Call for Chapters: Libraries and the Futures of the Humanities
Submission deadline: Saturday, February 1, 2025
Editors: Mark Dahlquist, Nancy Kranich, Jennifer Hofer, and Laura Semrau
The editors of a collected volume in development with Rowman & Littlefield request chapter proposals for a book on libraries and the futures of the humanities. For details about this proposed publication, please see below.
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More than 90% of Americans agree that students in the United States should experience an education that includes the humanities. Surveys indicate that Americans value the humanities and that the study of subjects such as history, philosophy, and literature helps them to understand and appreciate cultural differences, acquire valuable professional skills, participate in democracy, and lead meaningful and happy lives.[1]
Nevertheless, the number of students majoring in humanities disciplines has declined in recent years.[2] Some colleges and universities have closed or consolidated programs, or prioritized other disciplines. Aside from enrollment, the humanities face other challenges:
The rise of both the “neoliberal university” and a “post-liberal” movement that depreciates the role of rhetoric and democracy in national policy-making[3]
The belief that the humanities are relevant to a narrow group of scholars or "elites," without connection to ordinary life
The exclusionary and colonial understandings of literature and history that have underwritten curricula in colleges and universities
The development of AI threatening the distinctiveness of human creativity, insight, and language-based skills
These concerns have heightened the sense of crisis that has arisen from declining enrolment numbers. While some have argued that the idea of a crisis in the humanities has been overstated, or observed that the notion of crisis is intrinsic to the concept of the humanities,[4] enrollment challenges raise important questions about the value of the humanities and create opportunities to rethink what the humanities are, or could become.
Although the humanities have often been described in abstract terms of a “humanist ethos” or “ways of knowing,”[5] libraries, like archives and other cultural institutions, have long planned and developed infrastructures that have shaped how–and for whom–cultural history has been preserved and remembered. Academic libraries and archives have long supported the creation, distribution, and preservation of scholarship, through the work of information professionals.
The humanities have sometimes been regarded as a set of disciplines practiced by solitary scholars within the “ivory tower” of the academy. Libraries and the Futures of the Humanities presents a conversation about how libraries and librarians can engage the present crisis by collaborating with faculty, students, and community stakeholders to imagine new understandings of the humanities rooted in more inclusive, community-engaged, and democratic forms of cultural reflection.
Amid this present set of challenges, how can libraries continue to protect and shape the future of the humanities?
Libraries and the Futures of the Humanities considers this question in chapters from a range of practical and theoretical perspectives, arranged into five sections:
Framing the Question: discussions on the history and concept of the humanities in relation to libraries
Across the Disciplines: examples of programs and practices that support cross-disciplinary teaching and scholarship (for example, humanities in STEM, business, and medical disciplines)
Beyond the University: initiatives that connect humanistic learning, research, and creativity to communities outside the university, from the local to the global
Civic Learning: approaches that apply humanistic knowledge and skills to empower learners to participate in creative democratic change
Machines and Meaning: projects that make use of AI, digital humanities, or maker technologies to open up innovative directions and possibilities in the humanities
We invite chapters from librarians, archivists, faculty members, and others on the above topics. Please submit a 250-500 word chapter proposal by 11:59 PM on Saturday, February 1, 2025. We encourage submissions to be as specific as possible when describing the humanities-related library practices and/or perspectives that your proposed chapter will discuss, and to indicate how your proposal may relate to questions of justice, diversity, equity and inclusion.
Selected chapter proposals will be incorporated in the book proposal that will be submitted to Rowman & Littlefield for final review.
Our plan is to notify authors of chapters selected for inclusion in February 2025, with final chapters of 4,000-6,000 words to be submitted by August 1, 2025.