Meeting the challenges: This issue  http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/current

This issue starts with two examples of discipline-boundary-crossing materialculture projects: ‘Ethnography by design: On goals and mediating artefacts’(Fabian Segelstrom and Stefan Holmlid, pp. 134–149) and ‘Toward a pedagogy
for faculty and student co-responsibility in curating college museum exhibitions’
(Susan Rodgers, pp. 150–165).
Then we have a contribution to an ongoing concern with projects that look to
the disciplines’ epistemological bases when planning teaching and learning: Joan
Middendorf and colleagues’ ‘What’s feeling got to do with it? Decoding emotional
bottlenecks in the history classroom’ (pp. 166–180).
Emotional bottlenecks, like difficulty papers and threshold concept theory, point
to forms of ‘troublesome knowledge’ which interrupt and complicate – not in a bad
way! – students’ unilinear progress of ‘knowledge acquisition’ and draw attention
to the importance to our disciplines of students’ own disciplinary meaning-making.
See also the seminal:

•  ‘On the Evidence of Theory: Close reading – the signature critical practice of
  literary studies – as a disciplinary model for writing about teaching and learning’
  by Randy Bass and Sherry Lee Linkon (AHHE 7(3): 245–261); and
• Pat Hutchings and Mary Taylor Huber’s ‘Placing Theory in the Scholarship
  of Teaching and Learning’ (AHHE 7(3): 229–244). ‘Faculty are often led
  to theoretical literature in their own or neighboring disciplines to
  puzzle out troublesome aspects of student learning or to get a
  handle on what ‘‘deep understanding’’ in their field might really look
  like’. Also:
• ‘Boundaries, Signature Pedagogies and Theorizing’ by the Editors (AHHE 7(2):115–116)
• and the Digital Storytelling Forum (AHHE 7(2): 165–223):
• ‘As a Signature Pedagogy for the New Humanities’ by Rina Benmayor and
• ‘Critical trajectories from the emotional to the epistemological’ by Matthias
  Oppermann;
•  ‘Signature pedagogy/powerful pedagogy: The Oxford tutorial system
  in the humanities’ by Julia Horn (AHHE 12(4): 350–366); and the
  forthcoming
• ‘Transforming conceptual space into a creative learning place: Crossing a
  threshold’ by Kirstine Moffat and Anne McKim, OnlineFirst

Academic identity [in] changing disciplines
The next two articles both reflect on the potential for and the challenging position
of the discipline academic in a changing disciplinary landscape: ‘Discipline identity
in economic history: Reflecting on an interdisciplinary community’ (Martin
Shanahan, pp. 181–193) and ‘Uncomfortable departments: British historians of science
and the importance of disciplinary communities’ (Aileen Fyfe, pp. 194–205).
We have an intermittent series about disciplinary change:
.

• ‘Is Communication a Humanities Discipline?: Struggles for academic identity’
  Bruce E. Gronbeck (AHHE 4(3): 229–246); and
•  ‘Is Law a Humanity: (Or Is It More Like Engineering)?’ by David Howarth
  (AHHE 3(1): 9–28).
  And a long extending interest in/interrogating ‘becoming disciplined’, including
  reflections by as well as on New Voices:
•  ‘Exploring a metamorphosis: Identity formation for an emerging conductor’ by Cayenna Ponchione (AHHE 12(2–3): 181–193);
• ‘Exploring religious identity through the arts: A call to theologians’ by Rosalind Parker (AHHE 13(1–2): 88–100);
• ‘Becoming a Music Student: Investigating the skills and attitudes of students
  beginning a Music degree’ by Karen Burland and Stephanie Pitts (AHHE 6(3):
  289–308);
•  ‘Intelligence and Interrogation: The identity of the English student’ by Ben
  Knights (AHHE 4(1): 33–52).

Creative critical writing
Finally, we are very pleased to publish a different kind of thesis, hopefully exemplifying
the kind of creative critical writing explored by Gavin Melles in the ‘Editorial: Pedagogies, writing and identity’ and, with co-founder of Writing PAD, Julia Lockheart, ‘Writing purposefully in art and design: Responding to converging and diverging new academic literacies’ (AHHE11(4): 329–332 and 346–362).
‘Like climbing Jacob’s ladder: An art-based exploration of the comprehensive exam process’
(pp. 206–227) by Sara Scott Shields, is ‘an artful documentation of my journey
through arts-based engagement with artifacts from my comprehensive exam process’.
We invite comments in response via the blogsite and submissions to our forthcoming
special issue dedicated to the dynamic of form and content in critical work,
Matters Creative and Critical. Contributions are invited from established as well as
early career writers and researchers, and the volume seeks to showcase the range of
cultural critical investigation currently under way. Contributions might include but
are not limited to:
. the essay
. the dialogue
. the visual essay
. the fragment or fragments
. the memoir
. the critical narrative
. the manifesto
. poetry
. … …