Invitation to Contribute

Sample Invitation to Contribute

Author Guidelines

Dear «AUTHOR»,

Please find herewith an invitation to contribute to the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. Below you will find more information about the project and some guidelines for your invited contribution.

If you agree to write for us, please let me have your postal address so we can send you an author's packet with additional information. Thank you very much.

Should you be unable to write this entry for us, we would be grateful if you could make any suggestions of other possible authors for it.

Yours sincerely,
Isabella Gerritsen
EWIC administrative assistant
gerritsen@brill.nl

Author: «INITIAL» «NAME»
The topic: «EWICTITLE» «Section»
N.B. The editors will finalize the titles when the volumes are put together

The word length for your entry or maximum word count (Max WC) is: «nr_words»
Due date for your entry is: «DEADLINE»
Please respond by: «DATE»

If you would like to accept the invitation but feel that you cannot cover the entry as it is described, please immediately contact the Routing Editor listed above to discuss this. We need to have an agreed upon understanding of the entry coverage at the outset so that we do not find a situation where the entry topic has been revised by default when it is too late to make appropriate adjustments.

To: «AUTHOR NAME»

From: Suad Joseph, General Editor, Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures
Olaf Köndgen, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Islam-Middle East, Brill Academic Publishers

The publisher, Koninklijke Brill N.V. and a group of internationally recognized scholars have embarked on an exciting new project, the production of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (EWIC). EWIC will be the first ever encyclopedia on this subject. The project is a multi-year effort to bring together hundreds of scholars world-wide, to write critical essays on women and Islamic cultures. We envision a 4,000,000 word, six-volume set to be published by Brill. Volume I will be published in 2003. Volumes I and II have been published in 2004 and 2005 respectively. Volume III will be published in 2005, and Volumes IV, V and VI will be published in 2006. EWIC covers all topics relevant to women and Islamic cultures. The coverage starts i the period before the rise of Islam to the present, in every society where Islam has had an important presence. EWIC, however, will not only study Muslim women, but women of all religions, in Muslim majority societies and Muslim women in Muslim minority societies. The goal is to survey all facets of life (religion, society, economy, politics, the arts, sports, health, science, medicine and so forth) of women in cultures where Islam has made significant contributions. The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures is envisioned as a broad based, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, transhistorical, and global project.

Under the General Editorship of Suad Joseph (University of California, Davis), EWIC's research will be lead by Associate Editors Afsaneh Najmabadi (Harvard University), Julie Peteet (University of Louisville), Seteney Shami (Social Science Research Council), Jacqueline Siapno (University of Melbourne), Jane I. Smith (Hartford Seminary), and Assistant Editor Alice Horner (Independent Scholar). Work on EWIC formally began in 1998 with the composition of the Editorial Board, followed by the first Editorial Board meeting, in June 1999.

To carry out such an ambitious research project, we have composed an international board of forty-one distinguished scholars, activists, artists, and professionals to serve on EWIC's International Advisory Editorial Board. We now are soliciting the contributions of experts, such as yourself, from around the world to write critical entries for EWIC. We write to invite you to write the entry described above.

Please read ALL the enclosed information, carefully, including "The EWIC Project", "Guideline for Authors of Thematic Entries", and the "Guideline Summary for EWIC Contributors" and the additional formatting, editing, and processing guidelines. The Guideline for Authors of Thematic Entries applies to contributors of Thematic Entries. Thematic Entries will form the bulk of Section I of EWIC, which will be in Volume I. The substantive entries are designated for Section II of EWIC, which will be Volumes II-V. Authors of Section II entries are asked to read all the guidelines to understand the way in which EWIC has been conceptualized. Volume VI is planned as the cumulative index.

If a consultation with your Routing Editor would facilitate your decision to accept our invitation, please feel free to contact her.

There will be an honorarium, based on a per word rate of E 0.0227 (Euro). Alternatively, you can choose to take a discount on the purchase of the full EWIC set of volumes in lieu of the honorarium. If you are invited and agree to write more than one entry, the word count will be accumulated toward your discount, according to the following scale:

• 50% discount for entries up to 10,000 words in length
• 75% discount for entries between 10,001 to 20,001 words
• a free set of EWIC for 20,001 words or more

We believe that the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures is a project whose time has come. The literature in the many fields encompassed by EWIC is rapidly expanding and theoretically and empirically at the frontiers of many disciplines. Our goal is not only to capture this exciting moment in the field of women's studies, but to break new ground in naming, framing, and analyzing the issues and to help set the agenda for future research. We invite you to join us in this pioneering project. We would appreciate that you confirm your willingness to write this entry piece at your earliest convenience, but no later than the date above. If you are not able to contribute this piece, could you recommend a possible author and include email, fax, or other coordinates in your response? This would be most helpful. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Suad Joseph, General Editor, EWIC
Anthropology, University of California
One Shields Ave.
Davis, CA 95616, U.S.A
Phone: 530-752-1593
Fax: 530-752-8885
sjoseph@ucdavis.edu

Olaf Köndgen
Senior Acquisitions Editor Islam - Middle East
Koninklijke Brill NV
Plantijnstraat 2
P.O.Box 9000
2300 PA Leiden
The Netherlands
Phone: 0031 71 5353581
Fax: 0031 71 5317532
E-mail: koendgen@brill.nl
http://www.brill.nl

EWIC will be organized into two sections, with an extended introduction at the beginning.

Introduction Volume I, written by the General Editor (with input from the Associate Editors), discusses the history, conceptualizations, organization, and objectives of EWIC. The Introduction outlines how the editors went about the work of EWIC, the rationale behind important decisions, the purpose of the different sections. The contradictions between the ways in which encyclopedia projects tend to stabilize concepts and the editors' efforts to destabilize, complicate, represent the "fuzziness" of reality will be discussed. The Introduction addresses problems of essentializing, historicizing, contextualizing. Problems of the "periodization" of scholarship on Islam and implications for the study of women will be discussed. The rationale for separating methodological pieces and general entries is explained. The Introduction discusses the rationale for organizing methodological sections by periods, regions, empires (the impact of political projects on research methods and sources). The problem of the "geography of Islam" or "social geographies" is addressed in many of the entries as well as by the Introduction to EWIC. The Introduction challenges the "regionalization" of Islam while explaining the need to organize some of EWIC's work regionally. The differences in the ways in which Islam spread, for example (by conquest, the nature of the conquest, the structure and culture of pre-Islamic communities), had different outcomes for women's issues locally. The Introduction also explains EWIC's effort to avoid the "exceptional women" approach to women's history by not allocating space for separate biographies of women, and opting to integrate brief biographies into appropriate entries.

Volume I: Thematic Entries:

Thematic entries are about methodologies, sources available for research, the constraints and limitations presented by methodologies and sources, and the implications of the above for scholarship on women and Islamic cultures. Authors were asked to evaluate the tools of research (what are the current methods and sources used to study women in that specific period, place, discipline) and identify the challenges and problems for the advancement of scholarship. This section aims to set the agenda for future research rather than answer all the questions. Section One is particularly directed at scholars, graduate students, and for teaching purposes.

A. Historical Thematic Entries

Historical thematic entries in Section One focus on problems in methodologies and sources for each period as relevant for doing research on women and Islamic cultures. They are not reviews of events, the state of Islam, or the conditions of women in the period covered, but rather evaluations of the methodological and epistemological problems in the study of women in the period covered.

B. Disciplinary Thematic Entries

Disciplinary thematic entries focus on the problems of methods and sources specific to their disciplines. Authors were asked to evaluate the epistemological assumptions of their disciplines and how these have affected the field of study, the study of women and Islamic cultures within their disciplines.

Volumes II-VI: General Entries

This section, the bulk of the Encyclopedia, will consist of the alphabetized substantive entries, organized by Thematic Volumes.

1. Each entry will have an Associate Editor as the "Routing Editor". This Editor will be the first to read the entry. We encourage you to be in contact with the Routing Editor as you write your entry, if you like. Do Not, however, mail your entry to the Routing Editor.

2. EWIC Editors reserve the option of asking for revisions and the right to edit all entries as necessary. Editors may reject articles which do not follow guidelines and meet EWIC standards. We particularly would like to inform you that EWIC is designed as a set of reference books. The thematic entries are targeted for scholars, experts, graduate students. The general entries are oriented toward the general reading public. We anticipate EWIC will be read across the disciplines by a broad range of scholars and lay readers. We invite you to rethink ideas, to capture the state of the art, to summarize important research, and to inform. We ask you to avoid attacks, axe-grinding, rhetoric, or narrowly-specialized jargon.

3. EWIC will not have separate biographical entries in order to avoid the kind of "exceptional women" approach often found in histories and encyclopedias.

4. We ask authors to be attentive to women's organizations, women's publications (journals, magazines, newspapers), or critical events (conferences, exhibits, political demonstrations) relevant to your entries. Please alert your Routing Editors if you are aware of organizations, publications, or critical events which should have a separate entry. Information on women's organizations or publications may be put within the entry, or a separate entry. If it is within your entry, it needs to be accommodated within your maximum word count (MaxWC) for your entry. The Routing Editor will consult with the author and the General Editor to make a judgement as to how to cover the organization or publication.

5. Please submit a short bibliography. This is excluded from the word count for your entry. The Bibliography should be no more than 20% of text length (2pp for 10pp of text). The references should be given in alphabetical order, with each reference on a separate line. Primary and secondary sources should be separated, with primary sources listed first.

6. Please discuss illustrations with the RE if they are useful to the entry. You are responsible for obtaining copyright permissions and releases for the use of illustrations.

7. Please indicate key words for the INDEX (five-ten key words per 1,000 words). These words are to be listed at the end of the entry. Key words should be specific -- Not for example, "Islam", "Women", "Gender", or large geographical terms like "North Africa", "Middle East". Use specific substantive terms and localities. The key words should be at the end of the text, separately, with a label: Key Words (not underlined within the text)

8. Please follow Brill's Contributor's Guide (on the EWIC Homepage and sent with the formal invitation from Brill):

9. All entries should be sent via email, hard copy, and diskette (in any of the following formats MS Word, Word Perfect, MacIntosh (Rich Text Format) -- please include a complete set of the font used for transliteration) to the following address:

Mr. Olaf Köndgen/Ms. Isabella Gerritsen
Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Brill Academic Publishers
Koninklijke Brill NV
Plantijnstraat 2
P.O.Box 9000
2300 PA Leiden
The Netherlands
Phone: 0031 71 5353581
Fax: 0031 71 5317532
E-mail:koendgen@brill.nl, gerritsen@brill.nl
http://www.brill.nl