The Trumpeter Journal of Ecosophy

Managing editor(s): Tihamer Richard Kover, Bartlomiej Lenart, John Charles Ryan / Editor(s): Nathan Kowalsky

About

The Trumpeter is an environmental journal dedicated to the development of an ecosophy, or wisdom, born of ecological understanding and insight. As such, it serves the deep ecology movement’s commitment to philosophically explore and analyze environmental concerns in light of ecological developments at every relevant level: metaphysics, science, history, politics. Gaining a deeper understanding involves a comprehensive set of criteria that includes analytical rigour, spiritual insight, ethical integrity, and aesthetic appreciation.

With respect to scholarly articles, The Trumpeter encourages high-quality academic submissions for peer review within the scope of the environmental humanities, including environmental philosophy, environmental ethics, and interdisciplinary environmental studies. The editors especially encourage submissions concerning or characterised by deep ecology, eco-phenomenology, eco-psychology, ecofeminism, primitivism, or other forms of ‘radical’ environmental theory.

In addition to scholarly articles, The Trumpeter also publishes poetry, narratives, cartoons, and book reviews.
 

Contact

Email: trumpeter.journal@gmail.com

Post: c/o St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, 11325 89 Avenue NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2J5, CANADA


Open access

The journal is open access and free to all without subscription via our website: trumpeter.athabascau.ca

Back issues (9 issues)

Permanent archiving of articles on Érudit is provided by Portico.

Editorial policy and ethics

Submissions

We encourage past contributors to continue submitting pieces in the genres that have characterized The Trumpeter since its inception, and we encourage both past and new contributors to submit work that will allow us to represent a wide range of approaches, perspectives, insights, and methodologies. We also continue to encourage submissions of narrative articles, poetry, and art, and we remain on the lookout for genuinely creative and innovative pieces.

Generally, we do not publish material that has been previously published, however, if the editor believes an article, which has received limited previous exposure, is important to the Deep Ecology movement, we will make exceptions.

The Trumpeter only publishes work written in English.

Peer Review Process

Scholarly articles are subject to double-blind peer review. In the main, each article receives two reviews. Poetry, narrative pieces, and book reviews are vetted by those sections' editors.

Copyright Notice

Authors who submit and have articles published in The Trumpeter license The Trumpeter to publish and redistribute the work under the CC (Creative Commons) BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. We comply fully with the open access requirements of UKRIWellcome, and NIHR. Where required by their funder, authors retain the right to distribute their author accepted manuscript (AAM),  such as via an institutional and/or subject repository (e.g. EuropePMC), under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence for release no later than the date of first online publication.

Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be reprinted free of charge and without further permission, provided the author and original source are acknowledged. However redistribution for commercial purposes is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder. Except for the conditions stated above, the authors reserve all rights over the work contained herein. If you have any questions, please contact The Trumpeter's editor-in-chief.

Submission Policy and Criteria

To submit your work, you must first register an account with our journal's website. After registering you may upload submissions online. If you have multiple roles in the journal (for example, author, reviewer, editor, etc.), make sure the 'Author' role is selected in the 'Submit As' part of the submission form. All submissions must be in Word or RTF format. MAC users must convert all submissions to Word or RTF format, prior to submitting. If you are unable to register, upload submissions, or otherwise have troubles with the journal's website, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at trumpeter.journal@gmail.com to see if alternate arrangements can be made.

General policies regarding documentation (citation) and style (formatting and layout) are included below. Specific submission policies for scholarly research articlesessays and narrativespoems, or book and film reviews can be found by clicking on the respective links.

Documentation

The Trumpeter uses a slightly modified Turabian/Chicago style to govern academic references. Authors may decide to use either footnotes or author-date parenthetical references (but not both). If author-date parenthetical references are used, a works-cited list is required. If notes are used for references, a bibliography may be provided but is not necessary.

All notes, whether for references or other remarks, should be footnotes rather than endnotes. Please refer to a recent issue of The Trumpeter for samples of correct citation and referencing. Authors should ensure that all references and bibliographical materials are correct prior to submission.


Information for contributors

To submit your work, you must first register an account with our journal's website. After registering you may upload submissions online. If you have multiple roles in the journal (for example, author, reviewer, editor, etc.), make sure the 'Author' role is selected in the 'Submit As' part of the submission form. All submissions must be in Word or RTF format. MAC users must convert all submissions to Word or RTF format, prior to submitting. If you are unable to register, upload submissions, or otherwise have troubles with the journal's website, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at trumpeter.journal@gmail.com to see if alternate arrangements can be made.

General policies regarding documentation (citation) and style (formatting and layout) are as follows:

Documentation

The Trumpeter uses a slightly modified Turabian/Chicago style to govern academic references. Authors may decide to use either footnotes or author-date parenthetical references (but not both). If author-date parenthetical references are used, a works cited list is required. If notes are used for references, a works cited list may be provided but is not necessary.

All notes, whether for references or other remarks, should be footnotes rather than endnotes. Please refer to a recent issue of The Trumpeter for samples of correct citation and referencing. Authors should ensure that all references and bibliographical materials are correct prior to submission.

Style

The Trumpeter makes extensive use of commas to avoid ambiguity (e.g., use commas to mark subordinate clauses and parenthetical phrases, along with other standard uses), including the Oxford/serial comma. Unnecessary formatting, hyperbole, polemics, and the like are discouraged. The use of emphasis markers (underlining, italics, bold face) should be kept to a minimum. When text is set apart using a hyphen or hyphens, use em dashes. Avoid extensive use of quotation marks to suggest irony or special usage. The text and context of the writing should make clear what is important. Although we invite pieces that may require technical language, technical terminology and jargon should be used only where needed and, in those cases, explained as clearly as possible for an intelligent lay audience. Use gender neutral language (i.e., they/them/their/theirs) unless referring to a specific gendered person or other gendered being.

Use the following formatting techniques: use 12 pt Calibri font for body and 10 pt Calibri font for footnotes; use line spacing of 1.15; use double quotes to mark concepts, terms, titles of articles, and direct quotations; use single quotes to mark quotations within quotations; direct quotation of more than 40 words should be set off in separate, indented paragraphs; italicize book and journal titles and foreign words; fully justify text, including footnotes (with the exception of poems and works cited sections). Pictures (photographs, line art, or scans) may be included provided they are clear, in focus, relevant to the material, and free of copyright restrictions. DO NOT: 1. create a title page for your submission 2. include your name or affiliation in the submission 3. paginate the submission.

Specific submission policies for scholarly research articlesessays and narrativespoems, or book and film reviews can be found below:

Article Submission Policy

Scholarly research articles should not exceed 10,000 words in length, unless prior approval has been granted by the editor. Within that upper limit, articles should be substantial pieces of analysis and criticism that demonstrate thoughtful reflection, evaluation, and embody a critical and conceptual argument in which various angles of the question are explored in fairness and at length. Articles should conform to relevant standards of disciplinary rigour and be ready to pass a double-blind peer review process, including having all information that could identify the author(s) removed from the text body and the document’s file properties. Articles must have an abstract. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words in length and entered directly into the online submission portal’s metadata along with any keywords, rather than including them in the submission document itself.

Essay & Narrative Submission Policy

The essay and narrative section of The Trumpeter invites works of both fiction (short stories) and nonfiction (personal essays, narrative or hybrid nonfictions) that enact, embody and/or reflect on human relations to the natural world. We are especially interested in works whose form is integral to and develops their ecosophical content; in works that demonstrate innovative, narrative engagements with ecological science, philosophy, and natural history; and in works that engage respectfully with non-Eurocentric traditions of ecological knowledge.

Submissions to this section should normally be between 3,000 and 5,000 words but shorter works may also be considered (e.g., a series of flash fictions or nonfictions). We encourage, except where absolutely necessary, minimal use of notes and citations. Submissions to this section are not peer-reviewed and do not require abstracts. The section editors will evaluate works in terms of the quality of both form and content. Authors should expect to revise in response to editorial advice before final acceptance.

Poetry Submission Policy

The Trumpeter accepts unsolicited submissions of previously unpublished poetry in English, or translations of poetry into English, in any form. We are looking for poetry that deals with, or reflects upon, the human connection to the natural world. We are especially interested in poetry that pushes the boundaries of traditional nature writing. Submit 3-5 poems in a single PDF or Word document. Long poems (over 3 pages or sequences of over 3 poems) will be considered but we may publish only excerpts. Poems should be single-spaced (double-spaces will be interpreted as spaces or stanza breaks). Include the poet’s name and email address on each page. The first page of the submission should be a short cover letter with a biographical statement of no more than 100 words. Poets are invited to submit once each calendar year. Simultaneous submissions are fine but please inform the poetry editors immediately if your work has been accepted by another publication.

Book/Film Review Information (for Publishers/Authors):

If you are interested in having a book submitted to The Trumpeter for review, please send an email to Wendell Kisner, our Book Review Editor, at wendellk@athabascau.caPlease do not send review copies to the editors unless a reviewer has been arranged for the book.

If you are interested in writing a review on one of the books or films listed below, or if you would like to review something not on the list but which you think might be a good fit with the Trumpeter, please contact Wendell Kisner at wendellk@athabascau.ca.

Book review guidelines:

The following are some general guidelines for book reviews submitted to the Trumpeter.

Avoid the following two extremes

Uncritical endorsement that overlooks problems.
Unfair criticism that either

  1. fails to address arguments the author presents which may allay the concerns raised, or
  2. faults the author for not doing something s/he wasn't trying to do in the first place.

Word limit

Most reviews tend to be between about 500 and 1500 words, with a 3000 word upper limit. Once a book review exceeds 3000 words, it begins to look more like a critical response paper than a book review and should be submitted as an article instead. Try to eliminate tangential discussions not directly related to the content of the book being reviewed. Alternatively, write a critical paper that more carefully develops the reviewer's own arguments, then submit it as a paper for publication rather than as a book review. Please contact the editor-in-chief (trumpeter.journal@gmail.com) regarding longer critical review essays if you think your work would be better categorised as such rather than as a research article.

 

Editorial board

Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Nathan Kowalsky, Associate Professor, Philosophy, St. Joseph's College, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Managing Editors:

  • Dr. T. R. Kover, Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
  • Dr. Bartlomiej Lenart, Philosophy and Library Sciences, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
  • Dr. John Charles Ryan, Environmental Humanities, Southern Cross University and Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Australia

Essay & Narrative Editors:

  • Dr. Paul Lindholdt, Eastern Washington University, United States of America
  • Dr. Catriona Sandilands, Environmental Humanities, York University, Canada

Poetry Editors:

  • Dr. Nancy Holmes, Creative Writing, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada
  • Kelly Shepherd, English and Communications, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Reviews Editor: Dr. Wendell Kisner, Associate Professor, Integrated Studies & Philosophy, Athabasca University, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada

Production Editor: Dr. James K. Bachmann, Instruction Librarian, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada