiled metadata of author demographics from every article published in the 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009, and 2019 volumes, excluding special issues, as well as article topics from a twenty-article subsample comprising four articles from each of the five aforementioned years. The author then provides a case study of JESHO scholarship on the Ottoman Empire, analyzing one article from 1979 and two articles each from 2009 and 2019 and explaining how their characteristics fit in the overall trends in JESHO. Discussion of orientalism and postcolonial theory forms a contextual framework for the critique, thus connecting the changes (or lack thereof) in JESHO articles to larger questions of intellectual responsibility and inclusivity, as well as Western hegemony in the archive and the academy of the history of the Orient, given JESHO's position as the most prestigious publication in its titular field.

WC = 188

READER PROFILE: I imagine a reader skeptical of the idea that author identities and demographics influence the perspectives included in historical writing.

READER'S RESPONSE: Hmm...if non-Western authors are only included when they write about the countries or places they come from, then they don't have the same flexibility that authors from Western countries do. This is really irresponsible of this journal, especially since its own mission statement says that it includes Asian and Middle Eastern voices.

Updated voice: first person only in describing article selection method for the metadata analysis and 20 article subsample (rest of paper will be in third person)

S, good modification of your voice plan!

Interesting idea about the identify of scholars and the topics. I know that generally we are working for more inclusion of scholars of scholar and national origin in many fields. I am more aware of this in English, with some movements called decolonize the syllabus, or #ShakeRace or even some work called, for example, Brown Romantics (I know the leader of the movement from twitter). I expect this could be similarly underway in history.