Rhae Lynn Barnes and Waldo E. Martin, Jr. are coordinating and editing a scholarly volume — currently titled Narrative and History: Experience, Voice, and Agency— centering Professor Leon F. Litwack’s (1929-2021) wide-ranging and powerful intellectual and cultural significance and impact on American history and culture. We envision a volume of short and engaging essays (approximately 2500-3000 words each) that explore specific aspects of that significance and impact.
This will not be a memorial volume. Instead, these essays will use Litwack’s life and career as historian, public intellectual, activist, leftist, labor advocate, passionate teacher, archivist, ephemera collector, library builder, and music aficionado as a conduit to explore larger issues and methodologies of narrative history, education, and American storytelling in the twenty-first century.
Leon F. Litwack was passionate about using the widest array of sources and media possible to tell stories about America’s past to the widest possible audience; we hope this volume will honor this luminous legacy by coming together and continuing this necessary and important work.
Our aim is to bring together the world’s leading scholars, dynamic practitioners of public humanities, educators, former students, artists, musicians, cultural critics, and individuals for whom Litwack’s work or life was meaningful.
We are in conversation with the University of North Carolina Press and the University of California Press, as possible publishers, to ensure this volume will be accessible and affordable across formats for students and the public.
We ask that those interested in participating send a 250 word abstract to RLBarnes@Princeton.edu and wmartin@berkeley.edu by July 1, 2022.
Thank you for your warm consideration, and, as Leon would want us to sign off: “Fight the power!”