University Press of Mississippi

• 1. Introduction

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  The University Press of Mississippi, often shortened to UPM, belongs to a small and unusual group among American university presses. Most presses answer to a single campus. This one has more than one university standing behind it. That arrangement raises a few simple questions. Which schools share a single publisher, and how long has the arrangement lasted? Then there is the output itself. What does a press of this kind choose to put into print, and which subjects have come to define its shelves?

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• 2. Eight Campuses, One Press

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  Nineteen seventy is the year the University Press of Mississippi was founded, and its sponsors were the state's eight public universities. Alcorn State University and Delta State University are on the list. So are Jackson State University and Mississippi State University. Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Southern Mississippi complete it. Few university presses in the United States have more than one affiliate university, and UPM has eight. The press therefore serves a whole state system rather than one flagship campus. The next question is what such a press actually prints.

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• 3. What Fills the Catalog

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  Since 1976 the press has been a member of the Association of University Presses. Each year it issues around 85 new books. By 2022 its total had passed 2000 titles. Four areas mark its reputation. African American history is one, and children's literature is another. A third is pop culture media, which the press applies to film, television, and comic books. The fourth is regional studies. The mix is telling, since a Mississippi publisher gives scholarly attention to comic books and Hollywood alongside the history of the region. The clearest view of that range comes from the press's named book series.

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• 4. The Series Shelf

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  Some of the press's series are tied closely to the state's own literary and political story. Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha has its own series, as does Critical Perspectives on Eudora Welty. Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography carries the name of another writer, and Civil Rights in Mississippi gives the region's struggle for equality a dedicated home. The Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies adds a further line of scholarship. Other series look outward. Atlantic Migrations and the African Diaspora and Caribbean Studies reach beyond the state, while America's Third Coast turns to the Gulf region. Popular culture gets equally serious treatment. Great Comic Artists and Critical Approaches to Comics Artists sit beside Hollywood Legends, Reframing Hollywood, and Horror and Monstrosity Studies Series. Banner Books and Cultures of Childhood round out a list that also includes American Made Music and Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World. The Chancellor Porter L. Fortune Symposium in Southern History is one more title on that shelf, and it shows how far the press ranges from a single campus base.

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