Proposals are invited for chapters to be included in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Cultural Analytics, a major new reference work that aims to consolidate and extend the field of cultural analytics at a time of considerable methodological innovation and critical reflection.
Cultural analytics—defined broadly as the computational and data-driven analysis of cultural materials—has matured from a set of experimental practices into a dynamic and increasingly central approach across the humanities and interpretive social sciences. This handbook seeks to capture the richness of this moment: to provide scholars, students, and practitioners with a comprehensive, critical, and forward-looking account of the field.
Contributions are welcome from across disciplines, institutions, and methodological traditions, including, but not limited to digital humanities, literary and cultural studies, art history, film and media studies, sociology, linguistics, and computational social science.
Chapters that focus on detailing specific methods are particularly welcome, but contributions are expected to adopt critical perspectives, rather than offering ‘how-to’ guides or focusing exclusively on case studies and accounts of project-based applications. Chapters should interrogate the epistemological, methodological, disciplinary, or infrastructural dimensions of cultural analytics. Prospective authors should consider The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities as an example of what is being sought. The aim is to offer durable, field-defining insights that speak beyond individual projects or tools. Essays will serve as entry points into individual topics and, with this in mind, should be framed broadly. The essay title should speak to the essay’s breadth of coverage.
Topics of interest may include:
The volume is under consideration with Bloomsbury Academic with the aim of forming part of their prestigious handbooks series. Bloomsbury Handbooks is a series of single-volume reference works which map the parameters of a discipline or sub-discipline and present the ‘state-of-the-art’ in terms of research. Each Handbook offers a systematic and structured range of specially commissioned essays reflecting on the history, methodologies, research methods, current debates and future of a particular field of research. Bloomsbury Handbooks provide researchers and graduate students with both cutting-edge perspectives on perennial questions and authoritative overviews of the history of research.
Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words, along with a short biographical statement to james.osullivan@ucc.ie by May 9th, 2025. Informal enquiries prior to submission are welcome.
Finals chapters will range from approximately 4,000–6,000 words, with manuscripts due in late 2025.