To celebrate the launch of the new journal archives from Liverpool University Press, we hear from several journal editors on what they like best about looking back and reflecting on past journal issues, and why it’s great news for readers seeking historical research in the fields of Modern Languages and Political History.

Political History Archive 1934 – 2004

Bringing together content from a range of perspectives in the world of political history, including labour politics, trade unions, management labour practices, co-operatives, gender and ethnicity, disability, Marxism, class, and progressive movements.

The Archive features scholarly articles, essays, reviews, memoirs, folklore and oral testimony, and explores past and present social justice issues.

Explore a diverse range of international labour studies, including European, African, and Australasian labour history.

Journals Included

Historical Studies in Industrial Relations– 18 volumes (1996 – 2004)
Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History – 84 volumes (1963 – 2004)
Labour History Review – 69 volumes (1960 – 2004)
Theory & Struggle – 275 volumes (1934 – 2004)

An Editor’s Take

This is a rich resource for those pursuing an interest in the field of labour history and its evolution over the past several decades. Labour History (issue no.1, 1963 to issue no.84, 2004) contains many gems in its back issues which attracted path-breaking work in feminist and social history as well as studies of the early colonial and later national labour movements. Topics covered: convict labour, major strikes and industrial confrontations, moments in political history of the Australian Labour Party and the domestic Cold War. Social movements organising for peace, against war and conscription and over issues of race and gender sit alongside workers’ campaigns for equal pay, struggles over technological change, housing or welfare, and for Indigenous land rights.
Diane Kirkby, Editor of Labour History

I could have gotten lost in this Archive, spending the entire afternoon in back issues…

Amy J Ransom, Editor of Québec Studies

Modern Languages Archive 1964 – 2004

Providing a broad range of research in the area of Modern Languages, including linguistics, culture, literature, performing and visual arts, media, gender studies, social sciences, and anthropology. 

The Archive includes research articles, translations, and book reviews, and provides a stimulating interdisciplinary forum for scholars.

Journals Included

Australian Journal of French Studies – 41 volumes (1964 – 2004)
Catalan Review – 18 volumes (1986 – 2004)
Contemporary French Civilization – 28 volumes (1976 – 2004)
Journal of Romance Studies – 4 volume (2001– 2004)
Québec Studies – 38 volumes (1983– 2004)

An Editor’s Take

Scholars in French and Francophone studies will find LUP’s Modern Language Archive an invaluable resource for digitized, full-text journal content prior to 2004. The Archive itself offers interesting opportunities for meta-type scholarship, as one follows the evolution of the discipline by following a single journal through its early years. For example, as I revisited the early issues of the journal I edit, Québec Studies, I was transported back in time to the 1980s and witnessed the early work of veteran scholars who essentially forged the notion of “Québec Studies” as a discipline through the journal itself. From its first issue in 1983, Québec Studies has been a forum for cutting-edge research not just on Québec but also on Francophone populations across North America. Its very first issue, volume 1, edited by Mary Jean Green, featured a symposium piece on the then very current “Constitutional Crisis and the Future of Québec,” and scholarly articles on Québec’s history and literature, art, contemporary economic, social, and public policy, as well as popular culture.

The journal’s particular focus on emerging women’s writing, theatre, and film appears clearly in its earliest issues, including path breaking articles by Jane Moss (the journal’s editor from 2008-2018), Janet Paterson, and Janis Pallister, and then editor Karen Gould’s interview with Denise Boucher, Madeleine Gagnon, and Louky Bersianik in volume 2. In its first years, the journal memorialized the passing of Gabrielle Roy (a writer frequently the subject of scholarly analysis in its pages) and historian Mason Wade, but also set a precedent for interdisciplinary scholarship on New England’s Franco-Americans, Acadians from the Grand Dérangement to contemporary language policy in Maritime Canada, and Louisiana’s French-speaking Creoles. Over the three decades covered in the Modern Language Archive, its contributors include rising US-based academics, but also Québécois public intellectuals and writers Lise Bissonette, Lise Gauvin, Louis Balthazar, Pierre Véronneau, and others.
Amy J Ransom, editor of Québec Studies

The Modern Languages Archive is a valuable research tool in French studies in Australia and beyond.
Jarrod Hayes, editor of Australian Journal of French Studies

This is a rich resource for scholars and students interested in understanding how the field of French and Francophone cultural and civilization studies has evolved since the 1970s.
Denis Provencher, editor of Contemporary French Civilization

Editors picks from the Archive

Québec Studies: Special issues address topics of interest such as film Volume 9 (1989), writer Marie-Claire Blais Volume 10 (1990), and representations of the October Crisis of 1970 Volume 11 (1990). Into the 1990s and early 2000s under successive editors Robert Schwartzwald and Patrick Coleman, the journal addressed new developments in the field, such as the relevance of postcolonial theory to Québec Volume 35 (2003), for example. This Archive contains a wealth of significant scholarship on Québec and Francophone North America.
Amy J Ransom, editor of Québec Studies

Labour History: Particularly notable are path-breaking special issues dedicated to racial questions – Volume 35 (1978) Racism and the Working Class in Australia – women – Volume 29 (1975) Women at Work; Volume 61 (1991) Women Work and the Labour Movement in Australia and Aoteroa/New Zealand – and later, Aboriginal workers – Volume 69 (1995). It is the resource for scholars and teachers in its dedication to original research articles, workers’ perspectives and coverage of the field in contemporary book reviews.
Diane Kirkby, Editor of Labour History

Contemporary French Civilization: There are many gems in the early volumes of Contemporary French Civilization. These include essays and specials issues on topics that include the French Resistance Volume 18.1 (1994), the Algerian question, Québec, intellectuals in the 1990’s Volume 24.2 (2000), immigration, urbanism, HIV/AIDS and sexuality, women in France Volume 25.2 (2001), France in Europe, regional radio, bande dessinée, the media and the popular press. We would encourage you and your students to explore these and the many interviews, book reviews, and pedagogical materials prepared by some of the pioneers of the “French civilization course”.
Denis Provencher, editor of Contemporary French Civilization

Australian Journal of French Studies: Volume 41.2 (2004) explores the Baudin expedition, a particularly pertinent topic for a specifically Australian French studies. Volume 41.3 (2004) is an issue containing several prominent scholars on writing the self. Of particular interest is an essay by the late Ross Chambers.
Jarrod Hayes, editor of Australian Journal of French Studies

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Liverpool University Press is pleased to offer your library the unique opportunity to make a one-off purchase of back-content in our Political History and Modern Languages journals included in the Archive. 

Access is available in perpetuity and there are no online hosting fees. All content is digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS Archive.

Political History Archive 2021 price: £812 / USD $1,247 
Modern Languages Archive 2021 price: £439 / USD $712

How do I order? 
Please contact our subscriptions team at subscriptions@liverpool.ac.uk 

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