I sometimes find myself calling North Dakota Quarterly a literary journal. I think this fulfills some personal pretension that I am participating in the larger project of literature in some way.

It’s closer to the truth to call North Dakota Quarterly a public humanities journal. Reading through the archives provides ample evidence for the impact of the Quarterly in the realm of public humanities.

Just yesterday, I was roaming the archives and came across the Summer 1987 volume dedicated to Colonization in Race, Class, and Gender. The papers came from a forum held at the 1984 Modern Language Association meeting. NDQ solicited the papers and published them in a double volume along with poems and reviews.

The cover art is by the Ojibwa artist Frank Big Bear.

Bill Caraher, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of North Dakota