Meliora: A Barnard Journal for English Theses

Mission The Latin Meliora translates to “the pursuit of the better.” The journal’s title captures our mission: to improve and challenge academic discourse by amplifying emerging voices. Meliora is Barnard College’s premier, undergraduate-run, open access literary journal committed to publishing peer-reviewed, original English senior theses on a bi-annual basis. In doing so, Meliora allows students and academics alike to utilize and expand upon authors’ ideas, forging a more accessible academic community for underrepresented young writers. Meliora features the work of student writers that offers evocative and informative new perspectives and, in doing so, seeks to convey a more nuanced portrait of literature and the human experience. Aim Meliora works to provide a platform to amplify the work of emergent intellectual student thinkers to connect them to a larger academic network of peers through publication. Meliora will also serve as an accessible archive for future students and academics to utilize as a resource and source of inspiration. We have an editorial board and author-base consisting entirely of Barnard undergraduates, and we aim to empower students with firsthand experience in the academic publishing process. Scope Meliora bi-annually publishes theses first written as coursework in Barnard College’s senior seminar or special project courses. As our goal is to center undergraduate voices in academic discourse, the journal only accepts submissions written within two semesters of the current submissions cycle. All submissions should be approximately 4,000 to 9,000 words in length, and we do not accept excerpts. The journal seeks to elevate innovative ideas that will expand the landscape of modern literary criticism. As such, Meliora accepts multimedia submissions in addition to cross-major student theses, incorporating images and links to videos. We hope that Meliora’s scholarship will be accessed by both Barnard students and academic communities.