Fordham University Press

• 1. Introduction

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  Fordham University Press has been putting ideas into print since 1907, making it the oldest Catholic university press in the United States and the seventh-oldest university press in the country. For well over a century, this New York institution has pursued a dual mission: to represent the values of Fordham University itself, and to spread scholarly research and ideas beyond the campus walls. Those are the press's own words, drawn from its founding charter. What makes a Catholic university press endure across so many decades, and what kinds of books does it bet on? The answers lie in the press's particular history, its institutional allegiances, and the unexpected bestsellers it has shepherded into the world.

• 2. A Century in the Bronx

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  Fordham University Press opened its doors in 1907, rooted in the university's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. For well over a hundred years, the operation ran out of Canisius Hall on that same campus. A turning point came in 1922, when Fordham closed its medical school. Rather than contracting, the press expanded its scope, moving under the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and beginning to publish textbooks across a range of disciplines: education, English, law, philosophy, and psychology. That diversification set the template for what the press would become. Then, in March 2017, after more than a century in the Bronx, the press packed up and moved to Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan, where it is headquartered today.

• 3. Institutional Ties

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  By 1938, Fordham University Press had joined the Association of University Presses, aligning itself with the broader scholarly publishing world. It also holds a more distinctive honor: it was a founding charter member of the Association of Jesuit University Presses, known as AJUP. That Jesuit connection is not incidental. Fordham itself is a Jesuit institution, and the press's mandate has always reflected those intellectual traditions, with a focus on the humanities and social sciences. The founding charter framed the press's purpose in explicitly values-laden terms: not just to publish, but to further the university's traditions through the dissemination of scholarly research and ideas.

• 4. Books That Broke Through

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  Among the press's bestselling titles, a few names stand out for their range and reach. Judith Butler's "Giving an Account of Oneself" sits alongside John D. Caputo's "Deconstruction in a Nutshell" on the list, placing continental philosophy front and center. Hardy Hansen and Gerald Quinn's "Greek: An Intensive Course" has found a sustained readership among students of classical languages. Alexander Jefferson's "Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free" brings military history into the catalog, while Brian Cudahy's "Under the Sidewalks of New York" speaks to the press's local roots. John Meyendorff's "Byzantine Theology" and Jean Leclercq's "Love of Learning and Desire for God" reflect the Catholic intellectual tradition that shapes the press's identity. The breadth of that list, from ancient Greek grammar to modern philosophy to Tuskegee Airmen memoir, points to a press that has never confined itself to a single lane.

• 5. A Contested Alliance

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  Fordham University Press joined the Association of American Publishers as a trade organization member, and that membership drew the press into one of the most contentious copyright disputes of recent years. The association took part in the Hachette v. Internet Archive lawsuit, a case that ended with the removal of access to over 500,000 books from readers around the world. For a press whose founding charter calls for the dissemination of scholarly research and ideas, that alignment carries a certain tension. The case put university presses in the uncomfortable position of restricting access to knowledge even as their stated missions call for expanding it. The press's involvement in that lawsuit is now part of its record, and a reminder that publishing institutions are never just neutral conduits for ideas.