Thanks for the response. I read the posts with Ruth Karras when they were first put up, and actually referred my students to them as a demystification of the whole academic/peer review publishing thing.

I should also correct myself from my previous post. The American Anthropological Association, which encompasses archaeology as part of the 4-field anthropology model, has two sub-groups dealing with feminism and queer theory: The Society for Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists at http://www.uvm.edu/~dlrh/solga/ and The Association for Feminist Anthropology at http://www.aaanet.org/sections/afa/ Both groups publish newsletters, and encourage discussion and publication in the AAA journal. Generally, however, these are skewed in the direction of not-archaeology.

[I]f we publish all our work on women and gender in G & H, Journal of Women’s History, etc., then there won’t be any work on women in the American Historical Review, William and Mary Quarterly, French Historical Studies, etc., and it’s important to be visible there too. It can also be important to publish in journals that one’s departmental colleagues may recognize.

I agree–but (speaking from my experience within my discipline) I think it’s important to note that the reason there are journals like JWH and G&H is that the non-women’s history journals were hardly clamoring to publish the dernier cri in feminist scholarship when it started to appear in the 1960s and 1970s. I would argue that women’s historians still have trouble getting published in many non-women’s history journals. There still are a lot of reviewers out there who will automatically react with hostility and skepticism to women’s and gender history, especially women’s history that is more theoretically informed (i.e. not just Nice Segregated Ladies’ history but stuff that uses gender & queer theory, etc.)

I would also add that if you publish an article in a women’s or feminist journal, that’s a good way of expanding your colleagues’ knowledge of archaeology journals! They’ll recognize that journal when they see it again on a younger colleague’s CV, and remember fondly the excellent article you published there.

So in the end, it’s unlikely that most of us can strategize that precisely about where our work gets published. Just getting it published is the main thing–and sometimes, valuable months and years are lost beating your head against a closed door at one journal when another might welcome your work and usher it through publication in a courteous and timely fashion.

FEMINIST PERIODICALS: A CURRENT LISTING OF CONTENTS
http://womenst.library.wisc.edu/publications/feminist-periodicals.html

I noticed, going through the various lists of periodicals, that archaeology is left out of the mix. (Yes, I know this is a history blog, but I’m an historical archaeologist!) There are certainly publications of feminist work in the main historical archaeology journals, but no specialized journal publications that I’m aware of focusing specifically on feminist/gendered/queered archaeology in general, never mind historical archaeology in particular. Do folks think this is beneficial (i.e. “forced” to publish in the main, cross-discipline journal, which = quality but has issues of publication lag, vs. having more focused journals available that may = questions of quality)?

Notorious, I think you’re right that the opinions of external reviewers are more important (and that most departments and college committees will weigh them more heavily than the perceived quality of one journal). My suspicion in the case reported on H-Net is that the person making a stink over “quality” was motivated by bias against feminist scholarship, in which case, since the outside reviewers are more than likely other feminist scholars, it’s a way of impeaching a candidate’s work without engaging the evaluations by people who are in a position to comment knowledgeably about her contributions to her field. (They’re all “biased” as feminists who probably publish in women’s history journals themselves–what the hell would they know about “quality??”)

And is there a better way? In my opinion, the best measure is to note the acceptance rates, but to have external reviewers on your file narratively assess the quality of the publications for the benefit of the nonspecialists who will be reviewing your file.

It’s too bad the AHA doesn’t do the same thing with journals that the MLA does.