Material Culture is printed two times a year for members of ISLPMC. It is abstracted and indexed in: JSTOR, ProQuest, History and Life, Historical Abstracts, GeoAbstracts, and the MLA International Bibliography. You may download a PDF of the table of contents of the current issue here.
We normally include here the abstracts from the research articles that appear in the current issue, but because this issue celebrating our 50th anniversary is unique, we are instead reproducing the entire Letter from the Editor, which will give you the best overview of the Spring 2018 issue of Material Culture:
Dear Colleagues,
It is with great pleasure that I bring you the second of two issues that celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of Material Culture (or Pioneer America, the journal’s original title). Like the first issue, which came out in Spring 2018, this one has some special features. One of my goals with this issue was to give more pages to women’s voices. Fifty years ago, women were a minority in the field of material culture studies, but thankfully, that has changed. Therefore, in this issue, we have both contemporary women’s voices and those of women who were active in the field in the late 1960s. From the first volume of the journal, published in 1969, I have reprinted an article written by Joyce E. Wilkinson, then Chairperson of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the (then) Pioneer America Society. To offer a contemporary perspective on the field, geographer Dawn Bowen reflects on how her approach to these studies, and the field of cultural geography and landscape studies, has changed over the course of her career. Another contemporary woman’s voice is presented by Jennifer Black, whose essay on scrapbooking examines how an activity (and subject of academic interest) thought to be only of concern to women, is represented in the literature.
This issue is further enriched with a reprinted article by Tony P. Wrenn who, at the time of publication in 1969, was project coordinator for the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Pioneer America Society. Also included is an essay by Richard Schein, who reflects on the changes to the study of cultural landscapes and the new meanings that have emerged as a result. Finally, a research article by Jeffrey Roth re-considers some of Terry Jordan’s original work on the diffusion of long lots in Texas and New Mexico. I hope you enjoy this commemorative issue!
I would also like to welcome two student copy editors to the journal’s staff. Emily Brown and Alyssa Minch are both undergraduates at SVSU in the Rhetoric and Professional Writing program. After almost a year without a copy editor, I am overjoyed that these two bright young women have joined my team!
I look forward to seeing many of you in New Orleans at this year’s annual meeting, and as always, I welcome your comments and suggestions!
Sincerely,
Sara Beth Keough, Ph.D., Editor