Unger Named Managing Editor of Legacy

Mary Unger, Ripon College Assistant Professor of English, has been named the Managing Editor of Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers.

Legacy is published by the University of Nebraska Press and according to its website is the “only scholarly journal to focus specifically on American women’s writings from the 17th through early 20th century.” The journal prides itself on the variety of approaches it takes, addressing everything from genre studies to examinations of race, ethnicity, gender, class and sexualities in women’s literature and profiles of authors and their works, both well- and lesser-known. The upcoming issue will feature articles including “Women Writing Disability” and “Freakery and the Discursive Limits of Be-ing in Julia Ward Howe’s The Hermaphrodite.”

Unger was selected for her position at Legacy, in part, as a result of her previous editing experience and her earlier contributions to Legacy as a scholar. Unger has served as Managing Editor and, later, Assistant Editor, for the journal American Literary History. Her article “’Dropping crooked into rhyme’: Djuna Barnes’s Disabled Poetics in The Book of Repulsive Women” appeared in Legacy in 2013.

Unger is looking forward to the opportunity at hand, noting “It’s fun for me to be able to see what my colleagues outside of Ripon are doing, and gain exposure to this new and exciting scholarship that’s going on. Being able to work with authors on their essays opens doors to collaboration and makes you a bigger part of that larger conversation.”

Unger also hopes that, down the road, she will be able to find a way to introduce Ripon College students to the sort of work required of an editor at a journal such as Legacy. Although the journal already provides her with an Editorial Assistant, “if we could somehow find a way to involve undergraduates, it would be great to have a student assistant for someone to gain experience in editing and publishing. I think it could draw students of many different interests.”

To read more stories of Ripon College faculty in the news, click here.

To learn more about the English Department at Ripon College, click here.

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