What follows is a brief account of the activities of the journal Filologia Germanica – Germanic Philology with regard to the period when I was its editor-in-chief, that is, from No. 1 (2009) to No. 8 (2016).
To begin with, a couple of essential notes on the ‘prehistory’ of the journal, illustrating the stage at which the project of a periodical devoted exclusively to Germanic philology studies was conceived and elaborated within the Italian Association of Germanic Philology (AIFG).
The establishment of a journal sponsored and managed by the AIFG began to be discussed at the Members’ Meeting in June 2005. At that meeting it was decided, among other things, that the issues of the journal should be annual (one issue for each calendar year) and ‘monothematic’ in nature, meaning that each volume should be devoted to a specific area of the Germanic linguistic and cultural field. The Assembly also mandates the AIFG Board of Directors (then consisting of President Fabrizio D. Raschellà and Board members Fulvio Ferrari and Valeria Micillo) to meet to study in depth and elaborate on the proposals it made for the next Assembly meeting. The meeting took place in March 2006, in Arezzo (the president’s institutional headquarters).
At the June 2006 Members’ Meeting, the single-issue nature of the journal’s annual volumes was reaffirmed and confirmed, and members were invited to submit proposals for the theme of the first issue, as well as, at the same time, the composition of the proposing Scientific Committee.
After some initial uncertainties about organizational and procedural arrangements, in July 2007 the Scientific Committee for the first issue was formed, which will be published with a 2009 date. Previously, at the Members’ Meeting in June 2007, it was resolved that the editorship of the periodical should be assumed by Fabrizio D. Raschellà, then president of the AIFG, for an indefinite period, that is, until the Association deemed it necessary to entrust the task to another person.
Thus, the processing of No. 1 began, and at the same time the necessary bureaucratic procedures were completed (registration of the editor in charge on the special list of the journalists’ register, registration of the periodical with the court). The volume comes out in January 2010.
Since its first issue, the journal has been published by the Prometheus publishing house in Milan, which also handles its distribution, and is registered with the Court of Trento (home of AIFG President Fulvio Ferrari at the time of its first publication). It relies on the collaboration of anonymous reviewers, both Italian and foreign, selected for each issue by the Scientific Committee on the basis of specific disciplinary expertise. Each volume is published at the beginning of the year following (January-February) the one marking the issue itself. The journal is published in both print and electronic versions (pdf format): the latter is made available one year after the publication of the print version, coinciding with the release of the next issue.
The journal has its own website, both in Italian and English versions, and a Facebook profile, through which its activities are concisely documented and publicized.
Organs of the journal are the Editorial Board (for the technical and administrative management of the journal), chaired by the Editor-in-Chief, and the Scientific Committee (for the care of scientific-editorial aspects: collection and eventual selection of contributions, verification of their relevance and compliance with editorial criteria, etc.), headed by a Coordinator. The two committees together constitute the Editorial Board. While the Editorial Committee coincides with the current Board of Directors of the AIFG plus the Editor-in-Chief, in the Scientific Committee different components succeed each other from number to number, according to the specific theme of the annual volume proposed by the same Committee and approved by the Members’ Assembly.
The Editorial Board included, up to No. 8, Fabrizio D. Raschellà (as editor-in-chief) and AIFG Board members Fulvio Ferrari (Nos. 1-6), Valeria Micillo (No. 1), Lucia Sinisi (Nos. 2-6), Alessandro Zironi (Nos. 2-6), Verio Santoro (Nos. 7-8), Marina Buzzoni (Nos. 7-8), and Letizia Vezzosi (Nos. 7-8).
The Scientific Committee included the following AIFG members (in alphabetical order): Maria Giovanna Arcamone (no. 2), Massimiliano Bampi (no. 4), Chiara Benati (no. 6), Maria Grazia Cammarota (no. 3), Maria Rita Digilio (no. 6), Claudia Di Sciacca (no. 5), Elena Di Venosa (no. 8), Carla Falluomini (no. 1), Marusca Francini (no. 1), Nicoletta Francovich Onesti (nos. 1 and 2), Concetta Giliberto (no. 8, coordinator), Anna Maria Guerrieri (no. 6), Claudia Händl (no. 6, coordinator), Omar H. A. Khalaf (n. 7), Loredana Lazzari (n. 5), Patrizia Lendinara (n. 5, coordinator), Simona Leonardi (n. 8), Maria Cristina Lombardi (n. 4, coordinator), Marcello Meli (n. 4), Maria Vittoria Molinari (nn. 2 and 3), Elda Morlicchio (nos. 2, coordinator, and 8), Maria Elena Ruggerini (nos. 4), Maria Grazia Saibene (nos. 3, coordinator), Verio Santoro (nos. 3), Lucia Sinisi (nos. 7, coordinator), Letizia Vezzosi (nos. 5 and 7), Alessandro Zironi (nos. 1, coordinator). It also included the following foreign scholars: Michael Benskin, Oslo (no. 7); Elvira Glaser, Zurich (no. 8); Joyce Hill, Leeds (no. 5); Christoph Huber, Tübingen (no. 3); Roger Lass, Edinburgh (no. 7); Agneta Ney, Uppsala and Gävle (no. 4); Max Pfister, Saarbrücken (no. 2); Ulrich Seelbach, Bielefeld (no. 6).
With the participation of 27 members over eight years, the scientific management of the journal has been largely representative of AIFG, while the presence of one or more foreign scholars on the Scientific Committee of each issue (with the exception of No. 1) has been one of the factors that have helped define the journal’s international character (for which see below).
The themes of the first eight issues of the journal touched on all the major areas of the medieval Germanic linguistic make-up: Gothic, Germanic linguistic and cultural evidence in early medieval Italy, Middle High German, Norse, Old English, Old and Middle Low German, Middle English and Old High German (each area considered, as a rule, in a particular aspect of its tradition). These are the topics of the individual volumes, in order of publication:
1 (2009): Language and culture of the Goths – Language and culture of the Goths
2 (2010): The Germans and Italy-The early Germanic peoples and Italy.
3 (2011): Medieval German poetry – Medieval German poetry.
4 (2012): The ‘Heimskringla’ and the Kings’ Sagas – ‘Heimskringla’ and the Kings’ sagas
5 (2013): Anglo-Saxon prose – Old English prose
6 (2014): Low German language and literature – Low German language and literature.
7 (2015): Middle English: Language and manuscript traditions – Middle English: Language and manuscript traditions.
8 (2016): Old and Early Middle High German (8th-12th c.) – Old and Early Middle High German (8th-12th c.)
A total of 76 contributions (i.e., an average of 9-10 articles per volume) were accepted in the eight volumes, of which 54 were by Italian authors and 22 by foreign authors. In addition, a substantial proportion of the contributions by Italian authors were written in foreign languages. These two factors-namely, an adequate proportion of contributions by foreign scholars (about 30 percent) and articles in foreign languages (about 60 percent)-along with the aforementioned presence of foreign scholars on the Scientific Committee of each issue, have, among other things, enabled the journal to fully meet the “internationality requirement” contemplated among the ministerial evaluation parameters of scientific periodicals.
On May 31, 2016, following Fabrizio D. Raschellà’s request at the time to be relieved of his long-standing position, the AIFG Members’ Meeting unanimously resolved to appoint Patrizia Lendinara as the new editor-in-chief of the journal, who therefore took over as its editor starting with no. 9 (2017).