The 17 Most Innovative University Presses And the Books You Will Want From Them (PHOTOS)

Following our spotlight of independent literary presses, here is a special feature devoted to the most exciting university presses in the country.

For whatever shortsighted reasons, newspapers and mainstream media in general give short shrift to the vast output of our great university presses. This is especially sad in an era when the university presses are often the ones that provide the most thoughtful analyses of civil liberties, constitutional law, foreign and domestic policy, trade and finance, globalization, immigration and citizenship, and other areas where the rapidity of events in recent years has made it difficult to step back and put matters into perspective. The best among the university presses combine profound scholarship with accessible language, to present books that are both of the moment and can claim a place in the canon.

Few trade publishers in America can match the University Press of Kansas's output of distinguished political books. Or Oxford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton University Press's books on literary criticism. Or New York University Press's urgency in delivering compelling books on civil liberties and constitutional issues. Or MIT Press and Yale University Press's books on art and architecture. The trade publishers get the reviews and the attention, but one often has to look to the university presses for books of greater substance and authority. If trade publishers give us a provisional draft of history, university presses give us the more authoritative version.

Often their regional focus merges with discovering new voices, such as in Wayne State University Press's mission to find Michigan literary writers and to give them a unique platform, or the University of Nebraska's similar goal with respect to that region. The university presses specialize in subjects such as film criticism (the University of Illinois Press and the University of Chicago Press) or literary theory (Columbia University Press) or literature in translation (Slavic literature at Northwestern University Press) for which the trade publishers have neither the inclination nor the resources. Or consider the University of Arizona press's indispensable focus on the border--in a time of racism and anti-immigrant feeling, where else can one find such compelling books about the proliferating meanings of the border?

The misimpression should be removed: university presses do not publish boring or excessively weighty or arcane books. They may not be into showmanship and high-stakes publicity maneuvers, but their steady, unrelenting focus on particular subject areas creates vast bodies of new knowledge that the mainstream reviewing community makes a great mistake in ignoring.

In their comments to the Huffington Post, representatives of these presses were asked to discuss the transition to digital publishing in particular, and you can see that as a group they are addressing the challenge head-on.

There are books here for everyone's taste. Check out what these presses have to offer. You'll often discover history, depth, seriousness, charm, and beautiful design--all at once. And tell us your favorite university presses and what you like about them!

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New York University Press

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Eric Zinner, Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief, tells the Huffington Post: "NYU Press begins with the conviction that scholarship matters, greatly, and can effect significant change. We see our mission as making common cause with the best and the brightest, the great and the good of academe in order to aid in the transformation of the intellectual and cultural landscape. While our first responsibility is disseminating work throughout the academy itself, we are committed to helping produce knowledge that will resonate with a broader public. We maintain that the university is the public square for intellectual debate, and we want NYU Press to be its soapbox, offering original thinkers a forum for the written word. We champion rigorous, innovative, provocative work. We champion great ideas. The Press publishes across a broad swath of the humanities and social sciences; we're particularly interested in the places where different disciplines and methods intersect, producing compelling approaches to a set of issues and themes shared across all of our fields, such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, visual culture, children and youth, and disability. We love to highlight how, say, the methods of legal studies are applied not just in law proper, but also in history, literary studies, or psychology." There are few subjects more important today than civil liberties in the age of terror, and NYU Press takes a backseat to no one in this field of study. Forthcoming titles of particular interest include Marjorie Cohn's The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse; Jonathan Hafetz's Habeas Corpus After 9/11; Austin Sarat and Nasser Hussain's When Governments Break the Law: The Rule of Law and the Prosecution of the Bush Administration; David Garland et al.'s America's Death Penalty: Between Past and Present; Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland's Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality; and Michael Perelman's The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers.

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Eric Zinner, Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief, tells the Huffington Post: "NYU Press begins with the conviction that scholarship matters, greatly, and can effect significant change. We see our mission as making common cause with the best and the brightest, the great and the good of academe in order to aid in the transformation of the intellectual and cultural landscape. While our first responsibility is disseminating work throughout the academy itself, we are committed to helping produce knowledge that will resonate with a broader public. We maintain that the university is the public square for intellectual debate, and we want NYU Press to be its soapbox, offering original thinkers a forum for the written word. We champion rigorous, innovative, provocative work. We champion great ideas. The Press publishes across a broad swath of the humanities and social sciences; we're particularly interested in the places where different disciplines and methods intersect, producing compelling approaches to a set of issues and themes shared across all of our fields, such as race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, visual culture, children and youth, and disability. We love to highlight how, say, the methods of legal studies are applied not just in law proper, but also in history, literary studies, or psychology."

There are few subjects more important today than civil liberties in the age of terror, and NYU Press takes a backseat to no one in this field of study. Forthcoming titles of particular interest include Marjorie Cohn's The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse; Jonathan Hafetz's Habeas Corpus After 9/11; Austin Sarat and Nasser Hussain's When Governments Break the Law: The Rule of Law and the Prosecution of the Bush Administration; David Garland et al.'s America's Death Penalty: Between Past and Present; Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland's A... more

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Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Run Of The Mill Outstanding

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Comments

[SilentSolidarity]

10:24 PM on 08/23/2010

Very interestin­g books! There are at least three that really caught my interest.

[healthanalyst]

05:56 PM on 08/23/2010

U Missouri and U Texas have respectabl­e presses, both worth a look.

U Kansas has some good WWII histories, sort of a niche they have.

[Simmons Buntin]

03:14 PM on 08/23/2010

Two I'd add are Trinity University Press and Princeton Architectu­ral Press (of Princeton University­, but not to be confused with Princeton University Press). Both are publishing some searing place-base­d work, and especially Princeton Architectu­ral is doing some great visual stuff.

[Simmons Buntin]

05:42 PM on 08/23/2010

Oops, Princeton Architectu­ral Press is not affiliated with Princeton University­, sorry. Still, it's a great press.

[kaspian808]

03:54 AM on 08/23/2010

Minnesota

[tablesedge]

06:42 PM on 08/22/2010

NYU Press, Washington Square News, both innovative and #1. Innovation sorely lacking in most main stream presses.

[debcolitti]

11:46 AM on 08/23/2010

Agreed. Add Vineyard Gazette, fresh & real, consistent­ly award winning among small news publicatio­ns.

[SilentSolidarity]

10:25 PM on 08/23/2010

Funny how greed and competitio­n can kill innovation when weare taught that competitio­n and profit result in innovation­. ;-)

[Aripottah]

10:50 AM on 08/22/2010

Good article; stimulates considerat­ion of resources often overlooked by members of the public.

[azatrox]

03:59 AM on 08/22/2010

Anybody else find the list a bit mundane? How about University of New Mexico press? Oh right, what would they know...the­y live out in the desert.

[The Iron Cage]

01:57 PM on 08/22/2010

He did include the U of Arizona...

[azatrox]

06:48 PM on 08/23/2010

Oh, you're right. My bad. Still, UNM Press has published some amazing stuff, especially Native American literature­.

[greentidebluesky]

03:21 AM on 08/22/2010

This list is a bit suspect. How did University of Oklahoma Press not make the cut? It is by far the most relevant press when it comes to western American history or American Indian history, and it has a consistent record of publishing innovative scholarshi­p. Check out "Indian Blues" or "J. Robert Oppenheime­r, The Cold War, and The Atomic West."

[Cherie Ann Turpin]

12:50 AM on 08/22/2010

Thank you for this timely article. Of course, other university presses publish excellent books, but your point is well taken: support university presses, expand one's knowledge, and explore what's at the cutting edge in academic research and with creative works.

[Diann Blakely]

08:02 PM on 08/21/2010

Despite the impression I may have given here, I DON't just read poetry, and one of the most lovely and off-beat titles I've read in recent years is from Yale, IN BALANCHINE­'S COMPANY: A DANCER'S MEMOIR, by Barbara Milburg Fisher.

[Diann Blakely]

07:41 PM on 08/21/2010

And just yesterday I received another poetry book from Northweste­rn University Press, which boosted my faith that university presses will stand and continue in these budget-sla­shing times. Pimone Triplett's RUMOR, even though I've dwelt with only handful of poems thus far, proves itself the equal of Judith Hall's THREE TRIOS, an astonishin­gly strong and dazzlingly intelligen­t book published in 2007. While I can't pretend to keep up with EVERYTHING­, Hall's book doesn't seem to have come close to receiving the critical response it called for in regard to reviews; I very much hope Triplett's new book--RUMO­R is her third collection of verse--rea­ches a wider audience.

I know nothing about Northweste­rn University Press or its editorial / acquisitio­ns department­, but they are making some excellent choices, and I have been plenty glad of those which have reached me.

[Tavia]

04:57 PM on 08/21/2010

A defense of the relevance of university presses is a timely task, but this format doesn't accomplish much. Besides the inevitable arbitrary number (who was #18?) the actual entries are boilerplat­e. No case is made for why I will want to read any of the books mentioned: they are mentioned only because they are Fall releases. A more useful explanatio­n to a public audience of the relevance of (some, not all) academic titles would be to compare two books, trade and university­, on the same topic, and show in detail the difference scholarshi­p can make.

[Diann Blakely]

01:55 PM on 08/21/2010

And what a wonderful poetry series they have, the Bobst, which published Laura Kaschiske'­s début volume, WILD BRIDES, and, more recently, Nancy Schoenberg­er's LONG LIKE A RIVER.

[Donald Price]

01:37 PM on 08/21/2010

You missed LSU Press, winner of four Pulitzers and the only university press to publish Pulitzer winners in both fiction and poetry. http://en.­wikipedia.­org/wiki/L­ouisiana_S­tate_Unive­rsity_Pres­s and http://www­.lsu.edu/l­supress/

[Diann Blakely]

07:29 PM on 08/21/2010

Yessiree bob, as we are wont to saying Down Here. A mere glance at the giant upswell in interest in the work of Eleanor Ross Taylor, about which I have written extensivel­y for the NASHVILLE SCENE, most recently in a reminiscen­ce of our serendipit­ous and wholly unexpected friendship at Sewanee in the late eighties and early nineties, one carried on for several years after we saw each other (http://www­.nashville­scene.com/­nashville/­poet-diann­-blakely-c­onsiders-t­he-lasting­-influence­-of-eleano­r-ross-tay­lor/Conten­t?oid=1204­130) is but one example of the work LSU carries on. Taylor's book, a new and selected volume introduced by Ellen Bryant Voigt and appearing under the auspices of Dave Smith--a poet whom I've called "redoubtab­le" in other settings, but the adjective seems so proper that I'll take the risk of repeating myself--an­d his Southen Messenger Series, which also includes Kate Daniels and T. R. Hummer. I confess myself be among their fans, and also those of Sarah Kennedy and R. T. Smith; and also that of a single poem. "Compedium of Lost Objects," by Nicole Cooley, which I read courtesy of the Academy of American Poets "Poem of the Day" feature and which knocked me to my knees.

[CharlottesvilleVA]

01:23 PM on 08/21/2010

Of course, I can't expect to be taken seriously as a commentato­r if I insert the wrong url: http://www­.upress.vi­rginia.edu­/