University of Minnesota Press

• 1. Introduction

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  The University of Minnesota Press has been publishing books since 1925, as an arm of the University of Minnesota. In fiscal year 2018 its annual revenues came to just over $8 million, a modest sum for a house that takes on demanding scholarly work. Two questions run through this documentary. What kinds of ideas does a university press of that size choose to back? And how did it come to be involved in a lawsuit over access to books for readers around the world?

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• 2. Theory and Translation

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  Social theory and cultural theory form the backbone of the book list at the University of Minnesota Press. The press is best known for critical theory, race and ethnic studies, urbanism, feminist criticism, and media studies. Those fields give the list its character, and readers in them tend to know the press by name.

  A second strand of the list is translation. The press publishes a significant number of translations of major works of European and Latin American thought and scholarship. That means readers who do not read the original languages can still follow some of the central arguments of those traditions.

  The third strand is closer to home. The press also issues a diverse list of works on the cultural and natural heritage of Minnesota and the upper Midwest. Books on the region sit beside theory and translation on the same imprint. Beyond books, the press also issues periodicals, and its roster of them is longer than many readers would guess.

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• 3. Thirteen Journals

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  Thirteen academic journals sit in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Press. Several of them look closely at buildings and places. Buildings & Landscapes is the journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Environment, Space, Place and Preservation Education and Research cover related ground, judging by their titles.

  Another group centers on identity, community, and heritage. Critical Ethnic Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and the Journal of American Indian Education belong here. So do Wíčazo Ša Review, Norwegian-American Studies, and Verge: Studies in Global Asias.

  The remaining four reach toward culture and the moving image. Cultural Critique and Future Anterior carry the theory side of the catalog into periodical form. Mechademia: Second Arc is a journal with its own distinct title and subtitle. The Moving Image is the journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. The press's name also appears on a very different kind of record, a lawsuit.

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• 4. The Hachette Lawsuit

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  The case known as Hachette v. Internet Archive drew the University of Minnesota Press into a courtroom dispute. The press joined The Association of American Publishers, a trade organization, in that lawsuit. The suit's result was the removal of access to over 500,000 books from global readers. Every one of those books was something a reader anywhere could previously reach, and that reach is what disappeared.

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