By Since 2020, the student-run Long Beach State journal, Genre, has been on hiatus.
Now, a group of student creatives and Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Viola Lasman yuhba, return to its 60-year history to revitalize, redefine and uphold its core intentions.
Having launched in 1967, Genre previously produced 39 issues featuring the works of writers and artists to the public.
“I think it’s hard a lot of the time for students to get their work published through the traditional avenues,” Genre student editor Christina Schwartz said. “Something like a student publication gives people a great opportunity to put their work out there where it might’ve been difficult without it.”
Four years ago, the journal had been placed on hiatus due to a vacancy in its permanent faculty advisor position. Without a permanent faculty advisor, the publication lacked consistent production. This year, that has been resolved and the journal has been brought back with the hiring of Lasmana.
Lasmana began working at CSULB this fall semester and has been tasked with overseeing the journal’s publication as well as facilitating its new student editorial staff.
Coming into the position, Lasmana is looking to provide the consistency previous volumes lacked— but this new era of the journal also comes with changes.
Members of Genre’s student editorial staff spoke to visitors about the publication and gave away copies of previous years’ issues at CLA Day on Oct. 16. Photo credit: Jamie R. Austria
In previous years, submissions were taken from professors, graduates, students and others within the academic community both in and out of CSULB.
“This year going forward, my vision for this journal is for it to be more student focused,” Lasmana said. “For the students, by the students, from the students, so that we can focus, as Genre at the Beach, to showcase student work across campus from multidisciplinary perspectives.”
The current goal is for the journal to be available digitally, starting with its upcoming 40th issue and onward.
Lasmana said that she envisions the publication as an open access journal with on-demand print options for future issues.
Genre will also begin digitalizing its previous issues, which also includes the past issues that were only available in paperback copies.
The new Genre team consists of six students who share the responsibility of reviewing submissions, editing and designing for each issue.
Since the journal experienced a four-year hiatus, the current team said that they are working to inform students from all departments across campus about the journal for outreach and to obtain contributing submissions.
Third-year comparative world literature and sociology major Alyssa Agudelo is among the six student editors. Agudelo said that Genre provides them with hands-on experience, and has helped them to adjust their editing processes to different writing styles.
“The best thing about this job is seeing the potential in a piece of writing and being able to elevate it to its highest potential,” Agudelo said. “A lot of what we do is very refined, detail oriented digging into the text.”
Submissions to the journal range from scholarly essays, poems, scripts, stories to many other creative writings.
Due to the limited artwork seen in previous editions, editors of Genre encourage students to submit visual works as well.
“That’s one aspect where we want to do more outreach to other communities on campus that are more in the art sector,” Schwartz said. “Illustrations, animations, photography, basically anything, I think that is something we really want to focus on with our newer additions.”
Genre is a thematic journal that will publish one issue every fall semester, featuring a variety of both written pieces and visual artworks.
The designated theme for the year is selected at the annual Comparative World Literature department’s spring conference. Following this past spring conference’s theme of Writers of Extreme Circumstances, the Genre student editors have titled its 40th issue, “Resistance/Resilience“.
The second round of submissions for this issue are currently open. This round is focused on visual art submissions fitting to the issue’s theme and are due by Nov. 3rd.
Visual art submissions for Genre’s 40th issue can be sent to their email, genrecsulb@gmail.com and updates within their publishing can be found on their Instagram, @csulbgenre.
