In a recent ceremony in Los Angeles at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) named Literature in the Early American Republic (LEAR) the Best New Journal of 2010. This honor places the journal in the company of such previous winners as the American Journal of Bioethics, the Gettysburg Review, the Journal of World History, Narrative, Pedagogy, and the Yale Journal of Criticism.

Speaking at the ceremony, CELJ vice president Alan Rauch (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) delivered written comments prepared by noted historian Ralph W. Mathisen (University of Illinois) that described LEAR as “a journal that will have real staying power” and one that “deals with a very significant topic that seems under-represented.” Mathisen added that the journal’s “contributions are all deserving of the epithet ‘learned,’ lacking the jargon and over-blown language that so often characterize literary studies in the modern day.”

Published by AMS Press, LEAR is housed in the Iowa State University department of English and is co-edited by its founders, Matthew Wynn Sivils (Iowa State University) and Jeffrey Walker (Oklahoma State University). Lance Schachterle (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) is an advisory editor and more than two dozen scholars serve on its editorial board.

Sivils accepted the award on January 9 in Los Angeles on behalf of both editors. “It is an immense honor to win this CELJ award,” Sivils said, “which serves not only as an affirmation of our hard work but also of LEAR’s future promise.”

LEAR is the only scholarly journal devoted solely to the study of the literary culture of the fledgling United States, from the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 to the death of James Fenimore Cooper in 1851.

As their website states, “The Council of Editors of Learned Journals, an Allied Organization of the Modern Language Association, is an organization of editors of scholarly journals in all disciplines. As the major national organization dedicated to supporting academic journal publishing, our membership of over 450 editors represents an invaluable collective wellhead of editorial wisdom and experience. Making this fund of expertise available to new and veteran editors alike for discussing common editorial concerns and sharing considered advice is one of our major purposes.”