Gohweli: A Journal of Native Literatures is a new on-line, peer reviewed
journal for the study of American Indian and Alaska Native literatures.
This journal will include essays of literary criticism, short fiction,
poetry, book reviews, interviews, photographs, and news about upcoming
events around the country and on the World Wide Web.
The name of the journal comes from the Cherokee word meaning "writing," and
is pronounced "go-WHALE-lee." We chose the name in honor of the Cherokee
visionary Sequoyah, who created one of the first Native syllabaries after
contact with non-Native peoples, demonstrating for Native peoples the power
and possibilities of the written word from a Native perspective.
The staff at Gohweli is excited about the opportunities afforded to on-line
publications, especially inexpensive access to the journal, and the uses of
multimedia to present Native literature studies in several formats. Because
the journal will be free to anyone who has access to the World Wide Web, we
believe that many remote tribal schools, schools without large library
funds, and people at home without easy access to large libraries will be
able to use and to enjoy the information and literature in our journal.
With President Clinton's initiative to have all public schools on-line by
the year 2000, we believe that on-line journals will provide one of the
best opportunities for research, scholarship, and literary publications in
the next century.
In the first issue of Gohweli, we will publish a poem (or two) by the Osage
poet Carter Revard. In addition to publishing the poem, we will include
photographs of Revard, possibly graphics illustrating his poems, and
RealAudio streaming of Revard reading his poems. Thus people with at least
a 14.400 baud modem and Real Audio software (available free of charge) will
be able to listen to Carter Revard read his poems at their own computers.
In the future, when more computer users have access to RealVideo
technology, we will also include the actual video of poets reading their
works.
The staff at Gohweli hopes to use multimedia in other ways as well,
including having book reviewers read their works, short story writers
comment on their fiction, interviewers publish the complete sound recording
of the interviews in the journal, as well as including text, photographs,
and graphics for all these sections. We will also include bulletin boards
for feedback on the literature and criticism, so readers can participate in
the discussion. We are also looking into the possibility of a "student
section" for young writers of Native literature.
Gohweli hopes to have the first complete publication on-line by the end of
October, 1997. We hope to publish one issue a college semester (2 issues
per year), and possibly one in the summer depending on the time restraints
on the editorial staff.
Gohweli is now accepting submissions for articles and book reviews about
Native literature (written by Indians or non-Indians, to be peer reviewed);
we are also accepting submissions of fiction, poetry, photographs and
graphics (produced by Native peoples). At present, Gohweli is operating on
a purely volunteer basis: no payment is available at this time for
contributors.
To contact the editors of Gohweli to ask about submission guidelines,
please go to the following web page:
http://www.uwm.edu/~mwilson/journal/
To see a mock-up of the first table of contents page, please to go the
following URL: http://www.uwm.edu/~mwilson/gohweli/
For other information, please contact me at the following addresses:
Michael Wilson
Asst. Professor
English Department
U of Wisconsin Milwaukee Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Office: (414) 229-4389
Message: (414) 229-4511
mwilson@csd.uwm.edu
http://www.uwm.edu/~mwilson/