Grand Valley State University students have created two new peer-reviewed journals: the Grand Valley Journal of History and Cinesthesia, a journal of film.

Cinesthesia has been in the works for about a year, said Toni Perrine, professor of film and video. Perrine said a group of students interested in cinema studies, rather than film production, wanted to make their work available to the public and decided to showcase their work in an academic journal.

The journal is peer reviewed by an editorial board made of seven undergraduate students, but several faculty members read the submissions, as well.

“We all decided that we thought the culture of cinema could be strengthened or reinforced by creating a journal,” said Joe Hogan, sophomore editorial board member. Hogan added the formation of the journal was all in an effort to cultivate academic discourse of studying film on campus.

While having academic film journals is not unheard of at universities, GVSU is not exactly following a common trend.

“Not every university has a film journal but at some major universities there are multiple journals across the board,” Hogan said.

The editor added each board member gathered different resources to start the journal, and he has been communicating with the creator of the Grand Valley Journal of History, Akshay Sarathi, in attempts to understand how a journal can be run.

Although the Cinesthesia focuses heavily on film studies, it is not exclusive to students of the film and video department.

Board members will take submissions of scholarly, film-centric papers and film reviews from students of any discipline.

“[There is] so much interest in film [and Cinesthesia is] trying to make it available to a wider range of people on campus,” Perrine said.

The editorial board is looking to have the journal up and running by May 2.

Meanwhile, the Grand Valley Journal of History has successfully made it through its first year. The journal was approved last year and has already produced work online during both the fall and winter semesters.

Jon Garcia, the journal’s public relations representative, said the group is hoping to come out with a print version of the journal soon that would include the previous two volumes of the work published online.

The journal is doing well thus far, Garcia said.

“We have come true to the main mission statement because we are all encompassing, unbiased, open to all majors and we represent all time periods,” he said.

However, the journal has experienced a few minor impediments due to lack of submissions and inadequate advertising of the journal. Next year, the staff is planning to head campaigns on other universities’ campuses, and it has advertised on all of the major social media sites including Youtube, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter.

“[We did this] to be fair to people who are at a smaller university, plus it helps meet the ‘all encompassing’ perspective,” Garcia said.

The group has also put together a team to create a promotional video, which Garcia said he hopes to have completed by the end of the semester.

All submissions for the Journal of History can be sent to [email protected] on a rolling basis, and all film and video submissions can be sent to [email protected] by April 16 at 5 p.m.

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