Literature, Critique, and Empire Today
Literature, Critique and Empire Today (formerly the Journal of Commonwealth Literature) is internationally recognized as the leading critical and bibliographic forum in the field of postcolonial and global literatures. It provides an essential, peer-reviewed reference tool for scholars, researchers, and libraries.
Three of the four issues each year are dedicated to the latest scholarship on all aspects of postcolonial literary studies. We welcome a wide range of critical and theoretical submissions on Anglophone and non-Anglophone literatures that have been shaped by the continuing legacies of the British Empire. The fourth issue provides a comprehensive bibliography of publications in the field. Read more about the Bibliography issue here.
We welcome articles, as well as proposals for special issues and symposia, on established and emerging areas in the field, including but by no means limited to: Indigenous studies, settler colonialisms and their contexts, postcolonial book and translation studies, postcolonial geographies, postcolonial health humanities, postcolonial environmental studies, refugee and diaspora studies, decolonizing methodologies, and the field’s intersections with gender, sexuality, religion, class, and caste. We also welcome interventions that think critically about innovating and reforming the field still widely known as “postcolonial” literary studies to address its reach, its critical foothold on contemporary realities, and its limitations.
Literature, Critique, and Empire Today was founded in 1966 as the Journal of Commonwealth Literature. The reason for the title change is provided here.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
All issues of Literature, Critique and Empire Today (formerly the Journal of Commonwealth Literature) are available to browse online.
Now in its sixth decade, Literature, Critique, and Empire Today (formerly the Journal of Commonwealth Literature) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal. Internationally recognized as the leading critical and bibliographic forum in the field of postcolonial literatures, the journal publishes work on the following areas of research:
- theories and strategies of anticolonial resistance
- race and racialization
- postcolonial publishing studies
- postcolonial geographies
- Indigenous studies
- settler colonialisms
- postcolonial health humanities
- postcolonial environmental studies
- comparative postcolonial studies
- refugee and diaspora studies
- decolonizing methodologies
- neoliberalism in the Global South
- postcolonial genre and popular fictions
- languages and translation
- the field’s intersections with gender, sexuality, religion, class, and caste
The journal is committed to publishing scholarship on literatures written in non-European languages in postcolonial contexts. While the journal’s key focus is on literary studies, broadly understood - poetry, life writing, short fiction, creative non-fiction, drama, and the novel - we also publish critical work on film, performance, and other visual media.
We welcome proposals for special issues or symposia on any of the above. We also publish scholarly interviews with key figures in the field. As the fourth issue of each year is a comprehensive bibliography of publications in the field, the journal does not publish book reviews.
All peer review is double anonymized and submissions are always reviewed by two referees.
| Rehana Ahmed | Queen Mary University of London, UK |
| Shital Pravinchandra | Queen Mary, University of London, UK |
| Lucinda Newns | King’s College London, UK |
| Diana Mudura | University of York, UK |
| Elleke Boehmer | University of Oxford, UK |
| Laurence Breiner | Boston University, USA |
| Claire Chambers | University of York, UK |
| Ralph Crane | University of Tasmania, Australia |
| Corinne Fowler | University of Leicester, UK |
| Rachael Gilmour | Queen Mary University of London, UK |
| Shane Graham | Utah State University, USA |
| Faye Hammill | University of Glasgow, UK |
| Caroline Herbert | Leeds Beckett University, UK |
| Hugh Hodges | Trent University, Ontario, Canada |
| Coral Ann Howells | University of Reading, UK |
| Graham Huggan | University of Leeds, UK |
| Michelle Kelly | University of Oxford, UK |
| Malashri Lal | University of Delhi, India |
| Dr Nukhbah Langah | Forman Christian College University, Pakistan |
| Arini Loader | Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand |
| Gail Low | University of Dundee, UK |
| John McLeod | University of Leeds, UK |
| Lindsey Moore | Lancaster University, UK |
| Peter Morey | University of Birmingham , UK |
| Stephen Morton | University of Southampton, UK |
| Pablo Mukherjee | Warwick University, UK |
| Stephanie Newell | Yale University, USA |
| Brendon Nicholls | University of Leeds, UK |
| James Ogude | University of Pretoria, South Africa |
| Ranka Primorac | University of Southampton, UK |
| Gillian Roberts | University of Nottingham, UK |
| Minoli Salgado | Sussex University, UK |
| Dennis Walder | The Open University, UK |
| Susan Watkins | Leeds Metropolitan University, UK |
| Marike Beyers (South Africa) | Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, Grahamstown, South Africa |
| Victoria V. Chang (the Caribbean) | The University of West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago |
| Joel Deshaye (Canada) | Joel Deshaye, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada |
| Lynne Grant (South Africa) | Amazwi South African Museum of Literature, Grahamstown, South Africa |
| Nathan Hobby (Australia) | University of Western Australia, Australia |
| Van Ikin (Australia) | University of Western Australia, Australia |
| Kirstine Moffat (Aotearoa New Zealand) | University of Waikato, New Zealand |
| Mafruha Mohua (Bangladesh) | University of London, UK |
| Mahruba T. Mowtushi (Bangladesh) | BRAC University, Bangladesh |
| Grace Musila (East and Central Africa) | University of Stellenbosch, South Africa |
| Payal Nagpal (India) | University of Delhi, India |
| Shyamala A Narayan (India) | Jamia Millia Islamia, India |
| S. Walter Perera (Sri Lanka) | University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka |
| Muneeza Shamsie (Pakistan) | "A" Street, Defense Housing Project, Karachi, Pakistan |
| Ismail S. Talib (Malaysia and Singapore) | National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore |
| John Uwa (West Africa) | University of Lagos, Nigeria |