West Virginia University Press
| Parent company | West Virginia University |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Morgantown, West Virginia |
| Publication types | Books, Academic journals, CDs |
| Imprints | Vandalia Press |
| Official website | www |
West Virginia University Press, sometimes referred to as WVU Press, is a university press that is part of West Virginia University. Founded in the 1960s, WVU Press focuses on topics related to West Virginia and Appalachia, as well as Medieval European Studies and African American Literature. The press has printed a number of books under its fiction imprint, the Vandalia Press, including the first edition of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and a reprint of the novel Crum. WVU Press has also released a music archive of Appalachian musicians and song traditions.
West Virginia University Press is part of the Association of American University Presses.
History
West Virginia University press was founded in the mid-1960s by Robert Munn, Dean of Libraries. It published a number of bibliographies and histories of the coal industry, and a variety of other scholarly works, including the Flora of West Virginia by Earl Core.
In 1999, the University decided to reestablish the WVU Press whose activities had waned over the intervening years. The Press was relocated to within the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, with Dr. Patrick Conner assuming the role of the Director the Press. In reconstituting WVU Press, Conner wrote: "The press shall publish scholarly and creative works on and from West Virginia and the Appalachian Region . . .Through the publication of all such works, West Virginia University Press fulfills part of the Land Grant mission of West Virginia University.”[citation needed]
By August 1999, WVU Press had created a set of operating policies and put in place a peer review and evaluation process. The WVU Press Board was created and held its first board meeting in March 2000. In June 2002, WVU Press successfully applied for admission to the Association of American University Presses. The group began to publish books, music, and journals for the students, scholars, and citizens of West Virginia. After directing WVU Press for nine years, Dr. Conner stepped down, though he remains as an editor for WVU Press’ Medieval European Studies series.
Carrie Mullen was appointed the director of WVU Press in 2008. In early 2009, the press joined the Chicago Distribution Center, run by the University of Chicago Press.
Derek Krissoff has been Director from 2014-present. Krissoff was previously editor in chief at the University of Nebraska Press. His initiatives include the series Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, as well as a number of new titles about energy, resources, and environment in global perspective.
Books
The Press publishes books in scholarly areas including history, natural history, politics, and fine arts.
The people, politics, and history of the state are written about in books such as Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and Politics in West Virginia, and reprints of Charles Henry Ambler’s Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776-1861." West Virginia’s landscape is depicted in books such as Mountain Memories: An Appalachian Sense of Place. The genius of West Virginia artists is in full view in Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist and Early Art and Artists in West Virginia."
Vandalia Press, an imprint of WVU Press, publishes fiction with an emphasis on Appalachian writers. Authors in fiction include Gary Fincke, Laura Long, Marie Manilla, Lee Maynard, Kevin Oderman, Karen Osborn, and Tim Poland. WVU Press has also published books of original poetry by West Virginia Poets Laureate Louise McNeill and Irene McKinney, in addition to an anthology of works by West Virginia writers, 'Back Country,' edited by Irene McKinney.
In music, The WVU Press Sound Archive makes aluminum disc collections of Appalachian music available in compact disc form, including the fiddle music of James Johnson and Edden Hammons, field recordings from southern West Virginian African-Americans, and the gospel, blues, and country-inspired music of Depression-era West Virginia coal miners.
Journals
Education and Treatment of Children
Education and Treatment of Children is a journal for researchers, educators, and clinical practitioners, as well as graduate students and others with a professional interest in the development of children and youth and a mission to improve teaching, training, and treatment effectiveness. The contents include experimental studies, literature reviews, data-based case studies, and book reviews. Education and Treatment of Children is devoted to the dissemination of information concerning the development of services for children and youth. A primary criterion for publication is that material be of direct value to educators and other child care professionals in improving their teaching/training effectiveness.
Essays in Medieval Studies
This is an online-only journal and is available to libraries through Project Muse. Essays in Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary journal of medieval studies. Contents for each volume are selected from papers delivered at the annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association. The annual volume appears in late spring each year and carries articles focused round the conference topic from scholars of both the literature and history of the period. Each volume focuses on the theme or topic of the annual meeting. Recent themes have included children and the family, medieval communities, and emotions in the Middle Ages.
Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review
Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review presents critical commentary and scholarship on both J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction and his academic work in literary and linguistic fields. The founding editors are Douglas A. Anderson (The Annotated Hobbit), Michael D. C. Drout (Beowulf and the Critics), and Verlyn Flieger (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World).
Victorian Poetry
Founded in 1962 to further the aesthetic study of the poetry of the Victorian Period in Britain (1830-1914), Victorian Poetry publishes articles from a range of theoretical and critical angles, including new historicism, feminism, and social and cultural issues. The journal has expanded its purview from the major figures of Victorian England (Tennyson, Browning, the Rossettis, etc.) to poets of all classes and gender identifications in nineteenth-century Britain and the Commonwealth. Victorian Poetry is edited by John B. Lamb and sponsored by the Department of English at West Virginia University.
West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies
West Virginia History, founded in 1939, is a source of scholarship and research on the history of the Mountain State. Now published in a series by the West Virginia University Press, West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies is published twice annually in the spring and fall, covering the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the state and its regional context.
Series
Medieval European Studies
Medieval European Studies represents contemporary developments in the best scholarship in English on the culture and history of Europe throughout the medieval period, which is defined as beginning as early as the establishment of the new pan-European religion, Christianity, in 325 CE at the Nicene Council to the end of the period which may, in Northern Europe, be dated as late as circa 1500 CE. The series publishes original works of scholarly significance, newly edited texts with full textual apparatus where these are not otherwise available, and newly corrected and annotated editions of earlier scholarship of continuing use to scholars and students. All manuscripts selected for inclusion in the series is based on a rigorous peer review by experts in the appropriate sub-fields.
Regenerations
Regenerations: African American Literature and Culture is a new series devoted to reprinting editions of important African American texts that either have fallen out of print or have failed to receive the attention they deserve. Regenerations encourages research that develops and extends the understanding of African American literary and cultural history, while promoting regional and local research that represents the complex dynamics of African American experience.
West Virginia and Appalachia
This series publishes of works on the history and culture of the Mountain State and its region, particularly on its importance as a borderland between empires in the 18th century and between warring sections in the U.S. Civil War era and its vital role in America's industrialization and its "culture wars".
Awards
The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart was a fiction finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West was awarded a Book of the Year Award silver medal in history by ForeWord Magazine, an American Institute of Graphic Arts award, and a Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness award. A bronze medal Independent Publishers Book Award—a competition of over 3,000 total entries from across the world—was awarded to Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster, The Worst Industrial Accident in US History. In 2001 Early Art and Artists in West Virginia won an American Graphic Design Award. Old South, New South, or Down South? won the 2010 Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award. In 2013, two books were awarded a gold medal Independent Publishers Book Award: "Centerville," a novel by Karen Osborn, and "A Natural History of the Central Appalachians" by Steven L. Stephenson.[1]
