Call for Chapter Proposals for The Edinburgh History of Reading

The Editors of the forthcoming Edinburgh History of Reading: A World Survey from Antiquity to the Present invite chapter proposals in English from both new and established scholars working on the global history, methodology and theory of reading and readerships in any period. The Edinburgh History of Reading will be a single-volume reference work of thirty to forty newly commissioned illustrated 8000-word chapters. Each will present innovative, previously unpublished work that connects with other disciplines. Chapters must showcase new research or scholarship, and should also ideally demonstrate theory or methodology in practice; we will not reprint frequently anthologised examples of established scholarship in the field.

Chapter proposals on any period and any national or regional context should be no more than 500 words, and may include (though are not confined to) the following broad topics:

• Contexts for reading (national/regional/sociological/demographic)
• Relative access to reading material/literacy (including prohibitions of any type)
• Mediated reading (reading aloud; listening alone or in a group)
• Changes in reading practices during any defined period and/or national/regional/sociological context)
• Individual reading practices (where these can be used to point to larger patterns)
• Reading while travelling
• Reading in non-native languages, in translation, or in non-standard formats (e.g. Braille, musical notation)
• The sociology of reading audiences
• Quantitative studies of readers and reading
• Group reading and discussion
• Modes of reading (intensive/extensive/close/selective/scanning/guided/self-directed/silent/random)
• Reading education and self-education
• Reader response
• Skeptical/credulous reading
• Decoding, misreading, and contested readings
• The history of literary criticism and reviewing
• Reading in schools, universities, prisons, asylums, churches, camps, military units, and other institutions
• Reading disabilities and bibliotherapy
• Highbrow/lowbrow/middlebrow reading
• Reading in marginalized communities
• The “common reader”
• The history of the historiography and sociology of reading
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Please send proposals to both editors, Professor Mary Hammond (E.M.Hammond@soton.ac.uk) and Professor Jonathan Rose (jerose@drew.edu) to arrive no later than 31 January 2017. Proposals must include a CV and full author contact details including both postal and email addresses, indicate whether the chapter is likely to be accompanied by B&W or colour illustrations (and specify roughly how many) and be accompanied by an assurance that the work has not been previously published in any form, either electronically or in print.  Contributors will be notified of the outcome no later than 1 March 2017, and chapter drafts will be due on 1 December  2017, with a planned final publication date of late 2019.