Public Humanities is a new international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life. The journal invites proposals for themed issues that pose urgent questions on contemporary public issues that require rigorous and relevant humanities knowledge. 

The journal invites submissions to its upcoming Themed Issue Global Public Literary Humanities, which will be Guest Edited by Tim Lanzendörfer and Pavan Malreddy. 

The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2025. 

Description 
The ongoing crisis of the humanities has produced what Rachel Arteaga calls “an increasing interest among scholars in literary studies, however positioned, to turn toward, engage with, and learn from various publics beyond the academy,” a public humanities practice. This Themed Issue offers a forum for an extended discussion of what a genuinely public literary studies might look like from different disciplinary vantage points. 

How do we envisage it formed within, but also reshaping, the current disciplines of the literary humanities, from the quasi-national language disciplines to area studies disciplines and world literature to postcolonial literary studies? What do we think its publics are, how they might be addressed, and how does this address relate to our professional practices? Where do we pick up from practices that already exist in the public humanities, and where do we need to forge our own routes? What, in practice, might it look like to “take as our point of departure those public poetry and literature readings that compel people, especially young people from communities of color, to show up or tune in with the hope of making sense of their world”? What is the relationship between our profession as literary humanist scholars and the public practices of literature? 

We are looking for essays that address themselves to the present and future of the public literary humanities. Subjects for contributions might include the following topics, but are not limited to them: 

• the specifics of literary studies as they pertain to their public practice  
• decolonial, indigenous, and postcolonial public intellectuals  
• literary truths and power structures 
• Discussions of the relation between the local, the disciplinary, and the global 
• discussions of concrete examples of public literary studies practice 
• the role of (professional) method in public literary studies 
• the question of what we might learn about literary studies from rethinking it as a public practice 
• the question of the form of our contributions, publicly or professionally 
• the links between research and public presentation 
• the relation between spaces for the public exploration of literature (on Youtube, Booktok, Goodreads, and other online platforms, for instance) and literary studies? 

Submission guidelines 
Submissions should be written in accessible language for a wide readership across and beyond the humanities.  

Articles will be peer reviewed for both content and style. Articles will appear digitally and open access in the journal.  

All submissions should be made through the Public Humanities online peer review system. Author should consult the journal’s Author Instructions prior to submission.  

All authors will be required to declare any funding and/or competing interests upon submission. See the journal’s Publishing Ethics guidelines for more information.  

Article types available

Contacts 
Guest Editor names: Tim Lanzendörfer and Pavan Malreddy  
Email addresses: tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de and malreddy@em.uni-frankfurt.de  

Questions regarding peer review can be sent to the Public Humanities inbox at publichumanities@cambridge.org.