About Ohio University Press

Incorporated in 1947 and formally organized in 1964 by Ohio University president Vernon Alden, Ohio University Press is the oldest scholarly publisher in Ohio. Since its founding, the press (including its trade imprint, Swallow Press) has developed into a leading publisher of books about Africa, Appalachia, Southeast Asia, and the Midwest, as well as on many other topics. From academic monographs to regional guides to internationally acclaimed literary works, its books have established the press as an essential member of its many communities: scholarly, literary, and geographic.

The press publishes between forty-five and fifty books a year. Distributed worldwide, its books are regularly covered by prominent national and international news and review media; in countless academic journals; and in a wide variety of literary and cultural outlets.

The press regularly partners with other scholarly and cultural institutions. In recent years, these have included the State Library of Ohio, the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, the Ohio University Center for International Studies, the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland museums of art, and the Polish American Historical Association.

Swallow Press

What began as a publishing partnership with the distinguished literary publisher Swallow Press has continued with Ohio University Press’s acquisition in 2008 of Swallow. Under the Swallow Press imprint, the Press continues to publish its esteemed literary list—including reissues of the works of such iconic authors as Anaïs Nin, Janet Lewis, Frank Waters, and Anna Akhmatova—as well as guidebooks, regional interest titles, and general nonfiction.

New Titles

Embodied Engineering
Gendered Labor, Food Security, and Taste in Twentieth-Century Mali
Common narratives about development in Africa miss the critical technological work of women. Twagira’s study instead positions Malian women as rural engineers whose strategic planning and labor over the course of the twentieth century assured their food security.

The Great Upheaval
Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria
In this finely textured social and intellectual history of gender and nation making, Byfield captures the dynamism of women’s political engagement in postwar Nigeria. She illuminates the centrality of gender to the study of nationalism, offering new lines of inquiry into the late colonial era and its consequences for the future Nigerian state.

English Lit
Poems
Affrilachian Poet Bernard Clay narrates his West-Side Louisville upbringing and the complexities of Black Appalachian identity in this debut collection of poems compiled from more than twenty years of work.

The Histories of HIVs
The Emergence of the Multiple Viruses That Caused the AIDS Epidemics
In this interdisciplinary collection, experts provide the most complete description to date of the often ignored and underappreciated features of the history of the multiple human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs) responsible for the global AIDS pandemic.

Sports in Africa, Past and Present
Through the prism of sports and from a range of scholarly perspectives, this anthology offers insight into the varied and shifting experiences of African athletes, fans, communities, and postcolonial states.