FAQ

Modern Language Initiative (MLI)

An Andrew W. Mellon-funded collaborative between Fordham University Press, University of California Press (FlashPoints series), University of Pennsylvania Press, University of Virginia Press, and University of Washington Press.

What sorts of books will appear as part of the MLI?
The presses collaborating in the MLI publish scholarship by first authors writing in English about linguistic cultural productions in languages other than English. This includes all types of literature, as well as other verbal productions such as rhetoric and film, in addition to performance, popular culture, and any other form employing language.

Why is this important?
Modern language departments, in which scholarship on linguistic cultural productions in languages other than English is primarily based, develop, preserve, and transmit the cultural knowledge and linguistic competence necessary for understanding other cultures. Yet there has been a dramatic reduction in publishing opportunities in foreign languages and literatures at a time when enrollments in foreign languages and interest in foreign cultures is greater than it has been in many years. We hope to change this by publishing quality scholarship in these areas.

How does the collaboration work?
Each press applies its own policies for acquisition, review, approval, revision, and development, at which point the projects are turned over to an outside managing editor for copyediting and production. All authors receive a standard royalty advance of $1,000.

Marketing efforts are also coordinated as a group. Joint marketing provides visibility both for these fields in themselves and for the individual books. Because of our collaborative work, can actively and effectively reach new communities of scholars, take new risks, and work more energetically to stimulate demand and attention to these new, outstanding works. We place ads as a collective group, share publicity, and ensure books are well-represented at major conferences.

What are each press’s strengths and specialties?
Fordham. Fordham Press books are characterized by virtuoso close reading in combination with theoretical and interdisciplinary ambition and a well-articulated grasp of the specific ways larger questions register in cultural objects—not just as themes, but in their very makeup and possibility. Interests in media and material culture are also reflected in our list, as is a concern with poetics, especially in the new series Verbal Art: Studies in Poetics. The intersections between philosophy, religion, and aesthetic production have long been a special focus for Fordham. Books are judged on how well they formulate and develop theoretical or philosophical questions and what they do with the issues of reading and language as such, without restriction to any particular language. Contact Helen Tartar, Editorial Director (tartar@fordham.edu). http://www.fordhampress.com/

California. The University of California Press has planned and launched the FlashPoints Series in Literary Studies. The series seeks to publish books that consider literature beyond strictly national and disciplinary frameworks, distinguished by both their historical grounding and their theoretical and conceptual strength. The series is interested in how literature contributes to forming new constellations of culture and history and in how such formations function critically and politically in the present. All FlashPoints books appear both in well-designed printed copies and in open-access versions accessible through the World Wide Web. Contact Edward Dimendberg, Coordinator, FlashPoints Editorial Group (FlashPoints@ucpress.edu). http://www.ucpress.edu/

Pennsylvania. The University of Pennsylvania Press has long-established lists in interdisciplinary and comparative literary studies from the medieval to the modern, with especial strengths in the earlier periods. Its Material Texts series explores cultural technologies of communication—books, manuscripts, scrolls, films, graffiti, the actor’s voice—with particular attention to the ways that the specific material forms in which linguistic communications are cast affect their meaning; books in the Middle Ages series examine the vernacular literatures of the Latin West in a broader Mediterranean and multicultural setting; the Jewish Cultures and Contexts series includes works that deal with the expression of Jewish identity through dominant and minority languages. Contact Jerome Singerman, Senior Humanities Editor (singerma@pobox.upenn.edu). http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/

Virginia. As the publisher of a long-standing translation series in francophone literature from the Caribbean and Africa, Virginia welcomes studies of these literatures that demand knowledge of French. Similarly, the Press has an established series in Caribbean cultural studies and welcomes work that demands knowledge of the multiple languages in that region—not only French but also Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. Contact Cathie Brettschneider, Humanities Editor (cib8b@virginia.edu). http://www.upress.virginia.edu

Washington. The University of Washington Press’s publications in literary studies cover a range of world literatures studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The Literary Conjugations series investigates literary artifacts in their cultural and historical environments to explore how literary production extends into, influences, and refracts multiple domains of intellectual and cultural life. The Press also publishes studies of Asian (especially Chinese), Scandinavian, Middle Eastern, and other literatures. Contact Lorri Hagman, Executive Editor (lhagman@u.washington.edu). www.washington.edu/uwpress