The Independent Scholar (TIS)
The Independent Scholar is a peer-reviewed open-access journal published under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Licence.
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VOLUME 11 General Issue (forthcoming, 2024)
CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Susan Breitzer. "Sisterhood was Limited: Jews, Intersectionality, and the Second Wave Feminist Movement."
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
VOLUME 10 Special Issue 'Ancient Texts, Modern Perspectives' (December 2023) <Download PDF>
CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Keenan Baca-Winters. "Where the Line is Drawn: Trauma and Narrative in the Histories of Agathias."
James M. Magrini. "Reading the Jefferson Bible: Elucidating the Ethics of Jesus of Nazareth."
Jordan Lavender. "The Hebrew Gospel in the Hebrew Script: Fourth Century Interpretation of Ἑβραΐδι Διαλέκτῳ as Alphabet."
Valerie A. Abrahamsen. "Titus and Other Jesus Missionaries on Crete: Encountering the Legacy of the Goddess."
2022 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE:
Winner: Gianncarlo Muschi. "U.S.-Peruvian Business Relations and Their Effects on the Pioneer Migration of Peruvians to Paterson, New Jersey 1920–1950." First published in The Latin Americanist, Volume 65, Number 2, June 2021, pp. 286-311.
Runner-up: Vanessa Mongey. "Protecting Foreigners: The Refugee Crisis on the Belize–Yucatán Border, 1847–71." First published in Law and History Review, February 2021, Vol. 39, No. 1.
OBITUARY:
Joanne Lafler
BOOK REVIEWS for this issue are accessible here
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VOLUME 9 General issue (December, 2022) <Download PDF>
CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Helen Ross. "Educating Post COVID-19: Moving on From Pandemic Pedagogy." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 5-22.
Mary Ellen Nourse. "Registered Apprenticeships and Youth Apprenticeships in Catholic Archdiocesan, Diocesan- and Parish-Affiliated High Schools in the United States: A Descriptive Snapshot." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 23-39.
Valerie Abrahamsen. "St. Paul and Goddesses along the Via Egnatia: Paganism and the Early Jesus Movement in Ancient Macedonia." The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 40-55.
2021 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE:
Joint winners:
Janet Smith. "Crossing the Border of Citizenship: Helen Taylor, the Independent Radical Democrat Candidate for Camberwell North, 1885." First published in Open Library of Humanities 6(2) (2020), 19. https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.540. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 57-73.
Phillip Frank Reid. "Conveyance and Commodity: The Ordinary Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800." First published in Cultural Economies in the Atlantic World: Objects and Capital in the Transatlantic Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003025436. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp.74-85.
Runner-up:
Evan Dutmer. "Teaching as Consolatio: Re-imagining the Teacher-Student Dynamic in Times of Emergency.” Teaching Classical Languages 11(2) (2020): 15-32. Reprinted with permission in The Independent Scholar Vol. 9 (December 2022), pp. 86-96.
OBITUARIES:
Paul G. Schneider (1945-2022)
Jeffrey Babcock Perry (1946-2022)
BOOK REVIEWS for this issue are accessible here
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VOLUME 8 General issue (December 2021) <Download PDF>
CRITICAL ESSAYS:
Eric Olson. "Backyard Archaeology and Integrity at Residential Sites in Northeast Ohio."
Douglas A. Dixon. "Improving History Instruction in Twenty-First-Century Language-Enriched Classrooms."
Jordan Lavender. "The Jews of Ecuador: Established and Emerging Communities."
Amanda J. Haste. "Using Translation as a Pedagogical Tool in Teaching English for Musicians and Musicologists."
2020 EISENSTEIN ESSAY PRIZE:
Winner: Kempe Ronald Hope Sr. "Peace, Justice and Inclusive Institutions: Overcoming Challenges to the Implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 16." (Originally published in Global Change, Peace & Security, 32:1, 57-77 (2019).
Runner-up: Sarah Hardstaff. "Money and the Gift in the Novels of Mildred Taylor and Cynthia Voigt." (Originally published in Barnboken Journal of Children’s Literature Research, 42 (2019). Reprinted with kind permission of the author and publisher.)
MUSINGS:
Fannie Peczenik, "Winning the Wager: What Faust Could Have Learned from Physics."
TRIBUTES:
A Tribute to Georgia Sommers Wright, by Tisa Anders
A Tribute to Sociologist and NCIS Stalwart David Sonnenschein
BOOK REVIEWS for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 7 'Connections and Challenges' (August 2020) <Download PDF>
Volume 7 features critical essays engaging with the theme "Connections and Challenges", expanded from communications given at the NCIS Conference held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in June 2019 on the twin themes of "Making Connections, Meeting Challenges." This issue also contains book reviews, and an extended book review/commentary on higher education present and future.
Darnella Davis, "Widening the Road for Independent Scholarship and Personal Narratives."
Review essay and authors' response: Yvonne Groseil. "Beyond Crisis: Higher Education Today and Tomorrow."
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 6 'Meeting Challenges' (February 2020) <Download PDF>
Volume 6 (February 2020) features critical essays engaging with the theme "Meeting Challenges, expanded from communications given at the NCIS Conference held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in June 2019 on the twin themes of "Making Connections, Meeting Challenges." This issue also contains book reviews, and reprints of both the winner and runner-up of the 2019 Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize.
Peer-reviewed articles:
Annie Rehill. "Writing and Art in Activist Collaboration: A Métis Story of Resistance and Change."
Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2019
Winner: Boria Sax. "When Adam and Eve Were Monkeys: Anthropomorphism, Zoomorphism and Other Ways of Looking at Animals." Originally published in The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History,ed. Hilda Kean and Philip Howell (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 273-297. Reprinted with kind permission of the author and publishers.
Runner-up : Stephanie Harp. "Stories of a Lynching: Accounts of John Carter, 1927." Originally published in Bullets and Fire: Lynching and Authority in Arkansas, 1840-1950, ed. Guy Lancaster. (University of Arkansas Press, 2018), pp. 195-221.
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 5 General issue (August 2019) <Download PDF>
Volume 5 (August 2019) is a general issue in which authors from the USA, France and Australia respectively explore the contemporary use of pronominal forms of address in Ecuador; the role of Théodore Flournoy in the history of psychoanalysis; and the influence of Australian activists on the early-20C American women's labor movement. This issue also contains six book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of one of the 2018 Eisenstein Prize-winning essays.
Peer-reviewed articles:
Karima Amer. “The Contribution Of Théodore Flournoy to the Discovery of the Unconscious Mind.”
Patricia Clarke. "Australian Influence on the American Women's Labor Movement."
Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2018:
The jury awarded the Prize jointly to Amanda Haste, for "Conflict and Reparation: The Agency of Music in Modern Monastic Community Dynamics," Music & Arts in Action 5.2 (2016): 39-51; and Janet Smith for “Helen Taylor’s work for land nationalisation in Great Britain and Ireland 1879–1907: Women’s political agency in the British Victorian land movement,” Women's History Review Vol. 27 (Aug. 2018): 778-798. DOI:10.1080/09612025.2017.1366968 https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1366968. Although Taylor & Francis declined Dr Smith’s request to reprint her paywalled article, Dr Haste’s article was published in an open access journal, and we are delighted to be able to reprint her winning essay here with her permission.
"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 4 'Gender and Society' (December 2018) <Download PDF>
Volume 4 (December 2018) is a themed issue on “Gender and Society” in which three authors explore the activism of Helen Taylor in 19th-century London, serialized novels aimed at immigrant Jewish women in early 20th-century New York, and the gender issues in academia and the resulting founding of NCIS in the late 20th century. This issue also contains three book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of one of the 2017 Eisenstein Prize-winning essays.
Peer-reviewed articles:
Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2017:
A strong field resulted in the jury awarding the Prize jointly to Patricia Silver for “Remembering Abuela: Memory, Authenticity and Place in Puerto Rican Orlando,” Latino Studies 13.3: 376–401; and Toni Vogel Carey for “Adam Smith's Invisible Hand: A Brief History,” Adam Smith Review 9 (2017): 88-104. Although the publishers of Latino Studies have not responded to our requests to reprint Dr Silver’s article, we are delighted to be able to reprint Dr Carey’s winning essay here. [Reprinted by permission.]
"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:
Therese Boos Dykeman. "Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912): Activist Scholar Without Borders" [Reprinted from The Independent Scholar Quarterly 22, 1 (Spring 2008): 8-11]
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 3 'Identity and Transition' (June 2017) <Download PDF>
Volume 3 (June 2017) is a themed issue on “Identity and Transition” and features peer-reviewed papers which take us to Canada, Africa, India, Israel, France and Poland for an exploration of personal, religious, and ethnic identity. This issue also contains six book reviews, an article selected from the TISQ archives by General Editor Shelby Shapiro, and a reprint of the winning essays in the strongly contested 2016 Eisenstein Prize.
Peer-reviewed articles:
Efrat Sadras-Ron. "[Re]Claiming Secular Jewish Sovereignty Through BINA."
Elizabeth Eisenstein Essay Prize 2016:
As reported in TIS Vol. 2 in September 2016, the winning essay of this prestigious Prize was "The Painted Page: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art” by Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz. However, as this was published in The Independent Scholar Vol. 1 (2016) and easily available to TIS readers, we have chosen to reprint (by kind permission of author and her publisher) the essay which took the runner-up prize, "Clichés Revisited: Poland’s 1949 Łagów Composers’ Conference” by Cindy Bylander [Orginally published in Polski Rocznik Muzykologiczny [Polish Musicological Annual] 2015: 15-34].
"Back in the Day" - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly:
Valerie Abrahamsen. "Symbols of the Prehistoric Goddess in Old Europe: Continuity and Significance in the Early Christian Era." [Reprinted from TISQ Vol. 25, No. 1 (February 2012): 16-23.]
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 2 General Issue (September 2016) <Download PDF>
Volume 2 (Sept. 2016) is a general issue featuring a wide-ranging set of peer-reviewed papers, complemented by reviews of books written by independent scholars and/or funded by NCIS-administered grants, and in our 'Back in the Day' section you can read a reprint of an essay that first appeared in The Independent Scholar Quarterly (TISQ). Also in this issue is the announcement of the 2016 winners of the Elizabeth Eisenstein Prize for a peer-reviewed article or book chapter published by an NCIS member, and an obituary of the eponmymous Professor Elizabeth Eisenstein who was very supportive of independent scholarship and in whose honor the Eisenstein Prize was established.
Amanda Haste. "Getting the Message Across: Translating Meaning for an Academic Readership."
Serena Newman. "They Came Here to Fish: Early Massachusetts Fishermen in a Puritan Society."
Back in the Day: - Editor's choice from the archives of The Independent Scholar Quarterly: Toni Vogel Carey. "Galileo Linceo."
Obituary: Professor Elizabeth Eisenstein
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here.
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VOLUME 1 'Traditions and Transitions' (December 2015) <Download PDF>
Volume 1 (Dec. 2015) features papers developed from those presented at the NCIS 25th Anniversary Conference at Yale University in June 2015, with the theme, “Traditions and Transitions: Independent Scholars and the Digital Landscape.” The authors engage with the conference theme in several disciplines and across eras: Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz examine the overlooked imagery of the book in Renaissance Art; Toni Vogel Carey examines town-gown relations in the Scottish Enlightenment; Piri Halasz gives a unique insight into 'Swinging London' of the 1960s; and Yvonne Groseil takes a look at the growing adjunct activism in the 21st century. All are informed by digital media and resources which were not available to previous generations of scholars. As well as these four critical essays, TIS1 contains four reviews of scholarly books.
Barbara Williams Ellertson and Janet Seiz. "The Painted Page: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art."
Toni Vogel Carey. "Town-Gown Collaboration: The Example of Eighteenth-Century Scotland."
Yvonne Groseil. "A Future for Adjuncts: From Plight to Fight."
Book Reviews for this issue are accessible here
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Suggestions for suitable books should be sent to the Book Review Editor (BRE) on reviews@ncis.org
EDITORIAL BOARD
General Editor
Shelby Shapiro, Ph.D., M.A.
tis@ncis.org
Humanities Editor
Amanda Haste, Ph.D., M.A., Dip.Trans.
amanda.haste@ncis.org
STEM Editor
Joan Cunningham, Ph.D., M.Sc.
jcunningham@ncis.org
Associate Editors
Jordan Lavender, Ph.D.
Annie Rehill, Ph.D.
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TIS PROTOCOL
The Independent Scholar (TIS) shall be entirely open access. There are to be no Author Processing Charges (APC) or other administrative charges meaning that there is no charge to authors for publishing in TIS. The content is to be publicly available online on the NCIS website, and no paywall is to be applied.
Eligibility to submit manuscripts to TIS.
All authors of manuscripts submitted to TIS must be paid-up members of NCIS at Full, Associate or Life member status, or be a verified member of an NICS-affiliated Partner Group.
Such membership status is to be stated on the submission form, and will be verified by referring to the NCIS Membership Officer or the President of the relevant Partner Group.
On submission of a manuscript to TIS the author must confirm that the work has not already been published, or submitted to another journal for review.
Copyright
Authors of articles accepted for publication in TIS retain full copyright of their work. If they republish the article elsewhere they must cite the original TIS publication details However, they remain free to submit revised versions of their TIS paper to more specialist journals.
Authors of book reviews accepted for publication in TIS retain full copyright of their review.
Authors of other material published in TIS (e.g. obituaries, tributes, review essays) retain full copyright of their contribution.
Permission to use or reprint material from articles published in TIS must be requested from the author(s).
Peer review process
All manuscript articles are submitted via our submissions portal. The Humanities editor or STEM editor will then assign an Associate Editor to source at least two peer reviews for each manuscript. The Humanities Editor or STEM editor may assign themselves as editor if the manuscript lies within their field of expertise.
All articles submitted to TIS will be reviewed by at least two reviewers in a double blind process : all manuscripts must be anonymised before being sent to the reviewers.
Authors will address any queries direct to their assigned editor, and submlit their revised papers via the OJS portal. Their Associate Editor will then make the final decision on whether to accept or decline the paper. In the case of opposing views among reviewers, the editor has the option of appointing an additional reviewer. They may also take the rôle of reviewer themselves, although their report must be presented as the report of Reviewer X to preserve the distance required between author and reviewer.
The editor’s decision is final, though in contentious cases they may seek the advice of the Humanities or STEM editor.
Formatting The TIS style guide is APA 8th edition. While TIS does not insist that manuscripts are formatted in APA on submission, if accepted the author undertakes to edit the format of the accepted article to comply with APA style before the article is published.
Proofreading Following acceptance, articles are copy edited and formatted in TIS style, and then sent to the author for final proofreading before publication. Authors must not alter the content of their article, but must proofread carefully and check all formatting against the style guide.
Preprints On acceptance, each article is published online on the NCIS website as a preprint. This gives immediate exposure to the author by avoiding the long lead-time between issues. Preprints do not have page numbers. Preprints can be seen at https://www.ncis.org/the-independent-scholar/tis
Book reviews
Book reviews will be commissioned by the NCIS Book Review Editor, and the reviewer must submit their review via the OJS portal. The Book Review Editor will review it and ask for revisions if necessary before accepting or declining it for publication in TIS.
In the event of a less-than-positive book review, the book’s author shall be given the opportunity to respond. Their response will be published immediately after the book review, and listed in the Table of Contents.
Book reviews can be seen at https://www.ncis.org/book-reviewsthe-independent-scholar-tis
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Also available are issues of the TIS predecessor journal, The Independent Scholar Quarterly (TISQ). Please note that prior to 2015, TIS and its predecessor, TISQ, were not peer reviewed.
THE INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR QUARTERLY (TISQ) ARCHIVES
All issues available as PDFs.
- May 2014
- February 2014
- November 2013
- August 2013
- May 2013
- February 2013
- November 2012
- August 2012
- February 2012
- November 2011
- August 2011
- January 2011
- December 2009
- September 2009
- June 2009
- March 2009
- December 2008
- September 2008
- March 2008
- December 2007
- October 2007
- June 2007
- March 2007