We are accepting book proposals for the imprint The Arts in Society.
Common Ground is setting new standards of rigorous academic knowledge creation and scholarly publication.
Unlike other publishers, we’re not interested in the size of potential markets or competition from other books. We’re only interested in the intellectual quality of the work.
If your book is a brilliant contribution to a specialist area of knowledge that only serves a small intellectual community, we still want to publish it. If it is expansive and has a broad appeal, we want to publish it too, but only if it is of the highest intellectual quality.
Between Grace and Fear: The Role of the Arts in a Time of Change by William Cleveland and Patricia Shifferd is now available from The Arts in Society imprint.
This book is a series of interviews with social theorists and scholars, philanthropists, scientists, theologians, artists, community development and community arts activists. Several recent books, including The Great Turning by David Korten, and A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, have made the argument that a new way of organizing our relationships to each other and to nature will be necessary in the coming years. The subjects, some 30 in all, were all asked to comment on this eventuality and to provide their perceptions of what role that artists and arts organizations should play in contributing to a more just and sustainable society.
William Cleveland is a pioneer in the community arts movement and one of its most poetic documenters. His books Art In Other Places, Making Exact Change and Art and Upheaval: Artists on the World’s Frontlines are considered seminal works in the field of arts-based community development. An activist, teacher, lecturer and musician, he also directs the Center for the Study of Art and Community, located on Bainbridge Island, in Washington state in the U.S.
Patricia A. Shifferd is an independent consultant in research and evaluation to arts groups and communities. Formerly the Vice President for community and education programs at American Composers Forum, she directed the community-based music commissioning project, Continental Harmony, a model of arts-based community development. Trained in Sociology and Anthropology, she received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; her research and teaching interests have centered on community development, the role of the arts in society, sense of place, and the social aspects of environmental affairs.
The New Institutional Theory of Art by David Graves is now available from the The Arts in Society imprint.
Question: What do all works of art have in common? Answer: They are all products of a major cultural institution called “The Artworld”.
Question: Is this what makes them art? Answer: Yes.
The New Institutional Theory of Art is a different kind of theory about art. The theory is capable of explaining how it is that a urinal offered up by Marcel Duchamp, and a statue of Moses offered up by Michelangelo, are both works of art, and under precisely the same terms. Together with this, the theory can also explain why it is that Michelangelo’s work is magnificent, whereas Duchamp’s is “interesting”, at best. By focusing not on the works of art themselves, but rather upon the complex social-cultural context of their creation and presentation, the New Institutional Theory provides fresh, clear and powerful explanations of the very inner workings of Art, writ large. The artists, the public, the issues, the techniques, the bothers and the worries are all illuminated for the reader to gain true insight into the actual logic of Art. This book is intended for all readers, professionals and non-professionals alike.
Common Ground Publishing has launched a new imprint, The Arts in Society.
You can now submit proposals or completed manuscript submissions of:
Books should be between 30,000 words to 150,000 words in length. They will be published simultaneously in print and electronic formats.
