Reasons for writing -- Writing about feelings -- Some feelings about writing in public; some reasons for a counterpublic humanities -- "But is it any good?" : Or, some feminist questions about academic writing -- You have to practice -- Who is your girl and where is she going? -- You write with your body, which keeps the score -- Pitches and abstracts : or, some ways of building worlds with words -- Know your noun -- Arguments and other stories -- The subject of the sentence -- Give the pull quote -- Burden of proof -- Red rage -- A short note about when we don't need your thoughtful essay -- Critical distance -- Elements of teaching style -- Elements of teaching style, redux : against the thesis statement -- Small acts of finishing -- Writing in time --Coda : hospitality

"In a world of crises that today undermine the humanities, what can still motivate humanists to write? Could developing new styles of prose, forms of argument, or writing strategies enliven humanist thinking? What might those be, and how might they be learned or put into practice? Imaginative, inspiring, and unrepentantly nerdy, Sarah Mesle's Reasons and Feelings: Humanities Writing Now helps its readers navigate these questions. It is a writing guide that also makes an argument about why embattled academics should write in the first place. Alongside practical compositional advice - strategies for addressing different audiences, for pitching publications, for managing writing anxiety - readers will find an account of how such craft practices connect to both their intellectual commitments and their historical conditions. Mesle shows how university-trained writers at all levels benefit when they embrace a broader range of styles and affects. Doing so helps them harness their writing's community-building andcollaborative potential. This, in turn, makes them better able to value their own expertise, whether they write for the classroom, in public venues, or for the specialized scholarly communities that share their niche, weird, or beloved objects of study.In a voice that is warm, sympathetic, and accessible, Mesle gives humanists a path toward bolder fantasies of the worlds their writing can make"--