Colleges and universities have experienced their own rapid and foundational changes and challenges over the past two decades: deep and permanent funding cuts; attacks from political factions and business interests questioning the purpose and value of higher education itself; extreme pressures to produce “work-ready” graduates; the continuing “adjunctification” of the professorate; and the closure of programs, departments, colleges, and entire universities. The humanities often suffer the worst due to these effects, and they also face lopsided initiatives that highlight and fund STEM fields at the expense of the so-called “soft sciences” and the “arts.” Meanwhile, efforts toward “STEAM” have been inconsistent and, at times, counterproductive.
Yet the humanities remain in the vanguard of social and cultural changes, as they always have. Ever responsive to the cultures and societies from which they come, the humanities is in the midst of a metamorphosis as the role of the arts and letters in the 21st century evolves to represent, articulate, interpret, challenge, champion, and create the myriad and rapid changes underway.
Watchung Review invites scholarly articles and creative works that take up the reimaginings of the humanities and its place in the 21st century. We invite broad interpretations of these reimaginings, especially ones sensitive to new or underrepresented voices.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Teaching into the unknown
- Diversification of and integrating the humanities within texts (e.g., in syllabi, scholarly research, assignments, university initiatives, etc.)
- Hiring and institutions
- What do we mean by an inclusive campus?
- Tackling inclusion without omissions
- Questions of appropriation
- Making student voices heard
- Who gets to teach what?: teaching, diversity, and authenticity
- Challenging the canon: popular fiction and inclusion
- Responding to the news and the political situations
- The humanities and the reemergence of nationalism and popularism in Europe and America
- The role and place of indigenous writing in the humanities
- The humanities in a time of climate crisis
- The humanities and social movements
- Engaging the public with the humanities (i.e., humanities and community engagement)
- The humanities and the cultural transformation of social media
- Interdisciplinarity in the 21st-century humanities
- The Ecological Other
- How do we hear/represent non-human voices in the Anthropocene?
- New Media and Old Theory: how do we understand narratology in 2019?
- Challenges of translation in a world of globalized media
- Fictionalized imaginings of a humanities-driven world
- Intersectional voices in the humanities
- Digital humanities
- What does it mean to be human in a 21st-century world?
Watchung Review is currently soliciting book reviews of the following works:
Homesickness: Of Trauma and the Longing for Place in a Changing Environment, Ryan Hediger
Resisting Dialogue: Modern Fiction and the Future of Dissent, Juan Meneses
Blue Notes: Jazz, Literature and Loneliness, Sam V.H. Reese
Shelter in a Time of Storm, Jelani M. Favors
The Insider’s Guide to Working with Universities, James W. Dean and Deborah Y. Clark
Conscripts of Migration: Neoliberal Globalization, Nationalism, and the Literature of New African Diasporas, Christopher Ian Foster
Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America, Jordan Dominy
New Postcolonial Dialectics: An Intercultural Comparison of Nigerian and English Plays, Sarbani Sen Vengadasalam
Teaching Racial Literacy: Reflective Practices for Critical Writing, Mara Lee Grayson
Deadline: 31st March 2020
Please send inquiries and submissions to watchungreview@gmail.com and review our submission guidelines here.
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