Editor's Note

Abstract

After serving as the assistant editor for last year's issue of The Fairmount Folio, I blithely assumed the publication process would be much the same this year. I revised this thinking early in the semester and am grateful to all who contributed time, effort, and counsel to make my job easier.

Dr. Helen Hundley, the supervising faculty member, was a great source of help and guidance throughout the entire process. I've decided to accelerate the publication process so that this issue could appear in May rather than in September as in the past. This schedule allowed authors and contributors to receive the results of their work before the end of the school year. As a result, each step in the process had to move along more quickly than we had originally planned. That we have achieved our goal of a May release is due to the flexibility and cooperation of numerous people along the way.

I would like to thank Devin Brogan, a fellow graduate student who cheerfully agreed to serve as assistant editor without having any idea what would be asked of him. I was glad for his support.

I would also like to thank the authors who submitted their work for consideration for publication in this volume of The Fairmount Folio. Their articles were subjected to board review, and the selection process was both rigorous and competitive. The review board valued and considered each piece, ultimately recommending six articles for inclusion in this issue. I thank the board members, Dr. James Duram, Dr. Helen Hundley, Dr. Ariel Loftus, Dr. Jay Price, and Devin Brogan, for their thoughtful service and editorial suggestions.

Authors whose works were accepted were punctual and conscientious in ushering their work through these steps in the publication process. Their efforts made my task much easier and more enjoyable.

Each year the Department of History grants paper awards in three categories, and The Fairmount Folio presents these unedited except for the format. Nathan Heiman's paper on the Bay of Pigs incident won the Rendell Award for work done in History 300, an undergraduate research and writing course. Joel Schaefer's study of the origins of the Salvation Army received the Fiske Hall Graduate Seminar Paper Award, bestowed on a semester-length research paper from a seminar course. Marsha Wiese's work on Greek drama had been accepted for publication by the review board and then also won the Fiske Hall Graduate Paper Award, given to a piece completed during a lecture course. Congratulations to all of these authors, who adapted swiftly to the compressed deadlines of the publication process.

Besides printing the research works of students, The Fairmount Folio reviews materials of historical interest when possible. For this reason, I am glad to include a book review by Valancy Gilliam.

The Department of History and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences deserve special thanks for supporting this project. History faculty and staff have been generous with their time and advice, and the college graciously allocates publication expenses.

Finally, I thank my husband, Bill Head, an unfailing source of support. Theresa St. Romain

May 2004