THEATRE SURVEY BOOK REVIEW GUIDELINES

On this page you will find editorial and style guidelines for Theatre Survey Book Reviews, including links to a sample book review and the current list of books received. If you have any questions, please contact Associate Professor Kim Solga, Book Review Editor, Theatre Survey, University of Western Ontario, Dept. of English, London,Ontario, N6A 3K7 Canada, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; tel. 519-661-2111, ext. 80118.

• Sample Book Review
• List of Books Received

Book Review Policies

Theatre Survey is chartered by the American Society for Theatre Research as a theatre history journal. Its theatrical and historical orientations are both broadly conceived. Performance-centered and historiographic studies from all points across the historical, cultural, and methodological spectra are welcome. Dramatic literature studies not substantially related to actual performance are outside the journal’s purview.

We welcome reviews of books that share the journal’s focus on performance-centered and historiographic research. As a widely indexed journal with a substantial circulation, Theatre Survey is central to shaping and expanding the field of theatre history, cultivating a diverse range of critical perspectives and engaging the current conversations in the academy. Reviews are an important part of this project, engaging new directions in the field, helping to create an audience, and analyzing both the contributions and limits of new theatre research. Typically the book review editor identifies and invites appropriate reviewers, but anyone one is welcome to contact the editor to explain both interest and expertise, or to propose reviews. It is best to contact the book review editor before submitting a review to insure that the book has not already been assigned. All reviews are subject to final approval by the book review editor in consultation with the journal editor.

Content and Approach

Every review should place the book in the context of existing scholarship, detailing the critical inquiries the book engages without embellishment or exaggeration. If these engagements are limited you should delineate these limits while still respecting the goals of the book. If the book fails to follow through with its objectives you should point this out while still acknowledging where the book is valuable. Brief commentary on distinctive aspects of the scholarly apparatus—such as illustrations, bibliography, documentation, index, and appendices—can also provide readers with helpful information. Because of the requirements of indexing, it is essential that you mention within the first line or two of your review the precise name of the book you are reviewing and the author’s name.

Submitting the Review

Please submit your review as a Microsoft Word attachment to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . If the review contains three or fewer diacritical marks, please alert the reviewer in the e-mail message to insure that the marks are not lost in electronic transmission. If the review contains four or more diacritical marks, please also print a hard copy, circle the diacritical marks, and mail the hard copy to: Associate Professor Kim Solga, Book Review Editor, Theatre Survey, University of Western Ontario, Dept. of English, London,Ontario, N6A 3K7 Canada, ; tel. 519-661-2111, ext. 80118. (Hardcopy submission is only necessary when the review contains four or more diacritical marks.)

Editing Process

The Journal does not provide authors with proofs prior to publication. The book review editor will edit for spelling, punctuations, and clarity. However, the editor will contact the reviewer when substantive changes are considered.

Length

Single book reviews should run between 750 and 1,000 words. Multiple book reviews should run between 1,500 and 2,000 words. Reviews exceeding these lengths will be returned for revision and can delay publication.

Format

Double space your review with a five point hanging indent for new paragraphs.

Begin with the details of publication in the following order: title, author/editor, place of publication, publisher, date, pages (separating out introductory pages: pp. xiv 245), illustrations (if any), price, and binding.

The following are examples of listing style for the Book Reviews:

• Out on Stage: Lesbian and Gay Theatre in the Twentieth Century. By Alan Sinfield. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000; pp. 407. $29.95 hardcover.

• Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality. Edited by Calvin Thomas. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000; pp. 290. $49.95 hardback, $18.95 paperback.

• The World Shakespeare Bibliography, 1980­-1996. Edited by James L. Harner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC), 2000. CD-ROM. $810.

There is no final punctuation after the reviewer’s affiliation, and a comma (not dash) before it:

Reviewed by Thomas Postlewait, The Ohio State University

Stylistic Matters

Refer to yourself in the first person, not as “the reviewer” or “this writer.” Do NOT cite additional sources. When quoting the reviewed book, keep the quotations short, avoiding indented quotations. If quotations are necessary, list the page number in parentheses following the quotation. Because of the requirements of indexing, it is essential that you mention within the first line or two of your review the precise name of the book you are reviewing and the author’s name. Avoid the generic use of male nouns and pronouns when referring to both sexes, where such editing can be done in a clear and graceful way and without contrivance. Also avoid use of the feminine article in reference to ships, countries, etc.: France, its people.

Copy Editing

Please be certain that you are familiar with Theatre Survey and its Book Review section before you submit your materials. Published reviews are reliable models for the type and range of reviews that interested us. They are documented according to the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition and rely on Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary for spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation. Please consult these sources on your own. In addition, be aware of the following:

1. Numbered chapters referenced in reviews should consistently use Arabic numerals (Chapter 10), regardless of how they were treated in the publication being reviewed. Parts of books may use either Arabic or Roman numerals (consistent with the book reviewed; not spelled out):
     a. Part 1 or Part I, not One.
2. Do not reverse-italicize in book titles:
     a. Shakespeare Survey: “King Lear” and Its Afterlife.
3. “That” will be used with a restrictive clause; “which” will be used with a nonrestrictive clause and set off by commas:
     a. He stopped the first car that contained two people. / He stopped the first car, which contained two people.
     b. He proposed the only amendment that concerned wage rates. / He proposed the only amendment, which concerned wage rates.
4. “Since” will be changed to “because” if and when its sense is ambiguous:
     a. Since 1860 was the first year of operation, it is not yet possible to judge the program’s effectiveness.
5. “While” will be used only as an adverb of time. In other contexts the word “although” or “whereas” should be substituted.
6. The copy-editor will rewrite to avoid overuse of sentences starting with conjunctions. Where a sentence beginning with “But” does not truly contradict what precedes it, or where an “And” simply reiterates a linkage clear from the flow of the text, the conjunction can simply be deleted. Where the sense of the conjunction must be maintained, however, there are three ways to resolve this problem:
    a. Lowercase the conjunction and change and the preceding period to a semicolon (often the easiest).
    b. If this would result in a sentence that is overly long or convoluted, change the conjunction to an adverb (But = However; And = Moreover, Furthermore, Also,         Additionally; Yet = Still, Nevertheless).
    c. If all else fails, recast the sentence to avoid the problem. Starting a sentence with a conjunction is acceptable when it is immediately preceded by a quotation.
7. The use of ‘an’ before a voiced ‘h’ is not now idiomatic in either American or British English and should be avoided. Use ‘a’ instead: “a historical analysis.”
8. Words with the following prefixes (and most others) will not be hyphenated:
    a. anti, co, extra, inter, intra, macro, micro, non, pre, post, pro, pseudo, psycho, re, semi, socio, sub, trans
    b. exceptions: ex-, quasi-
9. However, hyphens will be used where closing up the word might lead to confusion in meaning:
    a. re-create, re-form, re-visioning
10. The hyphen after the prefix will be retained when the second element begins with a capital or number:
    a. non-American, post-1950, (from Journal) anti-Catholic, -Dreyfusard, -Jewish, -Semitic, -Soviet
    b. arch-Nordic, Euro-American (but Eurocentric)
    c. mid-1960s, -Victorian
    d. neo-Foucauldian (not -dean, nor -tian), -Marxists
    e.non-African, -Anglophone, -British, -European, -German, -Greek, -Nigerian, -Western
    f. pan-Slavic
    g. post-1956, -Brechtian, -Thatcher, ­--World War II (en-dash, not hyphen)
    h. pre- and post-Stonewall
    i. pre-Commonwealth, ­--World War II (en-dash)
    j. pro-French, -Republican
    k. proto-Situationist
11. Separate items in a series of three or more with commas:
    a. red, white, and blue (rather than red, white and blue)

Numbers

1. In general:
   a. cardinal numbers 100 will be given in numerals:
       i. fifty-nine cents
      ii. six-month period

     iii. 265 years ago
      iv. 4,066 feet long
   b. but numerals will be used for numbers 100:
       i. Of 119 colleges, fewer than 15 were…
   c. and very large approximate figures given in hundreds, thousands, or millions will be spelled out or given in words and figures:
       i. forty thousand listeners
      ii. fifteen-hundred-word essay
     iii. 4.5 million years

      iv. $3 billion (American billion)
2. Ordinal numbers and fractions will be spelled out unless use of numerals makes the information easier to grasp [esp. in math]:
   a. one-third of the students but 3-by-5 cards
   b. the twentieth century
   c. nineteenth-century morality
3. Numerals will be used for dates, time of day, percentages, decimals (including money), ratios, and measurements in which the unit of measure is abbreviated:
   a. 1960­70
   b. 8 June 1960 (not June 8, 1960)
   c. the 1850s (not 1850’s) but the fifties [former is preferable, but latter OK to avoid overrepetition]
   d. 7:50 a.m. but eight o’clock, half past nine
   e. 7.98 inches
   f. $7.98 but spell out money not given in decimals: a two-dollar bet
   g. a 5:1 ratio
   h. a score of 5 to 3
   i. 7 lb
   j. 3 mm
4. Commas will be used [except in p. nos.] in numbers of four digits or more:
   a. 1,500 rather than 1500
5. When page numbers or years are given as a range of numbers,
   a. figures will be elided to one digit where possible:
      i. 1960­-70 and 1960­-6 rather than 1960­-1970 and 1960-­66
     ii. pp. 143­-4 rather than pp. 143-­144 (or pp. 143­-44)
   b. but to help pronunciation, the tens-digit will not be elided in numbers in the teens:
      i. 314­-15 rather than 314­-315 or 314­-5
   c. Note: Dates in book titles and chapter titles will NOT be elided:
      i. 1890­-1895
6. Other examples from the Journal:
   a. 35mm slides (no space)
2. 9/11 (re attacks of 11 Sept. 2001)