Category Archives: University Press Week

Happy University Press Week 2020! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great offerings that illuminate how university presses raise up active voices:

• University of Chicago Press shares an excerpt from Hearing Happiness by historian and disability activist Jaipreet Virdi.
• University of Notre Dame Press talks about the value of university press publishing from friends of the press.
• University of Alberta Press highlights the voice and work of Valerie Mason-John in her new book of poetry, I Am Still Your Negro.
• University of Florida Press posts “Activist Archaeology: A Reading List.”
• University of South Carolina Press author Daniel M. Harrison writes about how music is key understanding the south and why it matters.
• Bristol University Press Chief Executive Alison Shaw discusses actively engaging with social issues.
• Amsterdam University Press presents a guest post from Paula Albuquerque, a visual artist and scholar.
• For University of Toronto Press, climate change educator and author Rae Andre discusses the importance of leadership in activism.
• Bucknell University Press hosts a Q&A with the contributors to African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity.
• University of Toronto Press Journals has a blog post from Henry Tran, editor of the Journal of Education Human Resources.
• Vanderbilt University Press shares the new Policy to Practice series, providing perspectives on how global health policy becomes practice.
• University of Minnesota Press features their podcast’s Mental Health Series with former state representative Mindy Greiling.
• Harvard University Press looks at how the contributors to the volume Racism in America would like to see the book used and read.
• Columbia University Press interviews Dana Fisher, author of American Resistance.

Happy University Press Week 2020! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great offerings that illuminate how university presses raise up scientific voices:

• Johns Hopkins University Press discusses centering women’s voices in science.
• University of Alabama Press interviews their NEXUS series editors.
• Purdue University Press illuminates the work being done to learn the science behind the human-animal bond.
• Oregon State University Press‘s author Bruce Byers writes about lessons for the biosphere from the Oregon Coast.
• Princeton University Press features a post by editor Ingrid Gnerlich about the unique challenges of science publishing.
• Bristol University Press editor Claire Wilkinson discusses the relevance of science communication in the era of COVID.
• Indiana University Press presents an excerpt from Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet by Donald R. Prothero.
• For University of Toronto Press, Mireille F. Ghoussoub, co-author of The Story of CO2, talks about university press publishing.
• University of Toronto Press Journals shares a post by Lacey Cranston, managing editor of Journal of Military Veteran and Family Health.
• Vanderbilt University Press posts about Between the Rocks and the Stars, presenting scientific research for a general audience.
• Columbia University Press author Ashley Juavinett offers practical advice to those looking to enter a career in neuroscience.

Happy University Press Week 2020! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great offerings that illuminate how university presses raise up local voices:

• For Temple University Press, the editors of the Pennsylvania History series discuss regional collaboration.
• Fordham University Press features a post by Mathew Spady, author of The Neighborhood Manhattan Forgot.
• Syracuse University Press‘s regional acquisitions editor writes about their regional titles.
• University of California Press focuses on their recent titles in the A People’s Guide series about social justice and lesser known histories.
• Manchester University Press interviews local authors on their forthcoming book, Manchester.
• University Press of Kansas highlights how they work with a local bookstore to promote regional titles and authors.
• Penn State University Press hosts a Q&A with acqusitions editor Kathryn Yahner about their regional imprint.
• University of Nebraska Press has a guest post from James J. Kimble, author of the 2021 One Book One Nebraska selection.
• The American School of Classical Study at Athens discusses Vrysaki: A Neighborhood Lost in Search of the Athenian Agora.
• University of Toronto Press feature Another Story bookshop’s manager and events coordinator on the importance of supporting UPs.
• For University of Toronto Press Journals, Reuben Rose-Redwood, special edition editor Cartographica, talks about decolonizing the map.
• University of Virginia Press author Tom Kapsidelis reflects on the evolution of gun-safety advocacy since the Virginia Tech massacre.
• Eurospan will also provide an overview of UP Week for those who might not know about it and cover a few of the reading list books from UPs that they distribute.

Happy University Press Week 2020! This year’s theme, Raise UP, highlights the role that the university press community plays in elevating authors, subjects, and whole disciplines, bringing new perspectives, ideas, and voices to readers around the globe. Today on the blog tour, visit these great offerings that illuminate how university presses highlight creative voices:

• Northwestern University Press highlights Art Is Everything by Yxta Maya Murray.
• Notre Dame University Press interviews colleagues about the value of university press publishing.
• University of Michigan Press illuminates voices in the music and performance studies spaces in new and exciting ways.
• University of Athabasca Press shares the importance of publishing creative work alongside scholarly monographs.
• For University of Toronto Press, Charlotte Corden writes about the creative process involved in illustrating the book Light in Dark Times.
• Bristol University Press features author Rob Kitchin discussing research creation and creative practice in critical data studies.
• On Bucknell University Press‘s blog, Kevin Cope shares creative approaches to studying and writing about 18th-century literature.
• University of Toronto Press Journals guest blogger Thalia Gonzalez Kane talks about creative production in theatre during the pandemic.
• UBC Press hosts a Q&A with Gerilee McBride about the design behind their open-access book, It’s All Good.

Advisory committees and editorial boards play a key role in university press publishing. At the University of Wisconsin Press, the Press Committee is the guarantor of the press’s imprint, providing final oversight of the peer review process. Their discussions, comments, and questions produce valuable insights, critiques, and guidance to the press editors and director for current and future projects.

For University Press Week 2020, we are highlighting the voices of eight Press Committee members who bring unique new perspectives and ideas to the publishing process.

How do your academic discipline and experiences aid you as a member of the committee?

Anthony Cerulli: I specialize in the study of religion and medical humanities, with an area studies focus on South Asia. This background has helped me assess a wide range of manuscripts that come before the committee that contribute to these areas. I am also hopeful that I offer a helpful outsider’s view on work outside of my areas of expertise, such as the many works of fiction and manuscripts in European Studies.

Kathryn Ciancia: As academics, we know that writing, revising, and editing are processes that both take time and benefit from multiple perspectives. Having a team of people from different disciplines involved in a book can help to make it appealing to as wide a readership as possible.

Nan Enstad: My training and my career have been very interdisciplinary, crossing humanities and social sciences, which not only helps me understand the basis of more books being considered for publication for the press but also helps me understand disciplinary differences and boundaries. In graduate school, I gained training in history, African American studies, feminist studies, and cultural studies, focusing my work on people’s uses of cultural texts including film, popular fiction, and popular fashion. More recently, I’ve moved into Community and Environmental Sociology and study global capitalism, agriculture, labor, and food systems.

Kathryn McGarr: I enjoy being able to draw on my historical training and even simply my experiences as a critical reader to ask questions of the books we review and understand their contributions to their own conversations.

Sara McKinnon: I examine political rhetoric and communication about issues of violence, displacement, gender/sexuality, and human rights with a focus on the Americas. The University of Wisconsin Press has strong holdings in studies of Latin America and the Caribbean, human rights, and LGBT Studies. I apply my expertise in these subjects to assess the strength of the critical projects developed in the manuscripts we consider.

Nandini Pandey: We classics scholars call ourselves philologists—lovers of words. I love applying my love of words, my training in close reading, and my interest in meaning-making within a broader cultural context to my work on the UW Press Committee.

David Pavelich: My career has been built in academic libraries around the country, so I’ve been working with all kinds of books, journals, and other publications for years. Librarians are often generalists, so we take a broad view, and we’re naturally curious about lots of disciplines. As someone who is somewhat separated from academic debates, rivalries, and specializations, I think I bring an objectivity to the committee.

Porter Shreve: I’m a novelist, short story writer and essayist, and I direct the Creative Writing Program at UW, so I tend to lend my voice most often when the committee discusses creative projects. I’ve been very impressed with the range and quality of short story collections, novels and memoirs that have come before the committee. I’m also a screener for the Brittingham and Pollack Prizes in Poetry, which is one of the most respected university press book prizes in the country.

What do you find most fascinating about your role on the press committee?

Anthony Cerulli: I have written one book and recently went through peer review and contract negotiations for another one. Work on the Faculty Committee has opened my eyes to what happens on the press’s end of the book publication process, which, until my service on this committee, had been a little unclear to me. It’s wonderful to learn firsthand just how hard the editors and press’s staff work with authors, each other, and the faculty committee at UW Press, and I’m hopeful operations at most other university presses function this way, too.

Kathryn Ciancia: I’ve just been through the process of publishing my first book, so it’s been really enlightening to see things from the other perspective—that of a press. Plus, it’s just great fun to talk about books, including those in fields far outside of my own academic training, with a group of people who enjoy reading as much as I do!

Nan Enstad: On the press committee, I enjoy hearing about the editorial process and hearing others on the board respond to the topics at hand. I also enjoy reading the books UW Press is publishing!

Kathryn McGarr: Being on the Press Committee gives me a fantastic chance to read literature outside my discipline and enjoy works I normally would not have come across, from collections of short stories to histories of the Irish diaspora.

Sara McKinnon: It is so interesting to get a backstage view of the process of book making. I didn’t understand how much editors serve as advocates for the writers they work with, and just how many eyes are on a book before it goes into production. This experience on the board will undoubtedly shape how I develop my own future book projects and how I mentor colleagues and students who endeavor to publish their work.

Nandini Pandey: This is one of my most fulfilling and fascinating service commitments because it gives me an inside scoop into breaking ideas and trends in other fields, plus insight into things that affect every academic: the production of knowledge, the review and editing process, and the publishing industry. Through the press’s kaleidoscopic range of authors and projects, I get to learn about ideas, cultures, and disciplines that I’d otherwise rarely encounter in my ordinary scholarly life. So my work here redeems the joy in reading and love of imaginative travel that brought me into classics and academia in the first place.

David Pavelich: As a librarian, I’ve worked for years to acquire and provide access to university press books and journals, but I never had the opportunity to learn about university presses themselves. This has been a unique learning experience for me, a really exceptional look into the world of publishing. I’ve gained new insights into questions like, How does the move to e-books impact university presses? Or, How will a greater reliance on shared library collections impact university presses? Of course, it’s also been fascinating to see the results of new research before anyone else. The diversity of disciplines and subjects that the press publishes shows scholars exploring international archives, oral histories, and quantitative data. Librarians like me love to learn about scholars’ research methods and adventures.

Porter Shreve: As someone who submits manuscripts to presses and journals all the time and advises students about when and where to send out their own work, it’s been very helpful to understand the process from the publishing side. Creative Writing programs have such a focus on craft and technique that it’s useful for me to see some of the inner workings of marketing and editorial so my students have a better sense of what happens between the submission and publication of a book.

Happy University Press Week 2019! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great university press offerings that illuminate the role of university presses in moving national and international conversations forward on critical and complex issues:

• Beacon Press sits down for a Q&A with Peter Jan Honigsberg, author of A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantánamo.
• Bucknell University Press offers a guest post from author Jason Farr, author of Novel Bodies: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteentgh-Century British Literature.
• Columbia University Press shares a guest blog post from Elizabeth Segal on how social empathy can help you become a more compassionate person.
• Penn State University Press editor-in-chief discusses how their Graphic Medicine series can catalyze the practice of compassion.
• University of Illinois Press features their new Transformations series, radically committed to transformative approaches to knowledge production and social justice.
• University of Nebraska Press includes an excerpt on compassion from The Heart of Torah by Rabbi Shai Held.
• University of South Carolina Press quotes from Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement about the importance of inclusivity and support within a diverse queer community.
• University of Toronto Press acquiring editor Natalie Fingerhut will delve into their new imprint, New Jewish Press, exploring the importance of compassion and empathy.
• University of Washington Press‘s M’Bilia Meekers and Julie Fergus have a conversation about the intersections between compassion, emotional intelligence, and marketing university press books.

Happy University Press Week 2019! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great university press offerings that illuminate the role of university presses in moving national and international conversations forward on critical and complex issues:

• Athabasca University Press shares three books that offer tools for building and sustaining community.
• Columbia University Press reviews eight titles about New York City communities.
• Georgetown University Press explores their new mission statement and the importance of local and global communities of readers.
• Johns Hopkins University Press writes about Lawrence Brown’s forthcoming The Black Butterfly: Why We Must Make Black Neighborhoods Matter and considers how scholarly publishing can be a form of activism.
• MIT Press talks about how the MIT Press Bookstore uniquely sits at the intersection of publishing, scholarship, authors, and community.
• Princeton University Press highlights some of the new ways Princeton University Press has focused on community building.
• Syracuse University Press features a guest post from Sean Kirst, the bestselling author of The Soul of Central New York.
• Temple University Press showcases their new book, Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, and how it fostered community building.
• University of Michigan Press posts on how they have been creating and developing community around digital humanities scholarship which needs engagement from authors, readers, publishers, and libraries.
• University of Nebraska Press author Katya Cengel writes on how learning & telling the stories of others can build community.
• University of North Carolina Press hosts a Q&A with Lana Dee Povitz, author of Stirrings: How Activist New Yorkers Ignited a Movement for Food Justice.
• University of Toronto Press discusses building a community for the Journal of Scholarly Publishing as part of its 50th anniversary.
• University Press of Kansas describes working with local companies to increase awareness of the press and support independent breweries, bookstores, shops and a new literary festival.
• Vanderbilt University Press looks at a local organization that they are partnering with—the Nashville Adult Literacy Council—and the ways it actively builds a community of learners and volunteers.

Happy University Press Week 2019! Continue the blog tour by visiting these great university press offerings that illuminate the role of university presses in moving national and international conversations forward on critical and complex issues:

• Bucknell University Press highlights a guest post by Tim Wenzell on why ecocriticism makes us better stewards of nature.
• Columbia University Press shares tips from the author of Live Sustainably Now about tips to decreasing your carbon footprint.
• Duke University Press hosts a round table to answer the a question about one thing that more people need to understand about the current global climate crisis.
• Oregon State University Press author Marcy Cottrell Houle discusses the conservationists and activists who have been instrumental in preserving Oregon’s natural treasures.
• University of California Press posts an excerpt from Sarah Jaquette Ray’s forthcoming book, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety.
• University of Minnesota Press previews Red Gold by Jennifer Telesca, on the managed extinction of the giant bluefin tuna.
• University of Pittsburgh Press author Patricia Demarco has written about four simple ways that every person can become an environmental steward.
• University of South Carolina Press features photos from the authors of Carolina Bays about preservation of these unique ecological systems.
• University of Toronto Press sales rep Alex Keys will discuss the ways in which he is able to merge his job with his desire to be a better steward for the environment.
• University Press of Mississippi presents an essay from Jessica H. Schexnayder, author of Fragile Grounds: Louisiana’s Endangered Cemeteries.
• Yale University Press talks to authors connected with A Better Planet about actionable steps to help the environment.