About Amherst College Press

Amherst College Press produces pathbreaking, peer-reviewed scholarship and makes it available to readers everywhere as digital, open-access work and affordable paperback books. As a diamond/platinum open-access press, we charge no fees to authors, their institutions, or readers. Our books are published on Fulcrum, a platform created by Michigan Publishing, allowing narrative to be richly integrated with multimedia and optimized for long-term preservation and accessibility.

ACP publishes titles in art history and visual studies; digital and game studies; Latin American studies; literary and media studies; music and sound studies; and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. We also have deep interests in activist studies, environmental and energy humanities, multilingualism and translation, public and community humanities, and all forms of justice-oriented scholarship and methodology.

Amherst College Press is a member of the Association of University Presses and is fully funded by Amherst College.

Peer Review

Amherst College Press is committed to the highest standards of peer review in evaluating the work it considers for publication and to communicating the nature of review to readers in a transparent fashion. We specify the type of review used in the front matter of each of our publications to signal in a clear, consistent way how each project has been reviewed.

Please see our Peer Review Commitments and Guidelines page for more details.

Discovery, Preservation, and Reuse

ACP publishes books through the Fulcrum platform and delivers titles to a range of book indexers, library discovery services, and platforms including JSTOR Open, Muse Open, Open Research Library, and OAPEN. MARC records are available for free download under a CC0 license. 

Fulcrum is dedicated to providing durable, long-term stewardship for digital scholarship through a comprehensive preservation strategy that adheres to the practices and policies of the University of Michigan Library. ACP titles are also deposited into CLOCKSS, a leading digital preservation archive.  

Amherst College Press Press titles are made available under Creative Commons (CC) licenses. The particular CC license chosen is up to the author.

Our Production Process

Amherst College Press partners with Fulcrum, the digital publishing platform of Michigan Publishing Services, to produce our books. MPS handles all aspects of our production: copyediting, typesetting, cover design, EPUB creation, and final publication and distribution. Our books are available through the Chicago Distribution Center. Key partners at MPS are:

  • Jason Colman, Director, Michigan Publishing Services
  • Katie Rokakis, Senior Digital Publishing Coordinator, Michigan Publishing Services
  • Jeremy Morse, Director of Publishing Technology, Michigan Publishing Services

Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Amherst College Press holds diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice as core values. As an extension of Amherst College, we recognize and acknowledge the Nonotuck land Amherst occupies, and we also acknowledge our neighboring Indigenous nations: the Nipmuc and the Wampanoag to the East, the Mohegan and Pequot to the South, the Mohican to the West, and the Abenaki to the North.

ACP stands in solidarity with Black people and the movements centering Black lives and racial, economic, and educational justice. We recognize the need to educate ourselves and to continually emphasize the importance of working towards a scholarly community that listens, learns, and works to rectify past and present grievances. We also recognize the ways in which scholarly publishing has been complicit in perpetuating white supremacy and propping up systems of exclusion, from its reliance on opaque peer review practices and prohibitive pricing models to the industry’s predominantly white labor force. (See the 2019 Lee & Low Books survey of publishers that found the “publishing industry to be… 76% white, showing little change over 5 years in staff diversity across gender identity, race/ethnicity, dis/ability, and sexual orientation,” from the AUP Statement on Equity and Anti-Racism.)

As a small open-access press based at Amherst College, we seek to offer a different model for how the work of scholarly publishing can be done and a voice not typically heard—from the distinctive perspective of a liberal-arts institution—among the institutions that produce published scholarship. We do not assume that our work ends there. Specific steps we have taken and plan to take in order to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion at ACP include:

  • Ensuring our Faculty Board is inclusive and representative of students and former students of Amherst College as well as the audiences we hope to reach with our publishing program.
  • Contributing to industry-wide efforts in transparency around peer review and conducting regular audits on own peer review practices.
  • Contributing to industry-wide efforts to seek out and amplify scholarship from underrepresented groups.
  • Maintaining the mission of open access, including the removal of price and permissions barriers to readers, authors, and institutions.
  • Developing and sustaining an internship program for Amherst College undergraduates in the hopes of creating pipeline opportunities for those who have been historically underrepresented in the publishing industry.
  • Taking part in ongoing trainings and workshops led by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Amherst College; participating in the work of the Frost Library DEI committee.

Statement on Accessibility

Amherst College Press strives to ensure our books and their associated media and resources are available and accessible to anyone who wants to read or use them. As an open access press, we also seek to eliminate some historic barriers to publishing, particularly for those who are first-time authors or who lack institutional support. Specific steps we have taken and plan to take in order to advance accessibility of ACP titles: 

  • Continuing to charge no fees (commonly called “book processing charges”) to authors or their institutions to publish OA.
  • Making resources available that guide authors through the publication process on our website.
  • Communicating to readers the type of peer review each project underwent in a transparent fashion.
  • Utilizing Creative Commons licensing to ensure our titles can be easily and fairly cited and reused.
  • Working to make our books available and accessible in venues such as Bookshare and in audio formats on, for example, Google Play. 

We understand that there are many ways to do and read scholarship, which is why we partner with Fulcrum, a platform that makes accessibility a core value and design component. Read more about the ways Fulcrum is developing the platform and its content to be inclusive, accessible, and usable for all readers.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board of the Amherst College Press is composed of faculty members of Amherst College. Each member serves a three-year term. Ex officio positions are held by the director of the Amherst College Library, the director of the Mead Art Museum, and the director of the Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

Editorial Board members:

  • Class of 2019: Leah Schmalzbauer, David Little, Vanessa Walker
  • Class of 2020: Martha Umphrey, Hannah Holleman
  • Class of 2021: Tariq Jaffer, Laure Katsaros
  • Class of 2022: Jen Manion, Michael Kunichika
  • Class of 2023: Aneeka Henderson
  • Class of 2024: Kristin Bumiller, Chris Grobe, Paul Schroeder Rodríguez
  • Class of 2025: Pawan Dhingra, Pooja Rangan
  • Class of 2026: Yael Rice, Catherine Infante
  • Class of 2027: Amy Coddington, Lloyd Barba

Ex officio positions:

  • Martin Garnar, Director of the Library, Amherst College
  • Michael Kunichika, Director of the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Amherst College
  • Lisa Crossman, Curator of American Art and Arts of the Americas, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College

Historical Documents

Read the original Amherst College Press charter from 2014.

The current Amherst College Press extends the long tradition of publishing at Amherst College.

Take a look at some of our legacy titles here.