In Progress: A Graduate Journal of North American Studies is a peer-reviewed online journal based at the English Department at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. Launched in 2023, In Progress features academic work by graduate students in Anglophone literary, cultural, and media studies, focusing in particular (but not exclusively) on the field of North American Studies. To that end, we publish academic writing that demonstrates the excellence of graduate scholarship and strives to include diverse perspectives in our Academic Section. Beyond that, our journal provides a space for the documentation of student projects and other creative endeavors originating in and around Leibniz University’s international master program North American Studies. In this capacity, the journal also publishes creative writing, reports of events organized by students, and other outcomes of seminars offered in the master program’s “Independent Studies” module (such as video essays, podcast episodes, and book reviews) in our Independent Studies Section. In addition, the journal’s Open Section is dedicated to a wide range of other themes, forms, and contents that graduate students produce specifically for each issue. In Progress is managed and run by a small core editorial team and produced with the active collaboration of graduate students who participate in the advanced seminar “Editing a Scholarly Journal.” Seminar participants are involved in the blind peer review of the academic submissions and, together with the members of the core editorial team, they work on the editing and publication process. This also includes preparing the content of the Independent Studies Section for publication and the conceptual design and text production for the journal’s open section. Our journal thus serves several purposes: It gives graduate students the opportunity to publish peer-reviewed articles, it introduces students to the work process involved in editing a journal, and it showcases projects that students developed at the English Department in Hannover. As a literal work In Progress, each issue’s publication depends on the dedication, creativity, and cooperation of the people involved.

In Progress: A Graduate Journal of North American Studies is not affiliated with the now-defunct online graduate journal In Progress (2011-2014, archived at http://inprogressjournal.net/). We thank Jennifer Gammage and Lindsey Ives, the editors of the other In Progress, for their permission to use the name.