What are the tenure requirements in humanities/social science in the US

At what kind of institution do you teach? On my campus, you wouldn't need a monograph for tenure; on some campuses, you would need a monograph + articles; on others, a monograph + proof of another in the works; and, at some rarefied places, two monographs. Are you at a comprehensive? An R1?

tjw - Good point. It's not R1. For the sake of anonymity, it's a reasonably well-respected private institution (think 4th quartile of the http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings/page+4) that does not focus on humanities and social science; and so there is no real precedent for this in my department. And so I am looking for possible requirements in humanities/soc sci departments in other universities with similar rankings (say #75-#125).

Don't you have any colleagues at other institutions? People you've met at meetings? Folks you went to grad school with? Your PhD advisor(s) and mentors? Or are you so isolated at this out-of-your-discipline department that MeFi is really your best shot at getting good advice? I really don't mean that to sound snarky, I just hope you should be able to get better-sourced advice.

(of course, it occurs to me [too late] that you may be asking all those people as well. If so, good for you; if not, consider it; and sorry again if it sounded snarky)

No problem. Or are you so isolated at this out-of-your-discipline department that MeFi is really your best shot at getting good advice? To an extent, this is true. I'd like to emphasize that it's an interdisciplinary thing - Ph.D. in one discipline, which I have not been back to for pubs/conferences, and academic career in a second discipline, which I have exclusively focused on. So for example if I had a PhD in history, I may have been working on the history of the Internet for a while, but in a CS department. And I have not been to history conferences, and do not publish in history. It's actually different/more complex than this, but you get the idea. I'd heard that building an interdisciplinary academic career might be hard, and it seems so.

And yes - there is no-one in my department with my disciplinary background/training.

In an R1 hard humanities department (like literature), the tenure requirement is basically a book. Promotion is a second book. As you drift more and more to the science end of things, the emphasis becomes more and more on larger quantities of shorter articles. However, the original question was about justifying a monograph to your tenure committee. You should have to justify publishing period. More publishing is always better than less publishing. If you have an opportunity for a monograph, take it.

If you were in the humanities at the kind of institution you describe, the likely ballpark of the tenure standard would probably be book-plus-articles. But you aren't. The real issue here is going to be communicating clearly in advance about, and coming to mutual agreement on, a fair standard with the tenure committee that you actually have (and the department, for purposes of their recommendation, and the administration). So if you think book-plus is a fair standard for your kind of work, considering the broader field(s) it touches upon, you should try to make that case clearly and in writing to these folks now, in advance of the tenure case, and see if they can be gotten to agree on it. You might use some external reviewers or writers to help communicate this — contacts who work in departments in or around your old field might send letters describing what their field's tenure standards generally are, and perhaps you could supplement this with statements on tenure standards from the field's professional associations. But maybe the tenure question actually isn't the first thing you should be worried about here? If you want to, and you think it'll be intellectually productive for you, you should probably write the book in any case. It certainly won't hurt your CV!

In my experience all the requirement are kept very vague on purpose to give the committee more power to get rid of people, or keep people. It's never fair or consistant.