Mellon Grants Awarded for Collaborative Publishing Projects

Multi-Press Collaborations

2009

Archaeology of the Americas Digital Monograph Initiative
Press Participants: University Press of Colorado, Texas A&M University Press, University of Alabama Press, University of Arizona Press, University Press of Florida, and University of Utah Press
A $282,000 one-year planning grant to develop a digital collection of archaeology scholarship on the Americas. The initiative is intended to give scholars and professional archaeologists the ability to review data not commonly found in conventionally published volumes.
http://www.archaeologyoftheamericas.com

Early American Places
Press Participants: University of Georgia Press, NYU Press, and Northern Illinois University Press
The series was announced in late March, with a grant of $648,000 over five years to support the publication of revised dissertations on early North American History. The collaborating presses’ responsibilities are divided geographically.
http://www.earlyamericanplaces.org

E-Book Collaboration Grant
Participating Presses: NYU Press, University of Pennsylvania Press, Temple University Press, and Rutgers University Press
The participating presses were awarded a planning grant to fund research into the feasibility of developing a consortium of university presses to deliver e-books to libraries on a shared platform.

Ethnomusicology Multimedia
Press Participants: Indiana University Press, Kent State University Press, and Temple University Press
The partners have been awarded a five-year implementation grant of $877,000 to develop and publish Ethnomusicology Multimedia (EM), a collaborative series of first books in ethnomusicology to be accompanied by a web-based platform for hosting audio and video materials integral to the authors’ research. The implementation grant follows a one-year $80,000 Mellon planning grant awarded to the three presses in 2008.

First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies
Press Participants: University of Arizona Press, the University of North Carolina Press, the University of Minnesota Press, and Oregon State University Press
The Mellon Foundation awarded a $1-million collaborative grant for the publication of first books in the field of Indigenous Studies. The grant will support junior scholars as they develop their first books and will allow them to participate in a centralized and dedicated marketing effort. The presses aim to publish 40 books during the grant's four-year funding period.
http://www.firstpeoplesnewdirections.org

Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World
Press Participants: University of Illinois Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin Press
Partner participant: American Folklore Society
A grant for the establishment of a new book series that will publish first books in folklore studies.
http://folklorestudies.press.illinois.edu

Modern Language Initiative (MLI)
Press Participants: Fordham University Press, University of California Press (FlashPoints series), University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Virginia Press, and University of Washington Press
In February, the Mellon Foundation awarded a collaborative publishing grant of $1.16 million to the participating presses. The initiative will focus on the publication of scholarly books on the literatures of the non-Anglophone world.
http://www.modernlanguageinitiative.org

2008

American Literatures Initiative (ALI)
Press Participants: New York University Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press
The initiative will publish emerging scholars’ first books in the English-language literatures of Central and North America and the Caribbean. For this project, a shared, centralized, external editorial service will be created to handle all editorial and production aspects of ALI books.
http://www.americanliteratures.org

Slavic Studies
Press Participants: University of Wisconsin Press, Northwestern University Press, and the University of Pittsburgh Press
The initiative will allow the three presses to publish and promote first monographs in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies by junior scholars, helping those scholars in developing their careers by supporting their development as authors and arranging for book tours.
http://www.mellonslavicstudies.org

South Asia across the Disciplines
Participating Presses: Columbia University Press, University of California Press, and University of Chicago Press
The initiative will focus on giving scholars increased access to archival materials, exploring new methods and theories, and foster cross-discipline scholarship that is both broad and deep. The initiative, will build upon the strength of each university’s faculty, appointing Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chicago, history), Sheldon Pollock (Columbia, literature), and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (UCLA, history) as series editors. The aim is to publish six monographs per year, with each press responsible for two series editions.

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Press-Institution Collaborations

Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought
Participating Press: Cornell University Press
Partner Institutions: Cornell University Library and Cornell faculty in the Departments of German Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Music and Philosophy
A new English-language book series covering the literature, culture, criticism and intellectual history of the German-speaking world will be published in electronic format and in short print runs backed up by trade-quality bound books produced on a print-on-demand basis. The innovative cross-campus model involves extensive collaboration between the partners. The full text of many of the Signale books will be available online for free.
http://signale.cornell.edu/

California Studies Initiative
Participating Press: University of California Press
Partner Institutions: UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI), the UC California Studies Consortium (UCCSC), and the California Digital Library (CDL).
The press and its partner institutions received a $722,000 grant to fund a strategic initiative in California Studies). The grant will support the creation of a journal, a working papers collection, and an annual conference in this emerging field.

History of Science Initiative
Participating Press: University of Pittsburgh Press
Partner Institution: University of Pittsburgh Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the Department of History’s World History Center
The press and its university partners have been awarded a five-year, $750,000 grant to pursue a book publishing initiative in the history of science.

Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement
Participating Press: University of North Carolina Press
Partner Institution: UNC Chapel Hill
A three-year grant for the print and digital publication project. Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement seeks to inspire scholarly collaboration and develop new ways of creating and sharing scholarship on the civil rights movement.
https://lcrm.lib.unc.edu/blog/

Quadrant
Participating Press: University of Minnesota Press
Partner Institution: Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota
The partners will receive funding for their interdisciplinary research and publication project, which will create research residencies for scholars and endeavor to publish the fruits of such research. Quadrant will itself be composed of four collaborative groups: Design and Architecture, Environmental Sustainability, Global Cultures, and Health and Society.
http://ias.umn.edu/quadrant.php