Title: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld institutes. v.1, 1937-
Description: From the start the Journal aimed at an international readership and welcomed contributions from within and outside Europe. But an article on any given theme can generate a whole chain-reaction of response, so that a periodical can easily find itself identified with a particular style or topic. It was partly with a sense that the Journal was becoming the focus for material on a relatively limited range of subjects and periods – especially around the Renaissance – and, moreover, was rejecting an increasing proportion of long and often long-winded submissions, puffed up with extended surveys of existing literature, that in 1972 the then Editors, David Chambers and J. B. Trapp, decided ‘to restate the Journal’s aims and interests for the guidance of intending contributors’. The term cultural history, avoided or unavailable in the 1930s as an approximation to Kulturwissenschaft, could now be used as the Journal’s defining feature. Otherwise, it was the initial call for a forum of discussion between different disciplines that was emphasised, with ‘the continuity of the classical tradition... seen as one theme that would encourage an interdisciplinary approach’. In addition, with an eye to the wit and general appeal of many of the learned little notes in the early volumes, succinctness was urged, recapitulation of scholarly argument discouraged, and the hope was expressed that the Journal would ‘arouse a non-specialist’s interest in specialized material’.

The Journal’s ideal remains that of presenting to the scholarly community at large the fruits of new research in intellectual and cultural history, in a way that would ensure that academic standards are not compromised by accessibility. It seems ever more important to affirm the integrity of this concept of interdisciplinarity in the present climate of research, when the term is sometimes misapplied to impressionistic ‘cultural studies’ or to the opportunistic recycling of previously published specialist material.

The Journal has appeared regularly, at first quarterly, then half-yearly, then annually ‘through wartime and immediately post-war paper shortages, and through successive University retrenchments’, to quote the preface for the celebratory 50th volume of 1987. The business of editing and production has always taken place at the Warburg Institute, from 1948 with the help of a Journal Secretary. More of the production is now done in house than ever before, since the editorial assistant prepares the page layout for text and illustrations. There are at present four Editors, backed by an Advisory Board, all of them drawn from both Institutes.

Occasional numbers have been in some sense special issues. One such was the 1946 volume, devoted to contributions from Italy, in a post-war reassertion of the common purpose of British and European scholarship. Another was the 1987 volume, which was given over to past and present members of the two Institutes. But generally there is no attempt to impose a theme on any particular issue. With publication only once a year, it would be unreasonable to make authors wait for their subject to come round. And if the Editors sometimes advise prospective new contributors to look at past issues to gain an idea of the Journal’s profile and intended readership, this is emphatically not so as to impose any limitation on subject matter. Making past issues available to a wider public in the form of CD-ROMs, will, it is hoped, stimulate new topics and new ideas, indeed make the Journal the forum for discussion of a broader sort even than that envisaged in the original prospectus. (From The Warburg Institute Website)
Subjects: History, Societies, Religions, Civilization, Art