I find it compelling because collections of essay become more than merely collected material but they possess a story and narrative themselves. They are a meta-narrative on discipline, ideas, and pedagogy. I am thinking that one way to update The Social Fabric (an essay collection I co-edit, or any other essay collections) would be to supply some more of that meta-narrative, as well as perhaps other attendant details that transforms it into something more than a mere collection of others’ work but a statement in its own right.

I have been mulling the possibility of developing an American history text that juxtaposes social history with political history. It seems to me that this sort of thing might be possible in an essay collection, but one that provides greater historiographic content to the essays. In The Social Fabric,with its emphasis on social history this might mean offering a brief political and economic frame–that enriches the social historical narrative by giving it new meaning through comparison.

Of course, it might also mean suggest embracing a different type of marketing strategy, one that embraces the collection as more than a collection but a broader interpretive approach to the scholarship and the pedagogical narrative.  Indeed, in the digital age, this strategy of bricolage so long prized in the arts might be emerging as a critical thinking skill in the humanities and/or social sciences.