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HIST 6315 Women and Gender (Dr. Stuntz)

Scholarly and relevant

Each journal you use articles from must be both:

  • scholarly and
  • either
    • a history journal OR
    • a gender studies journal

Which journals are scholarly?

Does a database describe the journal as "peer-reviewed" or "refereed"?

To really judge meaningfully if a journal is scholarly requires critically evaluating it by several criteria:

  • whether what it claims to publish original primary research 
  • whether it claims to use peer review and/or is said by others (such as EBSCO, Ulrichsweb, & other database) to use peer review 
  • what you know about the publisher
  • whether the authors, upon specific scrutiny, are affiliated with or degreed from universities you recognize
  • what the specific articles look like, in terms of methods, cited sources, and style

Out of all those, the only piece that doesn’t require close individual scrutiny and can serve as useful shortcut is whether library tools such as EBSCOhost databases or Ulrichsweb list a journal as using peer review. These aren't perfect but can be a fairly useful way to limit your sources.

EBSCOhost databases such as America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts have a checkbox marked "Peer Reviewed" to the left of search results to limit sources to such journals.

For sources found through citation trails or JSTOR or databases without such a limiter, the Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory database has a column in which a referee-shirt icon indicates "Refereed" (which means the same thing as peer-reviewed).

Which are history journals?

As with whether a journal is scholarly, you can judge whether something is a history journal by closely evaluating various criteria such as

  • how it’s titled
  • how it describes itself on its website or its issues’ pages
  • the methodology of the articles
  • the discipline with which its editors identify
  • the citation style it uses

The first factor above, the title, can itself be a fairly good indicator, though there are exceptions.
In general, the title will usually include the words "History" or "Historical." There are at least several dozen examples and little need to list them all here.

Exceptions:
The Journal of Economic History is NOT a history journal.

These ARE history journals:

  • Annals of Iowa
  • Great Plains Quarterly
  • New England Quarterly
  • Journal of the Early Republic
  • Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
  • Slavery and Abolition
  • William and Mary Quarterly

 

Which gender studies journals?

Dr. Stuntz finds these gender studies journals suitable for this class:

  • Gender and Society
  • European Journal of Women’s Studies  
  • Violence Against Women
  • Politics and Gender
  • Journal of Gender Studies
  • Journal of Women Politics and Policy
  • Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
  • Feminist Review
  • Feminist Theory
  • Women’s Studies International Forum
  • Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies
  • Hypatia—A Journal of Feminist Philosophy
  • Feminist Studies
  • Australian Feminist Studies
  • Gender and History
  • Frontiers-A Journal of Women Studies
  • Asian Journal of Women’s Studies
  • Differences-A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies
  • Asian Women
  • Journal of Women’s History
  • Indian Journal of Gender Studies