Newswise — Published by Westfield State College, the respected Historical Journal of Massachusetts (HJM) is in its 38th year of publishing articles, book reviews, and teaching resources about Massachusetts history, culture, art, politics, and people.
And while the journal deals with history, it’s making news.
Due in part to a campaign to widen its audience, subscriptions have doubled in the past year. HJM recently redesigned its format to appeal not only to scholars, but also to teachers, history buffs, museum staff, and the reading public, including young people. In order to remain accessible to the public, the journal is affordable: only $12 annually.
The Historical Journal of Massachusetts is a rare bird in the publishing jungle. It is one of the few journals not affiliated with a historical society or association, typically a crucial source of financial support. Westfield State College has supported HJM since 1972 and underwrites 75% of its production costs. Westfield State is the only college in the nation that publishes a state history journal on its own.
Evan S. Dobelle, president of Westfield State, pointed out that, “This journal not only provides a valuable service in documenting our state’s past, but also offers important hands-on, publishing experience for our highly-motivated history and English majors.”
“We’re recording the rich past of this extraordinary commonwealth with an eye on the future,” said editor and publisher Mara Dodge, professor of history at Westfield State. “That's why ‘preserving the state’s cultural heritage for future generations’ is our motto.” “The Journal has been a labor of love throughout its existence,” Dodge said. "As managing editor, I also maintain a teaching schedule, and Westfield’s students—graduate and undergraduate, interns and work-study—form the staff. HJM has never had an advertising budget.”
HJM remains one of the few publications exclusively dedicated to preserving the commonwealth’s heritage for future generations. Each issue typically contains two articles relating to major aspects of Boston history, along with a wide variety of articles from around the state.
The fall 2009 issue was just released. At 180 pages it begins with a photo essay on the Allen Sisters of Westfield, known as the “Foremost Women Photographers in America”; and includes articles with such titles as “African American Heritage Trails: From Boston to the Berkshires;” “Until Death Do Us Part”: Wills, Widows and Women in the 1800s” and “Puritan Casualties in King Philip’s War,” among others, along with a dozen book reviews and teaching resources.
Since its founding in 1972, HJM has published articles by well-known scholars from many fields, along with teachers, researchers, museum staff, local college faculty, and historic site personnel. Its authors come from around the nation, although the majority reside here in Massachusetts. HJM presents a publication venue for local authors, both seasoned and as yet undiscovered writers who can provide high-quality historical research.
"We always welcome new authors and book reviewers," Dodge said. HJM also presents a unique opportunity for regional museums and historical sites. It runs profiles of interesting museums and new exhibits, helping to publicize the resources and programs created by other cultural organizations in the Commonwealth.
Teachers also use the journal, according to Dodge. In addition to at least seven in-depth articles, a “Photo Essay,” an “Editor’s Choice” book excerpt, and numerous book reviews, each issue features a special “Teaching Resources” section designed for middle and high school teachers.
“We believe that access to fresh, original material helps teachers overcome the challenges of lackluster textbooks and limited classroom resources, and actively engage their students in learning history,” Dodge said.
Building upon modest resources and the dedication of individuals, HJM has earned recognition as a significant contributor in the discipline of history. The full-text version of all articles published since 1998 is available through ProQuest Central, the largest, scholarly, multidisciplinary full-text online database in the market today (mostly available through university and college libraries). Full-text versions of all HJM articles published since 2006 are also available in EBSCO's History Reference Center database that features 130 leading historical journals and periodicals.
Dodge said that the journal's readers use it to understand the roots of many contemporary issues.
“We believe in a ‘living history’ that connects the past with the present and strives to create a truly representative ‘people’s history’ of Massachusetts,” Dodge said. “We strive to include the history of the state’s many racial, ethnic, and minority groups, including both past and recent immigrant communities.”
“Massachusetts has often been at the forefront of national reform struggles, from the abolition of slavery to public education, the women’s movement, and worker’s rights,” she said. “We are currently collecting articles on the history of the state’s many recent ethnic and immigrant communities, including Russian, Latino, Puerto Rican, Brazilian, Caribbean, Asian, African and Middle Eastern.”
LEADS FOR RECENT ARTICLES (2009)1. In the 1920s Holyoke’s infamous Elizabeth Towne published the leading “New Thought” (or “New Age”) magazine in the country. Just eight years after women won the right to vote, she was a cigarette-smoking editor, a devotee of meditation, a city councilor, and one of the first woman to run for mayor in the state.2. Boston’s racial past is fraught with contradictions. Robert Morris was the second African American in the nation to pass the bar exam. However, even as a lawyer he wasn’t welcome in the homes of Boston’s Yankee elite who fought his efforts to desegregate schools in 1850. But many local Irish didn’t hesitate to hire him for legal advice. Morris eventually converted to Catholicism, joining a tiny but growing Black Catholic community in Boston. 3. State Folklorist Maggie Holtzberg explores the dynamic past and present of Massachusetts folk art. The public often associates “folk art” with words such as rustic, primitive, and simple. Images of quilts, needlework, decoys, weather vanes, and Native American crafts are common conceptions. In starting contrast, Dr. Holtzberg redefines “folk art” to include the art of recent immigrant communities, from Caribbean carnival masks to Puerto Rican santos carvings and Cambodian calligraphy.4. Were people in the past grumpy? In her engaging essay, “’Don’t Smile for the Camera’: Expression is Early Photography” Deerfield museum curator Suzanne Flynt explains why so few early photographic subjects flashed smiles. She places the blame on both cultural conventions and technological limitations.5. Forget the peanuts and Crackerjacks. Nineteenth-century sports fans often preferred beer, gambling, and a fistfight. In his entertaining essay, “Take Me to the Brawl Game,” Northampton historian Robert Weir shows how late 19th-century sports were a raucous arena for class struggle that deeply disturbed the “gentlemen” of the Victorian upper class who sought (unsuccessfully) to promote a more “gentile” version of the new sport.6. How do you keep them in the Bay State once they’ve seen San Francisco Bay? Professor Michael Gutierrez follows a Lynn grocer to the 1850s California gold rush and back again. The grocer’s touching letters to his wife reveal his shifting loyalties to home and hearth in light of the excitement and economic opportunities that California offers.7. In “Politics, Honor, and Self-Defense,” UMass Emeritus Professor Jack Tager explores how a violent confrontation between two prominent Bostonians of different political parties became the legal case of the century in 1806. The murder/manslaughter trial that followed established one of the core principles in the plea of self-defense.8. In “African American Heritage Trails: From Boston to the Berkshires,” author Anita C. Danker investigates the creation of six heritage trails that document slavery and African-American culture. Her article ranges from Boston to Cambridge, New Bedford, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the Berkshires Trail that sprawls over nearly 100 miles.
TABLES OF CONTENTS
Fall 2009
PHOTO ESSAY: The Allen Sisters: “Foremost Women Photographers in America” Suzanne L. Flynt
EDITOR’S CHOICE: Mr. and Mrs. Prince: An African American Courtship and Marriage in Colonial Deerfield Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina
African American Heritage Trails: From Boston to the BerkshiresAnita C. Danker
“Something Will Drop:” Socialists, Unions, and Trusts in Nineteenth-Century Holyoke Joshua L. Root
“Until Death Do Us Part”: Wills, Widows Women, and Dower in Oxford County, 1805-20 Jean F. Hankins
Politics, Honor, and Self-Defense in Post-Revolutionary Boston: The 1806 Manslaughter Trial of Thomas Selfridge
“Weltering in Their Own Blood”: Puritan Casualties in King Philip’s WarRobert E. Cray, Jr.
Teaching the History of Education in Collaboration with a College Archive Kelly Kolodny, Julia Zoino-Jeannetti and Colleen Previte
Spring 2009
PHOTO ESSAY: Don’t Smile for the Camera: Another Angle on Early Photography by Suzanne L. Flynt
EDITOR’S CHOICE: Massachusetts Folk Art in the 21st Century: New Immigrants Redefine Tradition by Maggie Holtzberg
“Take Me to the Brawl Game”: Sports and Workers in Gilded Age Massachusetts by Robert Weir
Mrs. Elizabeth Towne: Pioneering Woman in Publishing and Politics (1865-1960) by Tzivia Gover
Black and Irish Relations in 19th Century Boston: The Interesting Case of Lawyer Robert Morris by William Leonard
“Won’t Be Home Again”: A Lynn Grocer’s Letters from the California Gold Rush by Michael Gutierrez
Gentlemen and Scholars: Harvard’s History Department and the Path to Professionalization, 1920-1950 by William Palmer
Building to a Revolution: The Powder Alarm and Popular Mobilization of the New England Countryside, 1774-1775 by Patrick Johnston
About Westfield State CollegeFounded in 1838 by Horace Mann, Westfield State is an education leader committed to providing every generation of students with a learning experience built on its founding principle as the first co-educational college in America to offer an education without barrier to race, creed or economic status. This spirit of innovative thinking and social responsibility is forged in a curriculum of liberal arts and professional studies that creates a vital community of engaged learners who become confident, capable individuals prepared for leadership and service to society.
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