Publications
In 2021, C21 stopped to ask: what is a book? As an interdisciplinary humanities center in a public university system, we are engaging with 21st-century issues of widespread public concern more directly as they arise and foregrounding knowledge production as transparent and collaborative. This has changed our publication framework to encourage and support ongoing scholarly and community-engaged work across digital formats, and through a variety of media. Through this approach, we are sustaining, connecting, and expanding upon ideas over a longer timeframe and across multiple spaces.
We aim to complicate the two-way dynamic between academic and community-based forms of knowledge production and challenge the assumptions we might have about how ideas flow easily or linearly between the university and its neighbors. Instead, we seek to explore how knowledge production is horizontal, with concepts, systems, and embodied experiences cross-pollinating each other across varied disciplines, histories, and lived experiences.
Current Publications
Slow Digest is our weekly digital publication that exists celebrate and supplement slow knowing, C21’s 2024-2025 theme. Some editions of the Slow Digest feature essays, insights, and annotations from C21 staff and stakeholders. Others consist of a collection of recommendations for further reading, curated around a particular slow topic.
The Center for 21st Century Studies is proud to present 6.5 Minutes With… In this series, hosted by C21, scholars and community members briefly discuss their important contributions to discussions surrounding the most exigent issues of our current times. All episodes of 6.5 Minutes With… can be found on Apple Podcasts!
The Center for 21st Century Studies has amassed a trove of recorded conference keynotes and one-off lectures over the years. New material is being added all the time. Browse our YouTube channel for videos and recorded talks going as far back as 2012.
Our commitment to interdisciplinary research goes beyond the bounds of the printed and spoken word. C21 started curating art exhibitions in 2021 to encourage more engagement with the arts in exploring how we can address the pressing issues of our time.
Past Publications
C21’s broad range of publications confirms its leadership in the academic community in the United States and abroad. The books in our most recent series with the University of Minnesota Press, and in our earlier series, 21st Century Studies and Theories of Contemporary Culture, with Indiana University Press originate from conferences sponsored by C21 or are authored by scholars affiliated with the Center.
Thinking C21 was a blog that served as a space for the convergence of the university and public spheres, where intellectual examinations of the contemporary and the past taking place within the academy enriched our understanding of the present moment as it extended beyond the academy. Contributors brought their research and knowledge of specific histories, theories, methodologies, and disciplines to bear on current events and questions of broad concern.
The Interactive Book Club (Spring 2022) served as a resource to promote discussion, collaboration, and exploration in line with the topics of each roundtable in C21’s Lonely No More series, Each edition comes with guest recommendations from panelists, discussion questions, and other relative resources.
See the Lonely No More! Interactive Book Club series below:
From 2022 to 2024, C21 experimented with an “unconference” format that allowed for the work and efforts of three (or more) different conferences to run concurrently across a few years. This intentionally broke from the traditional one year: one conference: one book format to create more points for participation, more time for reflection, and a wider range of deliverables. With its longevity and diversity, we envisioned this programming as a rolling symposia.
Check out the symposia by topic below:
From 2019-2020, former C21 graduate fellow Mallory Zink headed C21’s first podcast series, Inside C21. Inside C21 was a podcast that explored research in the humanities that would help listeners make sense of the 21st century. Music for the podcast included songs by former C21 graduate fellow Allain Daigle, and the guests of the show featured speakers and C21 faculty fellows hosted by the Center.