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

Talkative Polity
Radio, Domination, and Citizenship in Uganda
Until they were banned in 2009, the radio debates called Ugandan People’s Parliaments gave common folk a forum to air their views. But how do people talk about politics in an authoritarian regime? The forms and parameters of such speech turn out to be more complex than a simple confrontation between an oppressive state and a liberal civil society.

Staging the Amistad
Three Sierra Leonean Plays
Staging the Amistad collects for the first time plays about the Amistad slave revolt by three of Sierra Leone’s most influential playwrights of the latter decades of the 20th century. Written and staged before and after the start of Sierra Leone’s decade-long conflict, they brought the Amistad rebellion to public consciousness.

The Bassett Women
Ann and Josie Bassett were members of Butch Cassidy’s inner circle, ranchers, and cattle rustlers. Based on interviews, written records, newspapers, and archives, The Bassett Women is an indelible portrait and one of the few credible accounts of early settlers on Colorado’s western slope, one of the last strongholds of the Old West.

Reflections
The American Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art
Reflections: The American Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art adds a novel and provocative element to the library of art museum collection catalogs, featuring selected works from the museum’s collection and accompanied by concise essays by scholars of art who reflect on respond to the distinctive aspects of each work.

Ending the Civil War and Consequences for Congress
Contributors explore how the end of the Civil War continued the trauma of the conflict and also enhanced the potential for the new birth of freedom that Lincoln promised in the Gettysburg Address, particularly when it came to the Fourteenth Amendment.