DSQ > Fall 2007, Volume 27, No.4

This issue represents the kind of disciplinary and methodological diversity that makes Disability Studies the happening, exciting field it is.

With this issue we've updated a number of guidelines and policies with regards to submissions and citation formats, and in the near future, look for even more changes in those areas. One key change was to open up the acceptable citation formats for publications in DSQ; now, in addition, to APA style, we also accept Chicago Manual style (CMS) and MLA style. (In the next issue we plan to include especially good samples of each citation format for future contributors to use as models.) All that matters style-wise these days in DSQ is that the author is consistent and choose a style that is, as much as possible, in line with the disciplinary anchoring (or angle) of their contribution. You will see all three styles represented in this issue, a fitting reflection of the disciplinary variety and range published here.

We also now ask that each article include a brief abstract and keywords. Abstracts and keywords, we've found, are useful for many reasons: they allow the author to state again for him or herself the key argument, major findings, and conceptual anchors of their work; they provide regular journal readers an enhanced table of contents; and they further provide researchers in the future with a more readily useable search tool. They are like those delectable little samples of interesting food at your favorite grocery store (where even hot dogs, cut up in little bites, and served in a tiny paper cup, can suddenly seem worth buying and having more of.) Abstracts are good. We plan to be serving them regularly now in DSQ.

Aside from just policy changes, DSQ has a new look with this issue. We have moved over to our new publishing format, DPubS (Digital Publishing System). Guided by an outstanding, ingenious staff at the Ohio State University Libraries' Scholarly Resources Integration department, our adventure into a new technological interface for DSQ will prove to be more flexible for authors, readers, and researchers alike in the future. Briefly, DPubS is "an open-source software system designed to enable the organization, presentation, and delivery of scholarly journals, monographs, conference proceedings, and other common and evolving means of academic discourse" (http://dpubs.org/) You'll see more of what DPubS can do in future issues.

Finally, the contents of this issue make for a remarkable disciplinary, methodological mix. A special theme section on "The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine," co-edited by Liat Ben-Moshe and Sumi Colligan, presents some groundbreaking cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary work that I predict people in the field will still be talking about a decade from now. I'll let the co-editors themselves address the quality and range of this section in their own editorial introduction. But here, let me just say, that I was deeply impressed and newly informed by my own reading of the material in this special section. Many of the pieces moved me outside my own comfort zone and geography — intellectually and personally — and I came away awed and appreciative for that move. I think you will too.

This issue also features three peer-reviewed articles on other topics that further represent a diversity of approaches and critical lenses — from public health, teacher education, and critical autobiography. In this issue, we also have another outstanding creative work of fiction in Kristen Harmon's short story, "Gonna Buy You a Mockingbird." Harmon's story, which features a deaf protagonist, offers more range, more diversity, more answers to the question, "so what is disability studies?" And if that weren't already answer enough, you can read on to the book reviews featured in this issue — gathered by our new book and film review editor, Laurie Lambeth — and absorb even more of the scope and sophistication that represents our field. Finally, you can engage the discourse of our field through yet another colorful lens — that of "cultural commentaries" provided by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Santiago Solis.

Welcome to the happening!

References

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