The Texas Bookshelf: New Ways to Share Scholarship

In the spirit of partnership that pervades the university press community, the University of Texas Press and 36 other presses unite for the AAUP’s second annual blog tour during University Press Week. The tour highlights the value of university presses and the contributions they make to scholarship and our society.

Schedule your week's reading with the complete blog tour schedule here: http://bit.ly/HjQX7n.


Today's theme is 'The Future of Scholarly Communication,' and our Assistant Editor-in-Chief Robert Devens suggests that this future will be built on relationships closer to home:

The future of scholarly communication certainly depends upon looking ever outward, whether it be toward international markets, new modes of collaboration between far-flung research teams, or the formal and technological possibilities of the book itself. I’ve been thinking a lot lately, however, about the exciting opportunities much closer to home. It’s been nearly a year since I arrived in Austin on a 70-degree January day, the rock salt of Chicago still caked on the sides of my shoes, and barely a week has passed without some striking example of the importance and value of strong campus partnerships.

Just a few months ago we announced the Texas Bookshelf, our broadest campus initiative to date. The Bookshelf gathers fifteen scholars from many of the university’s top departments—including American studies, architecture, anthropology, film, history, journalism, and theatre—as well as from UT-Austin institutions such as the Michener Center for Writers, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Blanton Museum of Art. Each of the participants will take on some aspect of the state’s history and culture, and the result will be new bodies of knowledge and interpretations of Texas music, business, race relations, and much else. Though the local components of this project are my focus here, the books in the Texas Bookshelf will be anything but narrow regional histories: most striking about the various book proposals is their stress on the movement of people, culture, and ideas into and out of the state.

The Texas Bookshelf has already benefited the Press in many ways: we have signed new projects by UT scholars who were not previously on our list; we have received considerable support from both the university and private donors; and we have enjoyed a lot of positive publicity on campus, regionally, and nationally. Project participants, meanwhile, are developing their own collaborative approaches. It has been particularly gratifying to see scholars who did not previously know one another sharing information and ideas for their respective books. In coming months, we will be arranging more informal meetings of participants, which will eventually include presentations of work in progress and visits from staff at local archives.

Meanwhile, the development of the Bookshelf promises to have many benefits for the broader community. For instance, university reporters and publicity staff have expressed an interest in joining authors on local research field trips, in order to produce short “making of” pieces along the way, and we hope to sponsor large public forums with participating authors as well. The Bookshelf will be supported by a companion website that will highlight and connect to the rich archives and collections on campus. As well, we are planning special programming and public events in conjunction with the publication of each book for the both the university and larger Austin community. This is just a sampling of the opportunities for scholarly communication before publication! The books themselves will begin appearing in 2017, when we will publish Stephen Harrigan’s narrative history of the state of Texas, and will continue to come out over the following four or five years. By that point, I expect, we will be disseminating the fruits of our authors’ research in all sorts of new ways that have yet to be developed.

—Robert Devens, Assistant Editor-in-Chief

Blog Tour next stops:

• Duke University Press 
• Harvard University Press
• Stanford University Press
• Temple University Press
• University of Minnesota Press
• University of Virginia Press

Announcing a Major Publishing Initiative: The Texas Bookshelf

The University of Texas Press announces a major new initiative unprecedented in publishing—The Texas Bookshelf. This project will be the most ambitious and comprehensive publishing endeavor about the culture and history of one state ever undertaken. The Texas Bookshelf will comprise sixteen books and a companion website launching in 2017, all to be written by the distinguished faculty at The University of Texas at Austin. The first book will be a new full-length history of Texas, followed by fifteen books released over five years on a range of Texas subjects—politics, music, film, business, architecture, and sports, among many others. (Authors and subjects listed below)

The Texas Bookshelf authors.
Photo by Michael O’Brien (Hard Ground, 2011)

John Steinbeck wrote in his 1962 book Travels with Charley: In Search of America, “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.” Texas has long been a source of international fascination for writers, thinkers, musicians, artists, and innovators alike. This vast and varied state occupies a unique and sometimes controversial place in conversations about our nation’s cultural, economic, and political history, yet at the same time embodies something essential about the American experience. Today’s Texas, like America itself, is vital and diverse, a place whose rich heritage and Wild West romanticism are constantly being recombined with its modern entrepreneurial spirit, reflected in its personalities and national politicians—including three U.S. presidents—and the global boom industries of film, music, high tech, energy, and the growing sustainability movement. 

Drawing on the state’s brightest writers, scholars, and intellectuals, the engagingly written narratives of the Texas Bookshelf will reveal the many fascinating stories that have played out in Texas from pre-Columbian times to the twenty-first century.

Director of Princeton University Press Peter Dougherty calls the project “inspired” and says, “The Bookshelf is ambitious in aim, authoritative in authorship, and panoramic in scope. I think it brilliantly merges the resources of the University of Texas with a vision as big as Texas itself. The Bookshelf sets a new standard and establishes a new genre for university presses and publishers everywhere.”