Editorial Note

Since its inauguration a few years ago, Critical Literary Studies has successfully established itself as a quality journal. Warmly received by the scholars in the field, CLS now enjoys a prevalent popularity both in and outside Iran. The website records of paper submissions to the journal demonstrate an increasing interest among the researchers to publish their work in CLS, and, we normally receive a rather large number of papers that are mostly appealing and the work of distinguished scholars in the field.

CLS obtained its publishing license from the Iranian Ministry of Culture in 2018. A peer-reviewed biannual journal run by the Department of English and Linguistics of the University of Kurdistan in Iran, it is now approved and indexed by the Iranian Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. The journal is ranked 'B' by achieving 737.5 points from the Academic Journals Committee. CLS is also indexed in a number of domestic, regional, and international academic databases and indexing centers, and will be soon indexed by the ISC, the Islamic World Science Citation Centre.

Critical Literary Studies, as the first and, for the present, the only academic English journal fully dedicated to English literature and literary criticism and theory, now plays a significant role in promoting literary scholarship in the academic discourse of Iran and that of the most countries of the region. CLS also focuses on the areas associated with comparative literature, and publishes articles concerning Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, and Arabic literature. The journal is, in addition, a venue for publishing papers in the area of cultural studies, film criticism, and art researches as far as they are in close affinity with poetics and literary studies.

The editorial board of the journal includes eminent and prolific scholars all known for their high standard researches that are often times warmly received on a global scale. The team of reviewers, too, includes members from world universities. The submitted papers are first closely read by one of the editors and at least one of the editorial board members. If meeting the journal’s standards, the paper enters the peer review process by one of the board members and two outside reviewers.

The corrections are sent to the corresponding author in a relatively short period of time as compared with the long gap dedicated to peer review process in most academic journals.  The revised paper is directly sent to the third reviewer in order to arrive at the final decision. If unanimously accepted for publication, the paper is sent the technical editor for checking the citations and sources. The papers are then sent to the literary editors for stylistic revision in terms of the guidelines of Standard academic English. Furthermore, the Persian abstract of the papers are keenly revised by the Persian editors of the journal according to the instructions of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature. It is only after these stages that the journal’s DOI is offered to the papers, designating the immediate publication of the paper in both electronic and paperback versions.

The present issue of the journal includes twelve original research papers and a book review. All the manuscripts have been finalized and accepted for publication after final peer-review process and the technical and in-house evaluation. The published papers are soon uploaded on the journal’s pages at the special networks for the academic publishing. As good news, some of the papers published in CLS have been already marked with citations by other papers in CLS or in other journals.

I would like to sincerely thank the members of the editorial board for their cooperative concerns and helpful remarks. I am also thankful to the journal’s reviewers who carefully read the manuscripts and recommended their perceptive feedback. My gratitude goes to the team of technical and literary editors for examining the texts line by line. My thanks go to the Persian language editors of the journal who have prudently revised the Persian translation of the abstracts. I should express my gratitude to the executive manager of the journal for the positive role he plays in the development of the journal.

Finally, I thank my colleagues at the Faculty of Language and Literature of the University of Kurdistan in Sanandaj for their supportive recommendations. I also offer my sincere thanks to the authorities at the Research Department of the UOK for their pragmatic assistance and informative remarks. I appreciate the friendly environment of the CLS office and the hard work of the administrative staff of the journal. Many congratulations to the authors of the published papers of this issue as their work was accepted from amongst dozens of papers and endured a stringent process of double peer-review by foremost scholars in the field.