Crimson and Gold Connection; Dr. Casie Hermansson

Welcome to Crimson and Gold Connection, keeping you connected with the people and current events at Pittsburgh State University. This is the Crimson and Gold Connection, our weekly spotlight about the people, events, and this week, scholarly journals at Pittsburgh State University, I'm your host, Fred Fletcher-Fierro. Our guest this week is Dr. Casey Hermenson, editor of the Midwest Quarterly, a journal of contemporary thought. The Quarterly's Board of Editors is celebrating its 60th year of publication with reception, taking place Monday, October 22nd, at Gruss Hall, inside of the Office of Graduate and Continuing Studies Room 122, here at Pittsburgh State University. The reception starts at 2 p.m. To catch up our listeners who have may not have heard of the Midwest Quarterly before, I first asked Dr. Hermenson, what an interesting reader can find in an issue. Typically, an issue will have about five academic articles on any subject whatsoever, and our mandate is that they're interesting and readable, and that our subheading is a journal of contemporary thought, so you could expect to see things that speak to topical matters. For example, we have one coming up on Brexit, which is very topical, so the idea is that you could sit down and read one cover to cover and find interesting things, and then somewhere in the middle will be about 10 pages of poetry.

It is excluded to certain individuals, right? It's not exclusive, much as we publish on all topics, all disciplines, but it is an academic journal, so we are vetted, and we do have peer review systems, so we've got a network of readers across the university who attest for us that the scholarship is sound, and that it contributes something. We feel like, actually, we have an obligation to really vet the research that goes into those articles because within three weeks of publication of a print journal, all of those articles are in the library databases all over the world, and so typically, while a reader in Pittsburgh can sit down and read a copy of the print journal and any of the subscribers outside of Pittsburgh do so. So, typically, these days, the research will arrive at a user because they're on a database, they're researching a topic, and one of our articles comes to them that way, and we do find that our research is being used and reprinted, we get a lot of reprint requests. Just the other day, I had a master student from somewhere in the US saying that she needed more information, but she was working and was using one of our articles for a project.

That's going to feel good for the editor. Well, yes, but I'm just the public face of the journal. There's a board of editors behind me, and there's 60 years of hard work and editors and boards before that. Speaking about those 60 years, the first editor, he then created a deadly Cornish. When he started the quarterly, did he have any background working as an editor? And a quarterly, what was he like? I didn't meet him personally, but we almost met. He retired about the same year that I started at PSU in 1997, and his departure was, you know, his retirement was faded widely at the time. He was very well known author in his field. One of the interesting things, and I talk about it in an editorial essay at the very beginning of this 60th anniversary issue, is that we discovered when we moved offices in 2016, a real cache of onionskin carbon copy papers. And it was a carbon copy of all of his outgoing correspondence to authors. So although I never met him, I feel like through reading these papers and writing this article so that some of those things could come to light.

Rather than just be in the special collections over at Axe Library as part of the Dudley Cornish papers that are over there. His style of correspondence was incredibly personable and erudite. It is sort of a throwback to that very genteel early 20th century letter writing style. And some of the incoming mail also is preserved there, but I couldn't quote from that because it's personal communication from other people. But you really do get the sense of Dudley Cornish as an editor, separate from his function as a teacher, where he was celebrated for that, and as an author of books as a historian. But as an editor, I think he was incredibly compassionate and painstaking in his work. And I think that that trend has really continued through other editors as well, both the editors of poetry and the editors of the academic articles. The Midwest Quarterly has always been both an institutional journal and a labor of love from the people who work for it.

And you've been the editor for about three years? Yes, and I do love it too. When I came to the journal part of my mandate was to freshen it up a little bit. We've done some fun things over the last few years. One of them was to change, for example, just the covers so that it would have a bit more curb appeal. So we've got student artwork gracing the covers of the journal. So now you'll see interesting photography that's been taken by students and formatted by students, both in photojournalism courses at Pitt State, and also over in graphics and imaging technology, where they use it as a class project to design covers for the Midwest Quarterly, which has been a real pleasure to work with and to have students be able to contribute that way. The covers were color coded based on the seasons. So orange for fall, white for winter, green for spring and yellow for summer. And what brought you to this position? What did you do before your editor, the Midwest Quarterly?

That's good question. I guess there was a before and an after. I had not been an editor before. My skill set, though, I'm good at air traffic control, and I think a lot of the editor's job is in fact air traffic control. We have a lot of submissions coming in through the website, through mail. There's an administrative specialist who only works for the journal Mrs. Barone, who's been with us for 23 years now. And a lot of communicating with authors by email and tracking reader reports. I'm usually working on three issues at once, if not four, at all in various stages. But I did have a job before that. I've been at Pitt State since 1997. So this is my 22nd year in the English and Mon languages department. And so I've been teaching students and writing books and articles. So I have a strong interest in research. And I think a good grasp of the significance and value of creating research and making it available. Now was Dr. Casey Hermenson, editor of the Midwest Quarterly, which is celebrating its 60th year publication at Pittsburgh State University.

The quarterly sport of the editors is celebrating with a reception, taking place Monday, October 22nd at Russ Hall. Inside of the office of graduate and continuing studies here at Pittsburgh State University, Room 122. The reception starts at 2 p.m. To find out more about the Midwest Quarterly, visit pitstay.edu slash Midwest Q. I'm Fred Fletcher-Fierro and this has been the Crimson and Gold Connection, a production of KORPS. Join us for Crimson and Gold Connection Wednesdays at 8.50 and Fridays at 350.