Writing For Readers

Writing For Readers: Academic Publishing in a Time of Change

18 September 2017 (Monday)
4:00 - 5:30pm
丁香园AV Harbour Centre Room 1410

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There are many differences between research presented in dissertation form and as a scholarly book. As scholars, we are trained to research and write within a field of specialists. Taking a thesis and making it work as a book requires changes in form, style, content, and presumed audience. Subsequent books, which usually begin from scratch, require different kinds of decisions than revising a thesis, yet those choices are rarely addressed. This talk will explore those problems and discuss how to think about writing first and subsequent scholarly books at a time of change in the academy and in publishing.

About the speaker:

Ken Wissoker is the Editorial Director of Duke University Press, acquiring books in anthropology, cultural studies, and social theory; globalization and post-colonial studies; Asian, African, and American studies; music, film and television; race, gender and sexuality; science studies; and other areas in the humanities, social sciences, media, and the arts. He joined the Press as an Acquisitions Editor in 1991; became Editor-in-Chief in 1997; and was named Editorial Director in 2005. In addition to his duties at the Press, he serves as Director of Intellectual Publics at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City.

He has published almost a thousand books which have won over 100 prizes. Among the authors whose books he has published are Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Achille Mbembe, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jack Halberstam, Charles Taylor, Jos茅 David Saldivar, Lisa Lowe, Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi, Arjun Appadurai, Sara Ahmed, Chandra Mohanty, and Cherr铆e Moraga. He has written on publishing for The Chronicle of Higher Education and in Cinema Journal, and writes a column for the Japanese cultural studies journal 鈥�5.鈥� He speaks regularly on publishing at universities in the US and around the world.

Co-sponsored by:
VP Research (VPR)
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) Dean's Office
David See-chai Lam Centre (DLC)
Department of English (ENG)
Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies (GSWS)
Department of Sociology and Anthropology (SA)
Institute for Transpacific Cultural Research (ITCR)