We are currently seeking original essays for "Slow Down," a collection of articles written by arts and humanities scholars across disciplines, which together argue that higher education has been compromised by its uncritical acceptance of our culture's standards of productivity, busyness, and speed. Our project is inspired by the slow movement, which was made popular by Carlo Petrini's Slow Food movement and has since been adopted by many others concerned about the quality of life in a fast world. In a similar vein, our collection explains how and why university culture has come to value productivity over contemplation—or, put a different way, rapidity over slowness—analyzes the ramifications of this shift, and proposes some possible solutions to our current predicament. As the provisional title suggests, we are concerned in particular with the role of the arts and humanities in the context of a neoliberal world that values speed, and we explore how these fields might serve as a corrective to fast culture as it manifests itself in higher education. A university press has recently expressed a strong interest in this project.

Possible topics that essays might explore include:
o Speed/slowness and pedagogy.
o Speed/slowness and research.
o Speed/slowness and service.
o Speed/slowness and administration.
o Arts and humanities fields as counter to fast culture.
o Arts and humanities' relationship to neoliberalism.
o The future of the arts and humanities in a fast world.

For consideration, please send a title, a 250-300 word abstract, and a short author biography by July 1, 2016 to both editors: Stephannie S. Gearhart (stephsg@bgsu.edu) and Jonathan Chambers (jonathc@bgsu.edu).

Finished essays of 15-20 pages (4,000-5,000 words) will be due January 15, 2017.