[Soasiastudents] Mellon Foundation Grant - South Asia Book Series

[Deepa Banerjee]

FYI


January 30th, 2008 at 10:00 am

Mellon Foundation Grant awarded to Columbia University Press
The Mellon Foundation recently awarded Columbia University Press, the University Press of Chicago, and the University Press of California a grant to commence publication of a major book series covering South Asia. Read the full press release here.Columbia University Press, University of California Press, and the University of Chicago Press announce a new joint publishing effort in South Asian Studies.



Press Release


The University Presses of California, Chicago, and Columbia are pleased to announce that the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a grant to commence publication of a major book series covering South Asia. Titled “South Asia across the Disciplines” the new series aims to publish six monographs per year, in a collaborative effort across all three University Presses with each press publishing two series books per year.
Each press has long-established roots in the field and is based at a university with outstanding South Asia faculty. In recent years, the market for South Asian studies books has declined along with the broader market for academic monographs in many fields, making it increasingly difficult for emerging scholars to get their work published. “South Asia across the Disciplines” will disseminate and promote new scholarship on South Asia by combining the efforts and resources of the three presses.
Jennifer Crewe, Associate Director and Editorial Director of Columbia University Press says “Our three presses have all published in the field of South Asian Studies for many years and developed programs reflecting the strengths of their faculties. But lately, as the sales have declined, it has become almost impossible to recover our costs and maintain our previous level of commitment to the field. This new collaborative venture will allow us to publish books we would otherwise have reluctantly declined and achieve a significant level of visibility for them.” Alan Thomas, Editorial Director for the Humanities and Sciences at the University of Chicago Press, adds that “the Mellon grant will allow our three presses to experiment with a collaborative approach to monograph publishing and at the same time help shape the vital but underserved field of South Asian Studies. By publishing the 
series jointly, we have the potential to reduce costs and quickly achieve a critical mass of new scholarship.”
Major editorial goals of the series will be to open up new archival material to scholars, to explore new theories and methods, and to develop scholarship that is both deep in expertise and broad in appeal across disciplines. To that end, three prominent scholars have agreed to serve as series editors: Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago, history), Sheldon Pollock (Columbia University, literature), and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (UCLA, history). An additional twelve-member editorial board will include senior faculty at the three universities. They will seek to acquire books for the series that cover history, literary studies, philosophy, religion, social or cultural anthropology, and other fields.
All books in the “South Asia across the Disciplines” series will have a common design but will appear under the imprint of one of the three presses. Acquisitions and marketing costs will be shared among the three presses and supported by the Mellon Foundation grant.



Deepa Banerjee
South Asian Studies Librarian
Reference and Research Services
University of Washington Libraries
Phone: 206-685-1433