Conference Location: NeMLA 2026 March 5-8, Pittsburgh, PA (virtual option available)

In recent years, it has become common to speak of the public humanities ‘turn’ (Lewis 2024), made exceedingly visible through various intellectual and academic online venues. However, the current proliferation of autonomous and amateur authors posting their critical pieces on mainstream social platforms from YouTube to Substack drastically redefines what we understand as public humanities inquiry today. For instance, many young authors with university education have been engaging in multimedia modes of critical essayistic writing, which often rely on remediating scholarly works and concepts in digital public spaces (Sankofa 2023). As a result, such author-critics arguably regenerate scholarly humanities practices by making them publicly visible, popular, and relevant for the social and cultural worlds outside the narrow professional intellectual confines.

This panel invites scholars to engage with the phenomenon of non-professional digital criticism practiced across the globe as the productive pathway to regenerating known approaches to humanities. Using Jürgen Habermas’ literary ‘public sphere’ as a conceptual (albeit not necessary) blueprint, the panel is specifically invested in contemplations of how the humanities inquiry is made genuinely public by today’s digital critics, who explore the matters of philosophy, aesthetics, (popular) culture, national history, etc. outside recognized professional institutions. It is interested in discussing — though not limited to — topics such as:

- local or transnational disseminations of popular humanities online, from art reviews and video essays posted on popular social media to less visible digital think pieces spread through independently curated collective platforms;

- the relationship between specific forms of digital (multimedia) criticism and public debate;

- histories of ‘amateur’ criticism practiced outside recognized institutions and their influences on its current digital public practicing;

- the question of whether today’s examples of digital criticism can generate radically new forms of public sphere in the social platform era.

Description:

With the public humanities ‘turn’, online platforms have become an exceptionally fertile soil for amateur authorship and criticism practiced outside of traditional cultural and intellectual institutions. To discuss this phenomenon, the present panel invites scholars across various humanities disciplines to engage with the contemporary practices of digital public criticism, from ‘amateur’ remediations of academic scholarship to broader explorations of public humanities. Ultimately, the aim of this panel is to study whether today’s digital criticism can truly regenerate traditional humanities inquiry and construct ‘public sphere(s)’ on its basis.

Please, email your abstract of 300 words (max) and a short 3-sentence bio to eshatalo@uwaterloo.ca by September 30. This session will be held in-person with an option of virtual participation (indicate it in your email whether you wish to present your paper in person or virtually). 

The link to the panel may be found below:

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22016.

References:

Lewis, Phillip. The Public Humanities Turn: The University as an Instrument of Cultural Transformation. John Hopkins University Press, 2024.

Sankofa, Nicole. “Does the “big tent" include non-academics? Social media content creators conducting critical scholarship”. Qualitative Research Journal 23 (4), 2023, pp. 427-444.