WMQ - From “Notes and Documents” to “Sources and Interpretations”

The “Notes and Documents” section of the William and Mary Quarterly has been a regular feature of the journal since it shifted its focus from the study of Virginia to a consideration of “the entire field of early American history, institutions, and culture,” a “broadening of horizons” that occurred with the beginning of the Third Series in 1944 (“Historical News: The Quarterly’s Third Series,” WMQ 3d Ser., 1, 1 [Jan. 1944], 91-2).  The section generally contains two kinds of pieces: those concentrating upon or introducing a primary document (usually a new archival discovery), and Research Notes, which are short articles, narrower in scope and more focused in their scholarly contribution than the usual article.  The Research Note, though, has primarily been the domain for document-based historians.

The Quarterly will continue to publish both primary documents of broad interest and Research Notes of the familiar type, and I encourage both kinds of submissions.   Yet a similar format should be available to scholars using art, material objects, archeological evidence, or other kinds of sources to investigate the early American past.  Just as the introduction to a Notes and Documents piece places an archival find in its historical context and connects the document to significant questions in current historical inquiry, so might a short essay present and interpret a new archaeological find, an understudied text, or a forgotten artifact.  In 2008, volume 65 in the Third Series, therefore, the WMQ will broaden the methodological and disciplinary horizons of the Notes and Documents section by renaming it “Sources and Interpretations” and encouraging submissions to it that are not just document-based.  This renaming, discussed by the Quarterly’s Editorial Board at its May 2007 meeting, formalizes and continues to encourage the efforts to broaden the entire journal’s scope—efforts that are not new with the current editor or even the previous one and that reflect the growth and development of the field.  Neither an introduction to a primary source nor a short, stand-alone interpretive essay should exceed 6,000 words, excluding notes.  (The maximum word count for regular articles, excluding notes, is 10,000).

Christopher Grasso
Editor