Manuscript Workshops

The Stanford Humanities Center is currently accepting applications for Manuscript Workshops on a rolling basis. Please see below for details.


The Manuscript Workshops at the Stanford Humanities Center are designed to provide timely feedback to faculty members and full-time lecturers who are preparing monographs or other academic manuscripts of similar scope for submission for publication.

The program is open to Stanford faculty and full-time lecturers in the humanities and interpretive social sciences whose work, in any area or period, is near completion and is still in a position to benefit substantially from review. Preference is given to untenured, tenure-track faculty whose work has not already undergone a formal external review process (e.g., by a potential press). Because of limited resources, postdoctoral fellows, emeriti, and visiting scholars are not eligible for the program.

A three-hour seminar forms the heart of the program. In consultation with the author, two external reviewers and several Stanford faculty members from different disciplines are invited to read the work in advance. The Humanities Center gathers the author and reviewers for an afternoon of discussion followed by an informal dinner. Readers provide collegial, constructive criticism to assist the author in developing strategies to strengthen the work and place it for publication. During the 2023-24 academic year, SHC manuscript workshops will be held in hybrid format: internal (Stanford faculty) reviewers will attend in-person at the Humanities Center; external reviewers will participate remotely via the Center’s newly installed Zoom-room technology.

Individuals who are interested in applying to the program should submit a letter of inquiry including:

  • brief description of the project – no more than 1,000 words
  • timeline for completion
  • short list of possible external reviewers
  • external and internal funding received thus far
  • whether manuscript has undergone review process; if yes, please elaborate
  • curriculum vitae

If you are interested in applying for a workshop, please submit your application to Svetlana Turetskaya by email or call (650) 690-0763.