about EIDOLON
a modern way to write about the ancient world
Editor’s Note: this mission statement has since been updated. The new version can be found here:
Eidolon is a home for scholarly writing about Classics that isn’t formal scholarship. Our goal is to create a platform for essays that have a strong authorial voice and a unique point of view.
what will you see on Eidolon?
We’re especially interested in submissions between 1,500 and 3,000 words that fall into these categories:
- Explorations of how the ancient world relates to modern life
- First-person, anecdotal accounts that bring pieces of classical art or literature to life
- Personal approaches to academic topics, especially those that embrace marginalized voices
- Risky, provocative arguments that push the boundaries of accepted consensus views
- Creative and funny pieces that don’t take the Classics too seriously
This list is by no means exhaustive. We expect and hope to be surprised and educated by what people submit.
why create a new kind of academic publication?
Eidolon is not a replacement for peer-reviewed scholarship. Peer review is a time-tested method for ensuring the continued high quality of published articles. But while the peer review process has many merits, timeliness isn’t one of them. That makes it less than ideal for any kind of writing that can’t tolerate an 18-month wait time between writing and publication. A comparison between the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the execution of Socrates won’t be as meaningful if it isn’t available until Spring 2016.
In place of peer review, we encourage readers to engage with pieces on Eidolon using Medium’s ‘notes’ feature, which allows comments on a specific paragraph, sentence, or phrase. That feature is one of the main reasons we decided to use Medium as a platform. (The beautiful, easy-to-use interface doesn’t hurt, either.)
Because the reviewers of a refereed journal are scholars, peer review works best for writing done by academics, for academics. Eidolon is meant for a wider audience: not just classicists, but anybody who is intellectually engaged and has an interest in ancient Greece and Rome.
who are we?
Editorial team:
Donna Zuckerberg (Editor-in-Chief)
Sarah Scullin (Managing Editor)
Yung In Chae (Associate Editor)
Tori Lee (Assistant Editor)
Editorial board:
Helen Morales (Argyropoulos Professor of Hellenic Studies, UCSB)
Dan-el Padilla Peralta (Assistant Professor, Princeton University)
Tara Mulder (Managing Editor Emerita)
Johanna Hanink (Associate Professor, Brown University)
do you want to write (and get paid)?
If you have an idea for a piece that you think would be a great fit for Eidolon, we’d love to hear it! Send a pitch (100–250 words) telling us a little bit about both your idea and yourself to pitches@eidolon.pub. We try to respond to all submissions.
We strongly believe that scholars deserve to be paid for exceptional work. Writers for Eidolon are compensated at rates comparable to those of popular online literary magazines.
