When considering how best to introduce myself as the new Editor in Chief of New Review of Film and Television Studies, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps an ‘introduction’ feels a bit silly for someone who has been around the journal as long as I have. I’ve been involved with New Review since 2016 as the journal’s Book Reviews Editor, a role that has offered a helpful vantage point from which to consider the nature of editorial work more broadly. In helping fellow scholars craft their own responses to the published work of still-other fellow scholars, I’ve come to appreciate academic journals as sites of not just individual accomplishments but collective meaning-making for the field. As I look forward to my own tenure as EIC, then, I’m reminded that professional milestones purportedly tied to one person – the solo-authored monograph, the single name atop an editorial masthead – are always the products of multiple voices, shared history, and communal effort.
To that end, I want to offer some words of thanks to those who entrusted me with this position in the first place. My journey to this current role can be traced directly back to previous EIC Kyle Stevens, who first asked if I would be interested in editing book reviews for the journal. I appreciated Kyle’s trust in me then and continue to value his guidance and friendship today. More recently, I have had the immense pleasure of working with the journal’s just-departed EIC, Maria San Filippo, whose visionary leadership, generosity of spirit, and tireless dedication to the advancement of film and media studies scholarship have made New Review a truly wonderful publication to be part of. I think it only appropriate that our Spring 2024 issue (technically my first as EIC) was guest-edited by Maria, an issue fully imbued with so many of her lasting contributions to the journal – a commitment to scholarship on gender, feminism, and sexuality; a special issue linking strong scholarly voices under a rich thematic rubric – and enhanced by additional, connected articles published on the NRFTS Blog, which Maria founded during her tenure. I can only hope to continue the intellectual vibrancy and scholarly dialogue that Maria fostered over her four years at the helm.
I also want to spotlight the other members of the journal’s team, who are themselves a mixture of veterans and newcomers. Max Bledstein has been a diligent and creative Online Editor since 2023, qualities that he has only expanded upon in his new role as Associate Editor (and which will be on display in his forthcoming guest-edited issue on ‘Horror Media Studies Now’). Geneveive Newman has taken over as Online Editor and is already pursuing exciting ideas about how to grow the journal’s digital presence and circulate scholarly work to a wider and more accessible range of spaces. Finally, M. Sellers Johnson brings a deep cinephilic knowledge and enthusiasm for film and media studies scholarship to his new position as Book Reviews Editor (a role he has expanded into editing book reviews on NRFTS Blog as well). I could not ask for a better group to work alongside.
As I step more fully into this new role, I look forward to continuing and developing the numerous initiatives that the journal has undertaken in recent years: the NRFTS Blog, the journal’s podcast, further guest-edited special issues and dossiers, enduring partnerships with two organizations within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies – the Queer and Trans Caucus and the Television Studies Scholarly Interest Group – on graduate student essay contests, and more. At the same time, I hope to maintain just a bit of my prior perspective as Book Reviews Editor. It’s a role built around two of the foundational and animating impulses of this journal (indeed, of academic journals more broadly): cultivating scholarly community through the highlighting of new and exciting work, and encouraging robust intellectual debate, critique, and engagement with that work. These are the principles that I have the honor, privilege, and delight to uphold as we write the next chapter of New Review of Film and Television Studies.