LURe Submission Guidelines

Because of the blind review process, the author’s name and contact information must only appear in the form that accompanies your submission and not in the manuscript. Below you will see the information we inquire about you and your essay in the form.

• Name as you wish to be affiliated with your essay should it be published
• Preferred E-mail, which will be the main source of contact between you and LURe
• Undergraduate Institution
• Title of Essay 
• Manuscript File (with no identifying information) in Microsoft Word or Google Doc format and structured to MLA 8 standards

If you experience any complications, or are unable to fill out the Google Form, please email us at lurejournal@gmail.com with the above information in the email body.

• File format should be either a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) or a Google Doc
• File name should reflect the title of your article (e.g., Gender in Star Wars); please do NOT include your name in the file title or within the manuscript itself
• Length should not be less than seven (7) or more than twenty (20) pages, excluding Works Cited
• Font should be 12 point Times New Roman
• Margins should be 1 inch on all sides
• Spacing should be double throughout, including block quotes and notes
• Alignment should be left justified, except for your title, which can be center justified
• Pagination should be consecutive, from first page to the last; please center your page numbers at the bottom of each page; please remove your name from any pagination
• Style should include no auto-formatting; please use hanging indents for your bibliography and 1 inch indentations for block quotes
• Citations should follow MLA 8 guidelines; please review these as needed (Purdue OWL is a good starting place)
• Layout should include the article title followed by the article text
• Images and Figures should include descriptive captions and should be limited to two to three (2-3) figures; these cannot include copyrighted material unless the author has been given explicit permission to use them

• Use standard American spelling and usage, the only exception being within the context of a direct quote when you should reproduce the text you are citing exactly as it appears.
• Use a single space after a period.
• Italicize foreign words consistently.
• Translate non-English quotes immediately following the quotation in brackets (e.g. “que sera sera” [what will be, will be]). If you lead with the English translation put the original language in brackets instead.
• Use a tab and not extra spacing to indicate paragraph breaks.
• Use dashes to indicate compound words (e.g., high-risk).
• Use en dashes to note a range of numbers, such as pages or dates (e.g. 2–13).
• Include the tens and ones digits for all page ranges (e.g., 34-37, 102-09; NOT 34-7)
• Use em dashes to set off phrases in a sentence—like this—by typing two hyphens followed directly by the next word in your sentence; the em dash will appear after you insert the normal space following the double hyphens.
• Use double quotation marks for all quotes, including to indicate when a word is being used as a term (e.g., “othered”) or to define a term (e.g., unheimlich, meaning “uncanny” or “weird”); use single quotation marks for quotes within a quote.
• When using quotation marks for purposes other than citing quotes from your sources, place all punctuation EXCEPT colons and semi-colons within your quotation marks (e.g., what we really need to discuss is the relationship between “might” and “right,” not the definition of either term on its own).
• For block quotations, use the indent command and not multiple tabs or spaces.
• Spell out numbers one to ninety-nine.
• Spell out centuries (twentieth, not 20th). The adjectival form requires a hyphen (twentieth-century novel). Do not insert an apostrophe in dates (1660s, not 1660’s).
• Insert your ellipses manually as three periods with a space on both sides of all of them (eg., . . . ).
• Do not capitalize titles or institutional names unless they are part of specific, official names (e.g., the king versus King Henry or the church versus the Church of England).
• The first reference to an author in your prose should include his/her/their name; subsequent references can use last names only.

1. We accept submissions once a year during the period advertised in our Call For Papers (CFP). All submitted work goes through a blind peer review by two members of our editorial staff, and this feedback is used by our editors-in-chief to make initial recommendations about publication. We aim to have this feedback to authors within three to four months of receiving your submitted essays.
2. If you are encouraged to revise and resubmit your work at this point, you will receive a deadline for resubmission from the editors, and your resubmitted work will go through another cycle of blind peer review. The same is true of essays that are accepted for publication contingent on addressing a few specific queries from the editors.
3. Once LURe accepts the final revised copy of your text, it goes into line editing and production. Line editors will read your work for clarity, consistency, and grammatical and typographical errors; they will not check your quotations and references for you. It is your job to ensure that this information is accurate, and we recommend that you recheck these materials while your essay is being line edited. Any confusion along these lines might result in your work not being published.
4. When the line editors have completed their work, you will be sent a copy of your essay in a Google Doc format with their comments and queries embedded in it via track changes and inserted comments. At this point you need to read the suggestions carefully and insert all necessary changes directly into the same file (using the same tools—track changes and inserted comments to do so). You do not need to make every change suggested by our editors, but we do ask that you respond to each suggestion made. Please include your rationale for deciding not to accept certain changes either through an embedded comment in the file itself, or as part of the email that accompanies your work when you return it to us. This is your last chance to make significant changes to your work, and you will typically have two weeks to do so.
5. After LURe receives your responses to our line editing suggestions, we will recheck everything and contact you with any last minute questions. Our editors then begin the process of creating proofs for the issue as a whole. The final issue is posted to our website and printed. All published authors will receive a copy of the printed journal at the address provided during our earlier correspondence.

Who can submit to LURe?

All undergraduate students from an accredited institution can submit their research-based essays to the journal.

What kind of essays are considered for publication?

LURe accepts research-based scholarly undergraduate essays on all topics and historical periods of literature, film, critical theory, or cultural studies.

Can I submit multiple essays for consideration?

Currently, LURe only accepts one essay per student.

I recently graduated from my undergraduate institution. Can I still submit my paper?

Yes! LURe accepts any papers written during the author’s undergraduate years. We open submissions in the fall semester, so if you graduated in the spring or summer of that year, you are welcome to submit any papers written prior to your graduation.

How can I get involved with LURe?

If you’re interested in joining the LURe Team as an editor, you must be an undergraduate or graduate student from the University of West Georgia, where our journal is hosted. Most team members are English majors or minors, and communication-based majors are preferred, though we encourage anyone to inquire despite their program. 

Apply to Join the Team