Call for Book Chapter Proposals: Public Scholarship in Higher Education

June 30, 2016

We are seeking book chapter proposals on the topic of Public Scholarship in Higher Education.  A new book from Stylus press will be coming out in 2017 on this topic edited by Adrianna Kezar and Joanna Drivalas.

Public scholarship is research that engages various publics who are the beneficiaries or agents within the research and who act on the research to develop policy and shape practice. The public is considered in an inclusive way – students and parents, media, the general public, and particularly, groups that may have formerly had no access to our research or have been included in an audience.  Public scholarship asks us to consider the ways that we can reach out and engage the public with our research – in creation, dissemination, and application.  The commitment is focused on identifying publics that are important to our research and engaging the publics that are meaningful to our research.  This work might mean partnering with a community agency to design or disseminate research results.  It might mean sharing results over social media in a manner that is understood by the common person.  It might also mean writing for practitioner or policy venues and magazines, outside the traditional academic journals, or serving on boards for invested national groups with the authority to make important decisions related to an area within which you conduct research.  The focus is on scholars who have engaged in these activities, and less so on theorizing about such activities, although we are open to innovative chapters on those ideas as well.

We are particularly interested in the following ideas:

  1. Scholars participating in national movements like BlackLivesMatter;
  2. Scholars interested in ethics and the challenges of public scholarship;
  3. Ways to change training or preparation of scholars so they can be engaged in public scholarship;
  4. Public scholarship through an indigenous lens;
  5. And how public scholarship looks and happens in different institutional settings (e.g. public v. private, minority serving institutions, community colleges, etc.)

Please send chapter proposals and a copy of your C.V. to Joanna Drivalas (drivalas@usc.edu) by July 15th.  Proposals need only be a paragraph description.