Submissions

The Editorial Board welcomes the submission of manuscripts written in English on any aspect of modern Chinese literature and culture, including film, television, performing and visual arts, architecture, popular culture, material and print culture. Authors should write in a style that is comprehensible to non-specialists in other fields and disciplines, but that is at the same time theoretically informed and original. Literary translations are published only if they are essential to an accompanying critical/analytical study. (MCLC publishes editor-reviewed translations, interviews, multimedia-intensive articles, and other miscellaneous essays on this website, the MCLC Resource Center). Manuscripts should be double-spaced and can range in length from 30 to 60 pages. An electronic copy of the submission, along with a cover letter that includes contact information, should be addressed to the editors, Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier, and sent to this email address: MCLC@ed.ac.uk.

MCLC is a blind, peer-reviewed journal. When submitting essays, please make sure the author’s name is not indicated in the essay itself or does not appear embedded in “Properties” in the Word file.

MCLC STYLE GUIDE (see below, but also available in pdf format here)

Manuscript Submission

  • Manuscripts should be between 8,000 and 15,000 words in length. Authors including images should reduce the maximum length by about 250 words per half-page image.
  • Send manuscripts, ideally in Word format, to mclc@ed.ac.uk.
  • Submissions should include an abstract of no more than 200 words. Please also include five to six keywords (names and short phrases can be used).
  • Large files (16mb+) can be uploaded here (password: mclc).
  • Please include with your submission a statement that your manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere and is not previously published in English. If you are submitting a translation, you should say so.

Formatting

  • MCLC accepts submissions in both American and British English. Manuscripts in British English must use Oxford spellings (-ize, -ization, analyse).
  • MCLC uses the Oxford serial comma.
  • Commas and periods should be placed inside quotation marks, following the American convention “like this.”
  • Numbers up to one hundred should be written out.
  • Chinese terms using pinyin (or other romanization) should be italicized, but proper names, such as Mao Zedong, should not. For terms mentioned frequently, subsequent italicization is optional.
  • In most cases, English should come first with pinyin following in parenthesis, e.g., . . . plaza (guangchang).
  • For titles of works, italicize books, plays, periodicals, and films; use citation marks for essays, articles, short stories, and poems.
  • Note italics and capitalization in these examples:

Gao Xingjian’s play Dialogue and Rebuttal (Duihua yu fanjie) . . .

Shi Zhecun’s short story “Spring Sunshine” (Chun yang) . . .

  • If the Chinese title is put first, it should appear as follows:

Gao Xingjian’s play Duihua yu fanjie (Dialogue and rebuttal) . . .

Shi Zhecun’s short story “Chun yang” (Spring sunshine) . . .

  • As shown, titles provided in English should capitalize main words except when put in parenthesis as translations. Titles in pinyin should only capitalize the first word and proper names. When in parenthesis, italicize pinyin, not English.
  • Subsequent mentions should just use English titles unless there is good reason not to.
  • Quotes longer than thirty words or so should be formatted as block citations: separate paragraph, indented margins, single line spacing.
  • Quotes should not be italicized.

Referencing

  • Reference formatting should adhere to Chicago’s author-date style and should include page numbers, e.g., . . . (Lull 1991, 21).
  • Footnotes should only be used for brief additional information, not references.
  • Page ranges should be provided in full, e.g., (Lull 1991, 121–125), not (Lull 1991, 121–5).
  • Multiple works by the same author in a given year should be separated by adding a letter, e.g., (Lin 1998a, 123), (Lin 1998b, 123), etc.
  • Multiple works by different authors with the same surname can be separated by adding the initial of their given name, e.g., (Zhang X. 2012, 123), (Zhang C. 2014, 123), etc.
  • Original dates of publication can optionally be included in square brackets, e.g., . . . (Mao Dun [1933] 1984, 123). The same format can be used in the reference list.
  • Where the author is named in the sentence, the reference should not repeat it, e.g., “Dai Jinhua (1994, 45) writes . . .”
  • Inline references should have the period after the reference, e.g., . . . (Dai 1994, 123).
  • For block citations, however, the period should be placed before it, e.g., . . . (Dai 1994, 123)

Reference List Formatting

  • Below are some examples of formatting. Note deviations from the Chicago style for entries with Chinese characters:
Type Example
Book Lull, James. 1991. China Turned On: Television, Reform, and Resistance. London: Routledge.
Chinese book Wang Shan 王山. 1994. Disan zhi yanjing kan Zhongguo 第三只眼睛看中國 (The third eye looks at China). Hong Kong: Huadong shifan daxue. [Note: “chubanshe” or “press” can be omitted from the name of the press.]
Journal article Žižek, Slavoj. 1991. “Grimaces of the Real, or When the Phallus Appears.” October 58 (Fall): 45–68.
Chinese journal article Wang Hui 汪暉. 1997. “Dangdai Zhongguo de sixiang zhuangkuang yu xiandaixing wenti” 當代中國的思想狀況與現代性問題 (Intellectual conditions and the issue of modernity in contemporary China). Tianya 4, no. 1: 133–150.  [where “4” is the volume no.]
Article in edited book Williams, Linda. 1992. “When the Woman Looks.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen, and Leo Braudy, 561–577. 4th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
Translation Mo Yan. 2004. Big Breasts and Wide Hips. Translated by Howard Goldblatt. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Film with English release Xie Fei, dir. 1990. Black Snow. Second Run, 2010. DVD.
Film online Sun Yu 孙瑜, dir. 1933. Tianming 天明 (Daybreak). Lianhua Film Company. Youtube video. Modern Chinese Cultural Studies, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE4ZBIHNL3E.
Website Li Ang Archive. 2014. “Life Chronology.” http://li-ang-english.blogspot.com/. [For examples with missing information, see the Chicago website and other guides.]
  • See the Chicago website for further examples: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html
  • As seen above, Chinese names in the reference list should follow the default order, putting the family name first. Since the order is not inverted, no comma should be inserted. If the source lists the author’s given name first, then invert name order and insert a comma as usual.
  • Chinese characters should be provided for names of people and titles of works, not for publishers and journals.

Glossary

  • Chinese characters for terms and proper nouns should be provided in a glossary at the back, using either simplified (jianti) or full forms (fanti) The glossary should not include names of dynasties, provinces, and large municipalities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. It should also leave out Chinese characters for authors of studies included in the reference list.
  • Chinese characters should only be included in the main body text for poetry or to highlight points about language.

Figures

  • Photographs, film and video stills, images, and other graphics should be submitted online or by Dropbox with a resolution of no less than 300 dpi (preferably 600 dpi).
  • Number your image files in the order in which they will appear in the article (fig. 1, fig. 2, fig. 3, etc.). Be sure to include captions for each of the images, either in a separate document or at the end of your paper in a section labeled “Figure captions.”
  • In the text of your manuscript, you must also include a “call-out” in parenthesis, e.g., “(fig. 1)” for each of the images, indicating the desired placement of that image.
  • Capturing images from VHS and DVD videos generally results in poor quality. If possible, use film stills or capture images from high-definition formats.

Criteria for Evaluation

MCLC is a blind, peer-reviewed scholarly journal. All submissions are first reviewed internally by the editor. Submissions that pass the internal review are then sent to two external reviewers, who base their evaluations on the following criteria:

Originality

A submission should make some new and original contribution to the field(s). Originality ranges from presenting research on new material and increasing our knowledge of unknown aspects of modern Chinese culture, to treating known material in fresh and interesting ways, to offering new theoretical approaches or paradigms that have a more general import. Of course, to help us assess originality, authors should situate their contribution in the context of similar and related scholarship in the field. Translations of work previously published in another language are not considered original research.

Scholarship

The argument should be substantiated with relevant and sufficient evidence and examples. The scholarship should be sound and the theoretical apparatus or methodology applied sensibly and fruitfully.

Argument and Style

The essay should be argued logically, coherently, and with clarity. Language should be clear, precise, and correct. An essay accepted for publication should not require a large amount of editorial work. MCLC encourages its authors to write in a fashion that is accessible to those outside a narrow sinological and/or literary studies readership. At the same time, we seek scholarship that is informed by issues raised in current theoretical discussions.

Submitting

Articles

Submissions of articles to Modern Chinese Literature and Culture should be addressed to the editors, Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier, and sent to this email address: MCLC@ed.ac.uk.

Book Reviews

All book reviews are published online on the MCLC Resource Center.

Reviewers should adhere to the MCLC style for articles outlined above. Chinese characters are permitted in the body of the review. They should be placed at the relevant spot in the text proper, not in a glossary, as is the style for MCLC articles. Footnotes are also acceptable, though not necessarily encouraged.

Book reviews will appear simultaneously in two formats: published on the MCLC Resource Center and on the MCLC LIST, an email discussion list affiliated with the journal. Book reviews are housed in the “Book Review” section of the MCLC Resource Center, which one can link to from the resource center homepage or the MCLC journal homepage. Links to book reviews will be added to entries for those books in the MCLC Resource Center bibliographies. Book review authors should, if possible, scan the book’s cover and include the image with the book review.