Randall Stephens
[Cross posted at Religion in American History.]
I liked it when the AHA met in NYC last year. Better yet, this year it’s in sunny San Diego, a nice break from the cold, snow, slush, and raging swine flu of New England. (And I forgot to bring my wetsuit.)
I spent part of Thursday reconnoitering the area and meeting with various friends in the profession. I also had a chance to sit down with Susan Ferber, executive editor, Oxford University Press, and pose a few questions about publishing.
In the video embedded here I ask her about what she looks for in a proposal and what she thinks about the recent boom in religious history. I also ask her about the matter of converting a dissertation into a book. I was reminded of a piece that appeared in the Chronicle nearly two years ago: “Goodbye to All That” by Rachel Toor. A former editor, Toor summed up a meeting she had with a friend who wondered how her dissertation would fare when submitted to a press:
Wanting to be helpful, and, since I was no longer an editor constantly on the prowl for potentially promising manuscripts, I gave her my honest opinion: Who would be interested in a book like this?
I pointed out that, even in the way she described it to me, she was using coded language, jargon that would be a big flashing red light to warn off anyone outside of her particular academic discipline. What publisher, I asked, was going to want a book on a topic unknown to most people, especially if there was no underlying argument or theoretical framework?
Ultimately, what I wondered was whether anything in the dissertation was worth turning into a book.
I'm not always the most fun lunch date.
True enough. Ferber’s remarks, by contrast, are positively cheerful. So take heart, your dissertation may have a ready audience as a book. Just think carefully about readership and how best to frame your argument.
Blog Archive
Popular Posts
-
Our first post comes from Heather Cox Richardson , professor of history at UMass, Amherst. Richardson is the author of a number of books on...
-
Randall Stephens Jean de Venette (ca. 1308-ca. 1369), a Carmelite friar in Paris, wrote about the horrifying devastation brought on by the ...
-
Jensen-Byrd building by Flickr user Terry Bain . (Thank you Terry for choosing Creative Commons licensing.) This morning we have some good n...
-
History blogging is delicate proposition. I typically look for a topic which is sufficient to fill 3-5 paragraphs with perhaps that many lin...
-
The Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture is throwing a big shindig on Saturday, September 22nd. The Fall Harvest Festival features a vari...
-
. Historic Maps and Digital Mapping Roundup "Was your street bombed during the Blitz?" Telegraph , December 6, 2012 The year-long...
-
. Steve Marinucci, "Beatles' Apple has nothing to fear from 'Strange Fruit' film," Examiner , April 21, 2012 It fina...
-
Eric B. Schultz Alan Lomax (left) with Richard Queen of Soco Junior Square Dance Team at the Mountain Music Festival, Asheville, North Carol...
-
Chris Beneke . NPR recently aired a story on the tower of 7,000 Abraham Lincoln-centered books (they’re actually replicas and amount to r...
-
Philip White November 30 was Winston Churchill’s birthday. 138 years after his birth, historians, politicians and the public are still as fa...