Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an
academic publisher
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally publ ...
founded in 1950 at
Indiana University that specializes in the
humanities and
social sciences. Its headquarters are located in
Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes 140 new
books annually, in addition to 39
academic journals, and maintains a current catalog comprising some 2,000 titles.
Indiana University Press primarily publishes in the following areas:
African,
African American,
Asian,
cultural
Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...
,
Jewish,
Holocaust,
Middle Eastern studies,
Russian and
Eastern European, and
women's and
gender studies;
anthropology,
film studies,
folklore,
history,
bioethics,
music,
paleontology,
philanthropy
Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...
,
philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, and
religion. IU Press undertakes extensive regional publishing under its Quarry Books imprint.
History
IU Press began in 1950 as part of Indiana University's post-war growth under President
Herman B Wells. Bernard Perry, son of Harvard philosophy professor
Ralph Barton Perry
Ralph Barton Perry (July 3, 1876 in Poultney, Vermont – January 22, 1957 in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American philosopher. He was a strident moral idealist who stated in 1909 that, to him, idealism meant "to interpret life consistently ...
, served as the first director. IU Press's first book was a translation of Edouard de Montulé's ''Travels in America, 1816-1817'', published in March 1951. A total of six books were published the first year.
In 1952, IU Press earned full membership with the
Association of American University Presses. During its first decade in operation, IU Press published more than 200 books and increased sales from zero in 1950 to $167,000 in 1959-1960. That same decade, in 1955, it published
Rolfe Humphries's translation of the ''Metamorphoses'' of Ovid, IU Press's all-time bestseller, having sold more than 500,000 copies to date.
Bernard Perry retired as director in 1976 and was replaced by John Gallman who focused on the academic strengths of Indiana University. By 1980 IU Press's annual sales neared $2 million and by 1990 had reached $4.1 million. The Journals Division launched in 1987 with three journals and now carries 39 in its 2020 catalog. By the end of John Gallman's tenure as director in 2000, IU Press published 150 books annually and reached sales of close to $7 million.
In 2004 IU Press launched Quarry Books, an imprint dedicated to regional topics.
Honors and awards
In 1965, IU Press received the Centennial Medal, the highest prize of the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission, for its role in preserving Civil War history. IU Press's 1967 translation of volume 1 of Kierkegaard's ''Journals and Papers'' won a
National Book Award. It was followed by a second National Book Award in 1970 for a translation of Bertolt Brecht's ''Saint Joan of the Stockyards''.
In 2009 Indiana University Press publication ''The
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945'', Volume I was selected as the winner of the 2009
National Jewish Book Award in the
Holocaust category.
In a ranking of scholarly publishers in political science, IUP ranked 28th among all scholarly publishers by respondent preferences for publishers whose books they read or rely upon for the best research in political science.
References
External links
*
IU Press Journals on JSTOR
{{Authority control
1950 establishments in Indiana
Companies based in Bloomington, Indiana
Book publishing companies based in Indiana
Indiana University
Publishing companies established in 1950
University presses of the United States