Search Results for: Black

As Black History Month comes to a close, continue to celebrate, learn, and amplify Black stories. The Bucknell Press continues to partner with the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures by publishing the  Griot Project Book Series, an interdisciplinary series of “monographs, collections of essays, and poetry exploring the aesthetics, art, history, and culture of African America and the African diaspora.” 

The Griot Project Book Series has published seven fantastic books, including Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2021) by Shanee Stepakoff. The text is a moving collection of poetry drawn from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown. The Bucknell Press recently published a Q&A with the author about her process and the art of listening. While the series continues to grow, the Bucknell Press continues to support the events and programs coordinated by the Griot Institute that occur throughout the year. 

Beyond the Griot Book series, the Press recently published two independent titles that align fruitfully with the Griot mission as well as the celebration of Black History Month: Challenging the Black Atlantic: The New World Novels of Zapata Olivella and Gonçalves by John T. Maddox IV and Mayaya Rising: Black Female Icons in Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture by Dawn Duke.

In Challenging the Black Atlantic, John T. Maddox IV, an assistant professor of Spanish and African American studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, analyzes how the historical novels of Manuel Zapata Olivella and Ana Maria Gonçalves map black journeys from Africa to the Americas in a way that challenges the Black Atlantic paradigm that has become synonymous with cosmopolitan African diaspora studies. Unlike Paul Gilroy, who coined the term and based it on W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness, Zapata, in Changó el gran putas (1983), creates an empowering mythology that reframes black resistance in Colombia, Haiti, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. In Um defeito de cor (2006), Gonçalves imagines the survival strategies of a legendary woman said to be the mother of black abolitionist poet Luís Gama and a conspirator in an African Muslim–⁠led revolt in Brazil’s “Black Rome.” These novels show differing visions of revolution, black community, femininity, sexuality, and captivity. They skillfully reveal how events preceding the UNESCO Decade of Afro-Descent (2015–2024) alter our understanding of Afro-⁠Latin America as it gains increased visibility. 

“Maddox offers us a refreshingly provocative revision of Black Atlantic theory and African diasporic authorship across Luso-Hispanic communities. His insightful readings will further enrich our understanding of the complex and nonlinear facets of African diasporic Blackness, Black Atlantic religious traditions, and Black women in impactful, new ways.”

—Nick Jones, author of Staging Habla de Negros

“John Maddox’s Challenging the Black Atlantic is as monumental as the historical sagas the book studies. . . . Originally conceived, meticulously researched, and well written and argued, the book is an intellectually sophisticated interdisciplinary study that will certainly leave its vital mark in the field of Afro-diaspora studies for years to come. A must read!”

—Emanuelle Oliveira-Monte, author of Writing Identity: The Politics of Contemporary Afro-Brazilian Literature

Mayaya Rising: Black Female Icons in Latin American and Caribbean Literature and Culture by Dawn Duke, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, re-centers previously overlooked black heroines of Latin America and the Caribbean. In answer to the historical dearth of models of African ancestry in the region, Mayaya Rising explores and celebrates the work of writers who intentionally center powerful female cultural archetypes. In this inventive analysis, Duke proposes three case studies and a corresponding womanist methodology through which to study and rediscover these figures. The musical Cuban-Dominican sisters and former slaves Teodora and Micaela Ginés inspired Aida Cartagena Portalatin’s epic poem Yania tierra; the Nicaraguan matriarch of the May Pole, “Miss Lizzie,” figures prominently in four anthologies from the country’s Bluefields region; and the iconic palenqueras of Cartagena, Colombia are magnified in the work of poets María Teresa Ramírez Neiva and Mirian Díaz Pérez. In elevating these figures and foregrounding these works, Duke restores and repairs the scholarly record.

“Dawn Duke’s study of black women writers in the Hispanic Caribbean—its continental components included—breaks important new ground. Its intersectional stress on race and gender illuminates the path of authors who draw strength from feminist and anti-racist legacies owed to iconic ancestresses. The cultural and linguistic diversity of this literary corpus pulverizes homogenizing assumptions about ‘Spanish American’ literature.”
—Silvio Torres-Saillant, coauthor of The Once and Future Muse: The Poetry and Poetics of Rhina P. Espaillat

“[A] carefully detailed and focused discussion of Afro-Latina/Caribbean women writers from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Colombia. Duke discusses strategies of resistance, recuperation of memory, and rewritings of history, centering her reading of Afro-diasporic women’s literature transversally within Hispanic Caribbean and Latin American Literature Studies. It is a much-needed repositioning . . . ‘Enhorabuena,’ Dawn Duke. As an Afro-Boricua writer, I celebrate Mayaya Rising. Latin American and Caribbean Literary Studies need more books like this.”
—Mayra Santos-Febres, author of La amante de Gardel

Celebrate and learn during Black History Month with texts from the Griot Project Book Series, an interdisciplinary series published in association with the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures. 

A griot is a central figure in West African cultures that historically held many functions, including community historian, cultural critic, indigenous artist and collective spokesperson. At Bucknell University, the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures provides faculty and students intellectual and creative engagement with the interdisciplinary investigation of the cultures, histories, narratives, peoples, geographies and arts of Africa and the African diaspora. 

Bucknell University Press is honored to extend the Griot Institute’s mission by publishing monographs, collections of essays, and poetry exploring the aesthetics, art, history, and culture of African America and the African diaspora. “In bringing out new creative and scholarly work that complements the Griot Institute’s programming, we honor the vision of founding series editor Carmen Gillespie,” says Suzanne Guiod, Bucknell University Press Director.

Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone

by Shanee Stepakoff

Derived from public testimonies at a UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Freetown, this remarkable poetry collection aims to breathe new life into the records of Sierra Leone’s civil war, delicately extracting heartbreaking human stories from the morass of legal jargon. By rendering selected trial transcripts in poetic form, Shanee Stepakoff finds a novel way to communicate not only the suffering of Sierra Leone’s people, but also their courage, dignity, and resilience. Her use of innovative literary techniques helps to ensure that the voices of survivors are not forgotten, but rather heard across the world. 
 
This volume also includes an introduction that explores how the genre of “found poetry” can serve as a uniquely powerful means through which writers may bear witness to atrocity. This book’s unforgettable excavation and shaping of survivor testimonies opens new possibilities for speaking about the unspeakable.

African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity

Edited by Sharrell D. Luckett

Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S. The essays in African American Arts: Activism, Aesthetics, and Futurity engage readers in critical conversations by activists, scholars, and artists reflecting on national and transnational legacies of African American activism as an element of artistic practice, particularly as they concern artistic expression and race relations, and the intersections of creative processes with economic, sociological, and psychological inequalities.

Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella

by Frieda Ekotto

Don’t Whisper Too Much was the first work of fiction by an African writer to present love stories between African women in a positive light. Bona Mbella is the second. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay, African women, Ekotto comments upon larger issues that affect these women, including Africa as a post-colonial space, the circulation of knowledge, and the question of who writes history. In recounting the beauty and complexity of relationships between women who love women, Ekotto inscribes these stories within African history, both past and present. Don’t Whisper Too Much follows young village girl Ada’s quest to write her story on her own terms, outside of heteronormative history. Bona Mbella focuses upon the life of a young woman from a poor neighborhood in an African megalopolis. And “Panè,” a love story, brings the many themes from Don’t Whisper Too Much and Bona Mbella together as it explores how emotional and sexual connections between women have the power to transform, even in the face of great humiliation and suffering. Each story in the collection addresses how female sexuality is often marked by violence, and yet is also a place for emotional connection, pleasure and agency.

Postracial America?: An Interdisciplinary Study

Edited by Vincent L. Stephens and Anthony Stewart

The concept of a “postracial” America —the dream of a nation beyond race — has attracted much attention over the course of the presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that this idea is peculiar to the contemporary moment alone. Postracial America? An Interdisciplinary Study attempts to broaden the application of this idea by situating it in contexts that demonstrate how the idea of the postracial has been with America since its founding and will continue to be long after the Obama administration’s term ends. The chapters in this volume explore the idea of the postracial in the United States through a variety of critical lenses, including film studies; literature; aesthetics and conceptual thinking; politics; media representations; race in relation to gender, identity, and sexuality; and personal experiences. Through this diverse interdisciplinary exploration, this collection skeptically weighs the implications of holding up a postracial culture as an admirable goal for the United States.

In Media Res: Race, Identity, and Pop Culture in the Twenty-First Century

Edited by James Braxton Peterson

In Media Res is a manifold collection that reflects the intersectional qualities of university programming in the twenty-first century. Taking race, gender, and popular culture as its central thematic subjects, the volume collects academic essays, speeches, poems, and creative works that critically engage a wide range of issues, including American imperialism, racial and gender discrimination, the globalization of culture, and the limitations of our new multimedia world. This diverse assortment of works by scholars, activists, and artists models the complex ways that we must engage university students, faculty, staff, and administration in a moment where so many of us are confounded by the “in medias res” nature of our interface with the world in the current moment. Featuring contributions from Imani Perry, Michael Eric Dyson, Suheir Hammad, John Jennings, and Adam Mansbach, In Media Res is a primer for academic inquiry into popular culture; American studies; critical media literacy; women, gender, and sexuality studies; and Africana studies. 

Venus of Khala-Kanti

By Angèle Kingué, Translated by Christine Schwartz Hartley

Venus of Khala-Kanti is a tale of life-altering loss and mystical recovery. Set in an imaginary West African village that becomes a charming cul-de-sac, the unintended consequence of a national roadwork project gone awry, the story follows characters drawn with humor, irony, and empathy. The heart of the story beats with the laughter and tears of three women. Having faced incredible hardship, they come together to build their lives anew, armed with the age-old spirit of human resilience, understanding, and tenderness. Tapping into the very soil of Khala-Kanti, Bella, Assumta, and Clarisse construct spaces, both internal and external, where they and others can rejuvenate their bodies, minds, and spirits. They build the Good Hope Center, which embraces both the physical and the mystical landscape of the story. The Center fuels the restoration and growth of the village’s inhabitants, and offers sanctuary for those who visit and those who stay. 

Catastrophic Bliss

By Myronn Hardy

Catastrophic Bliss contemplates the longing to understand connections and disconnections within a world ever more fragmented yet interdependent. With allusions to Dante, Stevie Wonder, Fernando Pessoa, Persephone and Marianne Moore, these poems move from the tumultuous to the sublime: a pit bull killing an invading thief, two people on a New York City subway playing chess, Billy Eckstine recording in Rio de Janeiro, to an imagined Barack Obama writing poems to his father. Myronn Hardy’s third collection comprises war, place, love, and history all yearning to be reconciled.

Toni Morrison: Forty Years in The Clearing

Edited by Carmen Gillespie

Toni Morrison: Forty Years in The Clearing enables audiences/readers, critics, and students to review Morrison’s cultural and literary impacts and to consider the import, and influence of her legacies in her multiple roles as writer, editor, publisher, reader, scholar, artist, and teacher over the last four decades.

Some of the highlights of the collection include contributions from many of the major scholars of Morrison’s canon: as well as art pieces, music, photographs and commentary from poets, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez; novelist, A.J. Verdelle; playwright, Lydia Diamond; composer, Richard Danielpour; photographer, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders; the first published interview with Morrison’s friends from Howard University, Florence Ladd and Mary Wilburn; and commentary from President Barack Obama.

What distinguishes this bookfrom the many other publications that engage Morrison’s work is that the collection is not exclusively a work of critical interpretation or reference. This is the first publication to contextualize and to consider the interdisciplinary, artistic, and intellectual impacts of Toni Morrison using the formal fluidity and dynamism that characterize her work.

Since 1976, February has been designated as Black History Month in the United States (as well as other countries, like Canada and the UK). The month was chosen due to the fact that it coincides with the birthdays of both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, two important abolitionists. Far from just celebrating the end of slavery, Black History Month emphasizes the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans and black culture. It is a recognition of the significant leaders, activists, moments, and achievements related to black history.

The Griot Project Book Series, published in conjunction with Bucknell’s Griot Institute for Africana Studies, produces books related to black history, focusing on scholarly monographs and creative works devoted to the interdisciplinary exploration of the aesthetic, artistic, and cultural products and intellectual currents of historical and contemporary African America and of the African diaspora, using narrative as a thematic and theoretical framework for the selection and execution of its projects.

Please find below a list of some recent Griot publications, as well as other BUP books relevant to Black History Month.

1.) In Media Res: Race, Identity, and Pop Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Edited by James Braxton Peterson)

In Media Res is a manifold collection that reflects the intersectional qualities of university programming in the twenty-first century. Taking race, gender, and popular culture as its central thematic subjects, the volume collects academic essays, speeches, poems, and creative works that critically engage a wide range of issues, including American imperialism, racial and gender discrimination, the globalization of culture, and the limitations of our new multimedia world. This diverse assortment of works by scholars, activists, and artists models the complex ways that we must engage university students, faculty, staff, and administration in a moment where so many of us are confounded by the “in medias res” nature of our interface with the world in the current moment. Featuring contributions from Imani Perry, Michael Eric Dyson, Suheir Hammad, John Jennings, and Adam Mansbach, In Media Res is a primer for academic inquiry into popular culture; American studies; critical media literacy; women, gender, and sexuality studies; and Africana studies.

2.) Venus of Khala-Kanti (By Angèle Kingué)

Venus of Khala-Kanti is a tale of life-altering loss and mystical recovery. Set in an imaginary West African village that becomes a charming cul-de-sac, the unintended consequence of a national roadwork project gone awry, the story follows characters drawn with humor, irony, and empathy. The heart of the story beats with the laughter and tears of three women. Having faced incredible hardship, they come together to build their lives anew, armed with the age-old spirit of human resilience, understanding, and tenderness. Tapping into the very soil of Khala-Kanti, Bella, Assumta, and Clarisse construct spaces, both internal and external, where they and others can rejuvenate their bodies, minds, and spirits. They build the Good Hope Center, which embraces both the physical and the mystical landscape of the story. The Center fuels the restoration and growth of the village’s inhabitants, and offers sanctuary for those who visit and those who stay.

3.) Postracial America?: An Interdisciplinary Study (Edited by Vincent L. Stephens and Anthony Stewart)

The concept of a “postracial” America—the dream of a nation beyond race—has attracted much attention over the course of the presidency of Barack Obama, suggesting that this idea is peculiar to the contemporary moment alone. Postracial America?: An Interdisciplinary Study attempts to broaden the application of this idea by situating it in contexts that demonstrate how the idea of the postracial has been with America since its founding and will continue to be long after the Obama administration’s term ends. The chapters in this volume explore the idea of the postracial in the United States through a variety of critical lenses, including film studies; literature; aesthetics and conceptual thinking; politics; media representations; race in relation to gender, identity, and sexuality; and personal experiences. Through this diverse interdisciplinary exploration, this collection skeptically weighs the implications of holding up a postracial culture as an admirable goal for the United States.

4.) Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella (By Frieda Ekotto)

Don’t Whisper Too Much was the first work of fiction by an African writer to present love stories between African women in a positive light. Bona Mbella is the second. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay, African women, Ekotto comments upon larger issues that affect these women, including Africa as a post-colonial space, the circulation of knowledge, and the question of who writes history. In recounting the beauty and complexity of relationships between women who love women, Ekotto inscribes these stories within African history, both past and present. Don’t Whisper Too Much follows young village girl Ada’s quest to write her story on her own terms, outside of heteronormative history. Bona Mbella focuses upon the life of a young woman from a poor neighborhood in an African megalopolis. And “Panè,” a love story, brings the many themes from Don’t Whisper Too Much and Bona Mbella together as it explores how emotional and sexual connections between women have the power to transform, even in the face of great humiliation and suffering. Each story in the collection addresses how female sexuality is often marked by violence, and yet is also a place for emotional connection, pleasure, and agency.

5.) Uniting Blacks in a Raceless Nation (By Miguel Arnedo-Gómez)

The Cuban writer Nicolás Guillén has traditionally been considered a poet of mestizaje, a term that, whilst denoting racial mixture, also refers to a homogenizing nationalist discourse that proclaims the harmonious nature of Cuban identity. Yet, many aspects of Guillén’s work enhance black Cuban and Afro-Cuban identities. Miguel Arnedo-Gómez explores this paradox in Guillén’s pre-Cuban Revolution writings, placing them alongside contemporaneous intellectual discourses that feigned adherence to the homogenizing ideology whilst upholding black interests. On the basis of links with these and other 1930s Cuban discourses, Arnedo-Gómez shows Guillén’s work to contain a message of black unity aimed at the black middle classes. Furthermore, against a tendency to seek a single authorial consciousness—be it mulatto or based on a North American construction of blackness—Guillén’s prose and poetry are also characterized as a struggle for a viable identity in a socio-culturally heterogeneous society.

Velocipedomania: A Cultural History of the Velocipede in France is a collection that foregrounds the significance of the nineteenth-century French invention that later developed into the modern bicycle. Edited by Corry Cropper, professor of French at Brigham Young University, and Seth Whidden, professor of French literature, Queen’s College, Oxford, the book includes three original source texts translated from French—available for the first time together in English—that explore the cultural significance of the velocipede. This engaging volume explores how the new machine represented cutting-edge technology and gives readers a glimpse into the material culture of France in the late 1860s, while underscoring the machine’s importance to the study of gender, culture, and the history of sport.

Here we speak to the editors about class mobility, transportation, and translation:

Why were you both drawn to studying the velocipede and its parallels to French culture? 
Both of us enjoy cycling—in fact we have cycled together before—so this was a topic that ticked all the boxes for us in terms of our scholarly focus on nineteenth-century France and our interest in the sport.

Throughout the text, you argue that the velocipede becomes a “symbol for economic mobility” that creates a “sense of middle-class national solidarity” (24-25). Can you explain how the wooden wheeled machine became such a symbol, particularly during late Second Empire in France?

The velocipede amazed people because it was new and different. Seeing people zipping around under their own power on two wheels without touching the ground attracted attention. And since the velocipede was a French invention, it served as a source of pride for the entire country. Its very existence implied progress, energy, freedom, and inventiveness. Initially, riding was primarily an upper class hobby, but the velocipede quickly became ubiquitous in Paris and inspired people of different classes to ride. More physical mobility also held the promise of more social mobility: people who couldn’t afford a horse suddenly saw new opportunities.

Would you call the velocipede a modern form of transportation?
We would call it the modern form of transportation. Besides the railroad, no form of transportation changed life more in France than the velocipede and its descendant the bicycle. In fact, it could be argued that globally the bicycle remains the most important form of transportation ever invented; it provides mobility for people from every socioeconomic level in nearly every region on the planet.

Can you speak to the experience of translating Note on Monsieur Michaux’s Velocipede and the Manual of the Velocipede compared to the operetta Dagobert and His Velocipede?¹ While both texts emphasize the influence of the velocipede in French culture, do the different genres communicate that influence to varying extents? 
The Note is more technical in nature, and the original author was more a bureaucrat than a writer. So we found it challenging to translate. But it remains an important piece because it argues for the utility of the velocipede. The operetta, Dagobert and His Velocipede, appeals to a popular audience and is designed to entertain. Since the action is set in the Middle Ages, the velocipede becomes a source of anachronistic humor: we had great fun working on it. The Manual of the Velocipede straddles the two: it features some practical advice alongside arguments in favor of the velocipede’s usefulness, and it ties the velocipede into French history, French literature, and the tradition of gallic humor.

In the introduction, you note Timothée Trimm’s front-page article in Le Petit Journal (July 5, 1868) and his greatest fear that “the velocipede will damage France’s literary reputation” (7). As French professors (as well as translators of these texts), did Trimm’s fear have any merit?
Not really. But it does highlight the fear people have around any new technology while also implying that one of the most central aspects of French identity and pride in the late 1860s was their literary tradition. It might be comparable to an American journalist being afraid that TikTok would destroy Hollywood and the American cinematic tradition.

While your book addresses this question in detail, why, briefly, was the enthusiasm for the velocipede so short-lived? 
The main company that manufactured and promoted the velocipede suffered from infighting and financial problems. Then in 1870, France was lured into a devastating war against Prussia, and in 1871 there was a bloody civil war known as the Paris Commune. All this taken together spelled the end of the fervor for the velocipede in France². But the cultural forms created around the velocipede would help shape how the bicycle was perceived later in the century.

Velocipedomania features forty black and white and six color images, including a number of illustrations of the velocipede that originally appeared in newspapers, musical scores, manuals, and advertisements from the 1860s. It is available for order in paperback, hardback, and ebook.

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[1] This book provides a translation of an operetta, Dagobert and his Velocipede, along with a recording of music
from the work (found here: velocipede.byu.edu)

[2] Significantly, the velocipede played a role during the Commune. In fact, Corry co-authored an article about it in a volume co-edited by Seth

Bucknell University Press is pleased to announce the rollout of a new colophon, debuting with its fall-winter 2022-23 publications. The fresh design features BUP’s name and an icon depicting the recognizable tower atop Bucknell’s beautiful Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library, with its distinctive finials and bison weathervane.

The new branding signals BUP’s “intention to advance and evolve, its commitment to the fields and the specialists whose work we publish, and its pledge to reflect and carry the university’s commitment to intellectual exploration and scholarly excellence worldwide,” according to director Suzanne E. Guiod. “Now in our sixth decade, BUP’s hope is that this new graphic identity will resonate with new generations of authors and readers, and become instantly identifiable for the quality and value of the work it represents.”

The colophon was designed by Adrienne Beaver, Bucknell University Communications Associate Director of Design, who said she aimed for “a clean form to allow for vibrant reproduction when reduced on a book spine.” Beaver selected fonts from the Freight Sans Pro collection, designed by Joshua Darden in 2005. “I find this font family to be clean, modern, and pleasing to the eye. The logo is clear, bold, and contemporary, neither too traditional nor too edgy, an approach I hope will provide great longevity.”

Ghislaine McDayter, Associate Provost for Research and Creative Activity remarked, “As Bucknell University Press continues to evolve as one of the most exciting of the small academic presses in America, this new logo will make it immediately recognizable as a press that remains dedicated to publishing fresh, important new voices in the humanistic fields.”

Replacing the university’s wordmark, which has long stood in as BUP’s logo on book spines and in other branded materials, the new colophon is unique to the Press, symbolizing its clear purpose in the publication and dissemination of innovative research in the humanities.

Prior to the Bucknell wordmark, Bucknell University Press books were branded with the university seal, approved by the university’s board of trustees in April 1849 and depicting the sun, an open book, and waves, meant to symbolize the light of knowledge and education surmounting the storms and turbulence of life.

Internationally distinguished in Iberian, Latin American, Irish and global eighteenth-century studies, Bucknell University Press has been publishing in the arts, humanities, and social sciences for more than 50 years. We proudly collaborate with institutional partners like the Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures and the Samek Art Museum, and with learned societies such as the Goethe Society of North America and the Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society to publish book series. Our newest collaboration is with the Library of Congress Publishing Office.

To learn more about Bucknell University Press and the books we publish, visit www.bucknelluniversitypress.org.

#ReadUP on these 10 noteworthy Bucknell UP titles published in the last 10 years

Bucknell UP’s partnership with Rutgers UP a way for small presses to #KeepUP with the times

Like many citizens of the UP community, Bucknell University Press proudly participates in several collaborative relationships on and off our beautiful Lewisburg, Pennsylvania campus. Locally, we copublish a book series with Bucknell’s Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives and Cultures, celebrating the art, culture, and history of African America and the African diaspora through textbooks, poetry, fiction in translation, and groundbreaking scholarship. Further afield we partner with the Goethe Society of North America on the New Studies in the Age of Goethe book series, and with the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society on their book series, Studies in Eighteenth Century Scotland. We also team with Bucknell’s Bertrand Library to make our new books fully and freely available to the Bucknell campus community through our institutional repository.

But perhaps our most significant collaboration is with a fellow AUPresses member.

In 2017, Bucknell University Press’s then-director Greg Clingham made the vital decision to dissolve BUP’s relationship with commercial academic publisher Rowman & Littlefield in favor of a new partnership with Rutgers University Press for the production, promotion, sale, and distribution of our books and journals. At a time when economies of scale are so critical, particularly to smaller, underresourced publishers trying to do business in the age of powerful conglomerates, partnering with a like-minded, mission-driven university press has brought measurable advantages.

Beginning in the fall of 2018, new Bucknell University Press book projects became fully integrated with the Rutgers University Press workflow from manuscript transmittal to bound book and beyond. Bucknell University Press authors and editors now benefit from the experience of Rutgers UP’s project editors, publicists, designers, and marketing staff, as well as its business relationships with printers, foreign sales agents, and the Chicago Distribution Center. Through Rutgers, Bucknell University Press, which publishes about 20 new books annually, has been able to professionalize its own in-house systems through access to Firebrand’s Title Management bibliographic database, and can retrieve and track granular sales data 24/7 at the touch of a button through the CDC.

Most meaningfully—particularly to our authors!—this partnership allows Bucknell University Press to bring out its books simultaneously in affordably-priced paperback, cloth, and multiple eBook editions for a range of readers. This materially supports our mission to disseminate new scholarship as broadly and accessibly as possible.

Notably, this innovative partnership frees Bucknell University—a small, liberal arts college for which a fifty-year-old university press might seem a luxury—from many of the typical overhead costs (think printing, binding, warehousing, shipping); instead, we can focus efforts and resources on signing and developing exceptional books in the humanities and expanding our editorial list thoughtfully over time.

This collegial relationship has also been a synergistic one. Rutgers University Press director Micah Kleit offers, “We are proud to be Bucknell’s publishing partner. BUP’s books are of the highest scholarly quality, and have added luster to our own list, allowing us to keep company with each other in significant ways, through conferences, domestic and international sales, and through heightened awareness of our programs. Our books speak to each other, and in so doing have made both presses stronger.”

Rutgers UP editorial director Kim Guinta suggests that for the larger press, such a partnership “extends what we can offer our authors—Rutgers’ Latin American studies list tends toward the social sciences, for example, but I can suggest that people with Latin American projects in the humanities talk to Bucknell, thus increasing your pipeline but also highlighting our usefulness to authors.”

She remarks further about the collaboration that, “It’s fun. I’ve enjoyed getting to know the BUP staff, and our willingness to work together and figure out solutions to problems makes us all more connected to the UP world. I really enjoy the camaraderie and the feeling of team-building involved.

“The partnership has also given me a better appreciation for the hurdles small presses face. I think that the way we’re working can relieve some of that pressure of having to go it alone or be taken advantage of. We hope the partnership makes BUP feel instead part of a supportive web of university press publishing.”

It does indeed. Ours is not the only big press/little press collaboration in the UP universe, certainly. That such partnerships among AUPresses members are becoming more common may speak in part to the need for mission-driven university presses to distinguish themselves from commercial academic publishers by—among other things—strategically aligning with their peers. Three years into the Bucknell-Rutgers partnership seems a fitting time to take stock of this successful and mutually beneficial initiative, and to highlight it as a financial and organizational model—at once practical and congenial—that could help to ensure the sustainability of very small presses into the future.