Fall Publishing Symposium

Fall Publishing Symposium

Thursday, November 12, 2020, via Zoom

(Please email huminst@uic.edu for invitation link.)

4:00-4:50 PM  “Getting It Written”

Word by word, a blank page becomes a manuscript, a dissertation becomes a book. How does this transformation occur? How do authors find and create time, inspiration, support, and motivation to write? This practical panel will share strategies from experienced authors in the humanities and social sciences, including advice on overcoming the particular challenges of research and writing in a pandemic.

• Tarini Bedi, associate professor of anthropology, UIC, and author of The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena: Political Matronage in Urbanizing India (SUNY Press, 2016) and (Auto)Biographies and (Auto)Mobilities: Roads, Labor, and Kinship in Mumbai’s Taxi Trade (University of Washington Press, forthcoming)
• Lynn Hudson, associate professor of history, UIC, and author of The Making of ‘Mammy Pleasant': A Black Entrepreneur in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco (University of Illinois Press, 2003) and West of Jim Crow: The Fight against California's Color Line (University of Illinois Press, 2020)
• Ronak K. Kapadia, director of graduate studies & associate professor of gender and women’s studies, UIC, and author of Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press, 2019)
• Chair: Mark Canuel is a professor of English and director of the Institute for the Humanities, and the author of 3 monographs, most recently, Justice, Dissent, and the Sublime (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012)

4:50-5:10        Break

5:10-6:00 PM  “Getting It Published”

You have completed your dissertation, drafted your article, or prepared your book proposal. How do you identify the right publisher and venue for your work? What is the best way to approach an editor? What questions should you ask, and what questions should you be prepared to answer? Three experienced editors share their top tips for authors, with special focus on how to pitch your project and connect with an editor in a virtual environment.

• Debbie Gershenowitz, senior acquisitions editor, University of North Carolina Press
  • areas of acquisition: African American history; the history of slavery, abolition, and freedom; histories of gender, women, and sexualities; histories of U.S. foreign relations and America and the World; military history; Latinx history; and legal history
• Emily Taber, acquisitions editor, MIT Press
  • areas of acquisition: economics, finance, and business
• Daniel Nasset, editor-in-chief, University of Illinois Press
  • areas of acquisition: communication, film and media, sports, Chicago
• Chair: Laurie Matheson, Director, University of Illinois Press

Organized by Laurie Matheson, Director, University of Illinois Press