Focused discussion with younger scholars

The focused discussion with younger scholars in art and architectural history took place on Friday, October 28,2005 at Columbia University. Twelve scholars took part in the discussion. The demographic characteristics of the group were asfollows:

• Sex: 6 men, 6 women
• Race: 9 white, 2 African American, 1 Asian-American
• Age: 2 ages 35-39, 7 ages 40-44, 2 ages 45-49, 1 age 50+

Eight members of the group had published at least one book; four were tenured. Specific subfields representedby the participants included medieval art, modern and contemporary art, pre-modern Japanese art and culture, 17th-century art andarchitecture, 20th-century American art, African art and architecture, Eastern Mediterranean art and archaeology, Islamicart and architecture, Greek art and architecture, history of Chinese art, and 19th&20th-century architectural history.

The publishing-related concerns expressed by the younger art history scholars clustered broadly into thefollowing categories:

• Tension between the requirements of scholarship and the requirements of publishers
• The relative“value”of different types of scholarly work, with respect to both advancing the field and tenure andpromotion
• The costs of publication in the field of art and architectural history

Tension between the requirements of scholarship and the requirements of publishers

Younger scholars in art and architectural history perceive a serious disconnect between the types ofscholarly monographs being produced by the field and the types of books publishers are looking to publish. Scholars say that thepresses they’ve worked with already have“an idea of what they want”in terms of the manuscripts they publish. That is, they either publish in specific subfields and not others, and/or theyare looking for manuscripts that will reach the broadest possible audience.

In many cases, scholars reported being told by publishers that the subjects of their manuscripts were too narrow.One scholar was surprised to hear his manuscript characterized this way since the time period covered in his book was severalcenturies. The issue, as scholars describe it, is that publishers are seeking to broaden the appeal of the books they publish, eitherto non-specialist audiences or to scholars in adjacent specialties.

For younger scholars, who must demonstrate with their first book-length work (typically their dissertation)their competence as a specialist in their area, this poses a dilemma. How does one write both for an audience of substantivespecialists (one’s peers), as well as for a more general readership? If both scholarship and reaching a wider audience areimportant, does that mean having to write and publish on two different tracks at once?

Scholars facing this dilemma may undertake extensive revisions of their manuscript to try to make it moregenerally appealing. Often, say scholars, this leads to the dilution or excision of important original ideas from themanuscript. Rewriting a manuscript also takes a significant amount of time, a scarce commodity for an assistant professor with heavyteaching and administrative responsibilities and one eye on the tenure-clock. And sometimes the revised work ends up satisfyingneither scholars nor general readers. An important question this raises is whether dissertations can continue to serve the dualpurposes they have served for many scholars in the past–as both a demonstration of one’s competence as a substantive specialist and as a potential first book to be listed on one’s CV.