About the Journal
About Us
- ESLA Journal of Cultural and Literary Criticism is a biannual online journal from the English Literature Department of the Facultad de Letras at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Our aim is to provide a platform for Latin American scholarly voices that are speaking about literature written in English. We also seek reflections on cultural exchanges between Latin America and English-speaking worlds. We accept original contributions from any disciplinary focus, especially those that reflect on the issues we describe in our Call for Papers .
- We welcome academic papers as well as essays, reviews, interviews, and any type of written reflection on literature and cultural productions in English. We are happy to receive and review poetry, graphic novels and short stories. If you would like to propose any other kind of digital text feel free to write us! In both our Non Fiction and Fiction sections, we are open to innovations.
- We are a double blind peer reviewed open access journal. No subscription is required and we pay no fees to authors or peer reviewers. All our contents are protected by Creative Commons (CC) license, which allows the sharing of our contents under the following terms: BY, NC, ND.
- We are indexed in Latindex and Modern Language Association (October 2017).
History
The conversations leading to the creation of this journal began in 2010, a year when student protests were on the rise. Professors continued to be available during class time, which made space for open conversations with students. Fom those, an idea was born: to create a journal within the Faculty of Letters focused on literatures in English. The journal would be a platform for academic articles as well as creative writing by university students and professors. By 2011, professors Carmen Luz Fuentes-Vásquez, Allison Ramay and several undergraduate students: Juan Pablo Vilches, Francisco Aranguiz, Beatriz Rengifo, Manuela Mercado and Francisca Ibaceta, launched the journal White Rabbit: English Studies in Latin America. The name reflected the curiosity and excitement of creating a new journal regarding a topic that had not yet been the focus of academic discussions via a formalized journal in Chile. The topic was literature and contemporary literary and cultural theories in English. A major highlight from Issue 1 was an interview by the White Rabbit staff with activist, theorist and academic Judith Butler titled “Meaningful Protests in the Kitchen: An Interview with Judith Butler”.
In 2017, the journal’s name was revised to English Studies in Latin America: A Journal of Cultural and Literary Studies or ESLA to better reflect its commitment to cultural and literary criticism. Additionally, over time, it became difficult to maintain undergraduates within the permanent staff. And despite the journal’s continued double-blind peer review system in place, it seemed that academics were hesitant to send their contributions because of indexation requirements within Latin American universities. Therefore, in 2017, editors Allison Ramay and Andrea Casals took the necessary steps to index the journal in MLA and Latindex, which was complete that year.
