CFP: Routledge Handbook of Humanities & Social Science Communication

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Dear colleagues,

We are delighted to invite proposals for a Routledge Handbook of Humanities and Social Science Communication. The handbook is under advance contract with anticipated publication in 2027. Chapter proposals are due August 3rd, 2025 and full chapter manuscripts due January 15, 2026. CFP URL: https://bit.ly/rhhssc.

Please direct questions to our collection email address (routledgehandbookhsscom) or feel free to reach out to one of us individually to discuss chapter ideas.

Best wishes,

Gwendolynne Reid

Call for Proposals: Routledge Handbook of Humanities and Social Science Communication (https://bit.ly/rhhssc)

Editors:Gwendolynne Reid (Emory), Chris Anson (NC State), and Xiao Tan (Utah State)

Since the 1970s, fields ranging from writing across the curriculum (WAC/WID) to English for academic purposes (EAP) and allied fields have studied disciplinary communication with the twin goals of (1) understanding the role of communication in scholarly knowledge production and (2) making disciplines accessible by teaching disciplinary communication to students and novices. Much of this research, however, has focused on scientific discourse, with “academic” often implicitly standing in for “scientific.”

And yet, communication in the humanities and interpretive disciplines in the social sciences (HSS) differs meaningfully from scientific communication. Beyond differing goals, objects of studies, and epistemologies, humanistic disciplines also have differing social histories, material conditions, institutional and societal positionalities, pedagogical charges, and communicative genres. For example, in many humanities disciplines, the monograph occupies the central epistemic role that the scientific research article occupies in many of the sciences (Elliott).Scholars in these disciplines also have differing relationships with the media and modes of scholarly communication (Fahnestock and Secor): these are often both what and how they study.

This collection seeks to address a gap in how these disciplines have been studied, namely that their disciplinary communication has been understudied, even as it changes in tandem with social and technological changes. And yet, understanding this communication is vital for general education in the humanities and social sciences, for the successful development of the next generation of scholars in those disciplines, and for addressing the opportunities and challenges facing HSS disciplines and the societies they are part of. Of equal and related importance, the lack of research on HSS disciplinary communication is connected with a lack of research on public communication of the humanities and social sciences (Cassidy; Lewis et al.), all while experiments to address this need proliferate (Burton and Fisher; Liu). Not least, understanding HSS communication can tell us much about HSS disciplinary communities, including the exclusionary and colonialist histories of some HSS genres (e.g., Applegarth) that could work against the values and goals they aspire to.

Chapter Proposals

We invite 500- to 750-word chapter proposals for a Routledge Handbook of Humanities and Social Science Communication that seeks to clarify the current state of HSS disciplinary communication and the many issues facing HSS communicators and stakeholders. We welcome proposals from diverse interdisciplinary and international perspectives, including relevant practitioners not in academia (e.g., museum curators, publishers, editors) and invite proposals for the following article types:

  • Historical Reviews
  • Theoretical and Critical Perspectives
  • Case Studies
  • Practitioner Profiles

We ask that you also indicate which of the following sections your proposal best fits (each section will include all four article types):

  1. Producing and Communicating Humanistic Knowledge – Topics such as the origins, development, and rhetorical roles of HSS disciplinary genres and rhetorical strategies; HSS communication and changing discourse communities, including transnationalism; changing practices of production, distribution, reading, use, and preservation; the HSS publishing landscape, including peer review and open access; the role of languages in HSS disciplinary communication; HSS genres and equity, inclusion, justice, and (de)colonialism.
  2. Modes and Media in Humanistic Disciplines – Topics such as the role of modes and media in HSS scholarship and communication; old media and new media; multimodality; communication technologies; generative artificial intelligence; digital and emerging genres.
  3. Teaching and Learning Communication in Humanistic Disciplines – Topics such as teaching and learning with/of HSS communication; HSS pedagogical practices and genres; pedagogical changes and innovations in HSS disciplines; education and mentorship of the next generation of HSS scholars; changes in HSS pedagogy related to multimodality, digital media, and generative artificial intelligence.
  4. Humanistic Knowledge in Organizations and Government – Topics such as the role of cultural institutions and government organizations in HSS communication and knowledge production; the role of libraries in preservation, archiving, and distribution of HSS disciplinary communication; HSS procedural genres used to support HSS scholarship (e.g., writing grants); HSS communication with related professional audiences, such as grant-making organizations, government agencies, museums, libraries, centers, public archives; the circulation and recontextualization of HSS knowledge and communication in other professional discourses.
  5. Humanistic Knowledge in Public – Topics such as public-facing genres and practices; public humanities; citizen humanities; public HSS communication; the role of communication in HSS-society relationships; HSS communication and social justice; the circulation and recontextualization of HSS communication among publics and counterpublics; HSS disciplinary communication and indigenous communities; HSS genre systems beyond the academy; HSS public intellectuals and the nature of expertise.

To maintain a clear scope for the handbook, we discourage chapter proposals focused on:

  • scientific genres, particularly genres related to controlled, experimental methods.
  • HSS disciplines or methodologies without a clear connection to HSS communication.

Submission Guidelines and Timeline

To submit your proposal to our submission form, please prepare:

  • A Word file or PDF with your 500-750-word proposal for a maximum 5,000-word chapter (please include your last name in your file name).
  • A 75-100-word biography with your relevant scholarship.
  • If submitting multiple proposals, your ranked preference of chapter proposals (we welcome multiple proposal submissions but will only accept one for the collection).

The collection is under advance contract with Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis. We encourage authors to review Taylor & Francis’sauthor guidelines, particularly those focusing onAI.

Estimated timeline:

  • August 3, 2025: Chapter proposals and author bios due
  • September 15, 2025: Decisions and feedback from editors
  • January 15, 2026: Chapters due to editors
  • February 27, 2026: Peer reviews due (2 editors + 1 author to review each chapter)
  • March 20, 2026: Peer reviews to authors
  • August 1, 2026: Revisions of chapters due to editorial team.
  • October 26, 2026: Final manuscript to Routledge.

Please direct questions to our collection email address: routledgehandbookhsscom. We look forward to your submissions and to advancing the conversation on HSS communication.

Anticipated Audiences

Routledge Handbooks provide comprehensive and accessible overviews of their subjects that include both foundational work and emerging scholarship. They are written accessibly, with an eye towards stimulating dialogue among scholars, students, and stakeholders with diverse backgrounds across national contexts and towards creating a foundation for future scholarship and study. Handbooks typically include 30-35 chapters of approximately 5,000 words in length. See theRoutledge Handbook of Scientific Communication for an example.

This handbook will be directed to scholars in humanities and interpretive social science disciplines as well as to stakeholders such as libraries, museums, editors, publishers, scholarly associations, grant-giving organizations, and government agencies. The handbook will be of special interest to students and early researchers in these fields and to their teachers, mentors, and faculty developers. Teachers of English for Academic Purposes as well as those working in post-secondary writing and composition contexts will also find the collection useful (e.g., writing programs, writing centers, writing across the curriculum specialists). We foresee this work also being of interest to those evaluating HSS scholars and scholarship, such as university tenure and promotion committees. Not least, this work has the potential to be useful to the many individuals and organizations responsible for developing relevant academic information technologies and systems, such as bibliographic databases, preservation projects, and digital publishing platforms (e.g., Manifold, Fulcrum, etc.).

Works Cited

  • Applegarth, Risa. “Rhetorical Scarcity: Spatial and Economic Inflections on Genre Change.” College Composition and Communication, 2012, pp. 453–83, https://www.jstor.org/stable/23131597.
  • Burton, Kath, and Daniel Fisher. Public Humanities and Publication: A Working Paper. White Paper, Routledge, Taylor & Francis and National Humanities Alliance, 2021, pp. 1–31, http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/gpvb-x279.
  • Cassidy, Angela. “Communicating the Social Sciences and Humanities: Challenges and Insights for Research Communication.” Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, edited by Massimiano Bucchi and Brian Trench, Routledge, 2021, pp. 198–213, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003039242-12-12.
  • Elliott, Michael A. “The Future of the Monograph in the Digital Era: A Report to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.” Journal of Electronic Publishing, vol. 18, no. 4, Fall 2015, http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0018.407.
  • Fahnestock, Jeanne, and Marie Secor. “The Rhetoric of Literary Criticism.” Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and Contemporary Studies of Writing in Professional Communities, edited by Charles Bazerman and James G. Paradis, University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 76–96, https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/textual_dynamics/chapter3.pdf.

Gwendolynne Reid, Ph.D. (she/her)Associate Professor of English | Director of the Writing & Communication Program
Treasurer, Small Liberal Arts Colleges Writing Program Administrators (SLAC-WPA)
Oxford College of Emory University | 801 Emory Street, Oxford, GA 30054
gwendolynne.reid | Office location: Pierce Hall 137

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