The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography is issuing a call for articles for a special issue of the magazine on the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania backcountry scheduled for an October 2012 publication.

The editors seek submissions for a special section on Favorite Sources/Hidden Gems. The editors seek proposals for short articles (250–750 words) featuring favorite sources/hidden gems highlighting some aspect of Pennsylvania’s eighteenth-century backcountry/borderlands, including all its political, social, intercultural, and military parameters. We invite articles focusing on both written and non-written sources, including but not limited to diaries, manuscript collections, novels, government documents, graphics, museum artifacts, and monuments. These items may or may not be found in the state, but all featured items will serve to illuminate some aspect of how Pennsylvanians, native and European, experienced the backcountry. Selections will be made based on the quality of the submission and with an eye toward representing the wide variety of source material available for understanding Pennsylvania’s backcountry.

Submission details: Submissions should be addressed to Tamara Gaskell, Editor, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 or, by e-mail, to pmhb@hsp.org. Contributors are encouraged to consult for reference the October 2011 issue of PMHB, a special issue on the Civil War in Pennsylvania that contained a similar section.

Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2011.