The Edited Collection

If you can throw together an edited collection, that's a good way of getting well-known, as long as it doesn't take away from your monographs and reviewed articles. If you were an unknown theorist and could become the editor of a book about some new hot theoretical trend in the 80s or 90s, you could get a reputation without having actually produced much theory of your own.

The problem with edited collections, I've heard, is having to work with a variety of authors with different attitudes toward prose-style and deadlines. The advantage is that you can have a book in your name without having to write the thing yourself. It's more cost-effective than editing a journal, where you do more work over a longer period of time, but don't have a book in your name no matter how long you've been the editor.

Editing more than one collection before you have a monograph is a mistake, according to the conventional view (with which I agree). The collection might be even more valuable to the field than your monograph is, but you need to show how you cultivate your own garden.

Edited collections are like any other book in that they can be excellent or not so excellent, but the difference is that they are likely to be less consistent in quality than monographs, especially if they are proceedings of an event (a conference or symposium) that haven't been individually refereed.

A tenure committee might count an edited collection as the equivalent of about 3 articles. 1/ 1/2 for the introduction, 1 1/2 for the editing. If the collection is super visible or influential, however, then that adds to its value. An edited collection on a single author or narrow subject is not likely to be influential. A book that appears to be a reference book might be visible, but does not quite seem as original. This judgment would depend on whether it was seen as a guide for undergraduates (unprestigious) or a book that introduces a new way of envisioning an entire field (prestigious).

The Monograph as Standard

Conventional wisdom says you need the book for tenure at a research 1 university; that's the gold standard in certain humanities fields. (Two books for promotion to full professor.) Conventional wisdom also questions this standard, since publishers are cutting back on the number of monographs they put out.

If we move to a system de-emphasizing books, we will have to move toward an even greater reliance on peer-reviewed articles. This system is also problematic, because competition for the best journals might become even more intense. In the Humanities journals are not ranked as clearly, with clear consensus about #1, #2, #3. In some fields there are clear expectation that you need to publish a certain number of articles in the top 2 or 3 journals to get tenure. If we remove the monograph requirement, will we move to a model like this? Then any imperfections in the peer-review system would be exaggerated, because all it would take is for one of the three to be poorly managed to throw a wrench in the works.

My colleagues coming up for tenure have still been able to publish books. I've still been able to publish books. We could argue about just how difficult it is to publish a book before we would have to abandon the 1-book rule, but we are not necessarily there right now.

A book is not just an article x 5 or x 6. It is qualitatively different, requiring a larger conception of things and a more sustained effort. Some say articles can be just as influential, but then a book containing several previously published articles is even better, right? Books receive reviews; articles do not.

The argument that people who only write brilliant articles, and never books, write more brilliantly than those who write both, finds support in the work of a very few brilliant scholars, like the late John Kronik. It is hard to set that up as a model, though, because that is the exceptional case and not the norm. The most influential humanities scholars write books and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. If we say you can get tenure without a book, we are saying you aren't going to be all that influential.

What's your metaphor?

What's your metaphor for your book? Is it a scale, where two things have to be balanced on either sides? Do you think in terms of surface and depth or in terms of "coverage" of a certain amount of territory? Is it a miscellany or a coherent whole? An atlas or a triptik? Does it have thread or a trajectory, is it a textile or a rocket? Is it a series of "slots" that can be filled with the appropriate content? A group of concentric or overlapping circies?

Each of these metaphors has its own implications. I am not recommending one over the other, but I (personally) spend a lot of time thinking in and about metaphors for what I am doing. They can be very useful for clarifying what it is you're attempting to accomplish. You'll probably find them shifting as you work. Some metaphors might be making it harder for you to do your work, so shifting to an easier one might be just the ticket.

You could also metaphorize your personal relation to your project. Is it a straitjacket, your best friend, the rock of Sisyphus? Is it a salt mine, a gold mine, or no kind of mine at all? Is it a crop you are cultivating or a game you are playing, a race you are running, a war you are waging? It could be a wild horse you are trying to tame.

Having the Book in Your Head

Now I feel that the entire book is essentially there, in my head, and just needs to be written down. Writing will be essentially taking dictation.

Of course, this is illusory. The book will change shape several more times. I will come up with new ideas and the relation between existing ideas will shift. In this sense, my idea that I should be able to complete the book in a few days--and could given enough caffeine and research assistants--is inaccurate. The book needs that long germination process to be what it needs to be.

At the same time, having the book there, even in an illusory sense, is wonderfully comforting.