West Virginia University Press, sometimes referred to as WVU Press, is a university press

University press

A university press is an academic, nonprofit publishing house that is typically affiliated with a large research university, and publishes work that has been reviewed by scholars in the field. It produces mainly scholarly works...

 that is part of West Virginia University

West Virginia University

West Virginia University is a public research university in Morgantown, West Virginia, USA. Other campuses include: West Virginia University at Parkersburg in Parkersburg; West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Montgomery; Potomac State College of West Virginia University in Keyser;...

. Founded in the 1960s, WVU Press focuses not only on topics related to West Virginia

West Virginia

West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

 and Appalachia

Appalachia

Appalachia is a term used to describe a cultural region in the eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York state to northern Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Canada to Cheaha Mountain in the U.S...

, but also broader topics, such as Medieval European Studies and African American Literature. The press has printed a number of books under its fiction imprint

Imprint

In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

, the Vandalia Press, including the first edition of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and a reprint of the cult novel Crum. WVU Press has also released a music archive of Appalachian musicians and song traditions.

West Virginia University Press is part of the Association of American University Presses

Association of American University Presses

The Association of American University Presses is an association of mostly, but not exclusively, North American university presses...

.

Creation

West Virginia University press was founded in the mid sixties by Robert Munn, Dean of Libraries. It was quite successful in its early days, publishing a number of important bibliographies and histories of the coal industry, and a variety of other significant scholarly works, including the justly famous Flora of West Virginia by Earl Core. Despite this initial success, WVU Press' involvement began to wane.

Dr. Patrick Conner: 1999-2008

In 1999, the University decided to reestablish the WVU Press whose activities had waned over the intervening years, and located it within the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. In 1999, the Press was relocated to within the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, with Dr. Patrick Conner assuming the role of the Director the Press. Dr. Conner, along with others, was determined to both reinvigorate the Press and establish it among the foremost university presses in the country. In reconstituting WVU Press, Dr. Conner wrote the following: "The press shall publish scholarly and creative works on and from West Virginia and the Appalachian Region . . .Through the publication of all such works, West Virginia University Press fulfills part of the Land Grant mission of West Virginia University.” It is in this context that WVU Press is "the press of West Virginia." Over the next nine years, Dr. Conner worked to make WVU Press into the best publishing house it could be.

Prior to 1999, WVU Press had not operated according to professional and scholarly publishing standards. Dr. Conner took it upon himself to secure a place for WVU Press within the community of prestigious American University Presses and set standards of scholarly publishing for all WVU Press titles. By August 1999, WVU Press had created a set of operating policies and put in place a peer review and evaluation process on par with those of the best university presses in the country. In accordance with industry standards, the WVU Press Board was created and held its first board meeting in March 2000. In June 2002, WVU Press successfully applied for admission to the Association of American University Presses. With high standards in place, WVU Press began to publish important, high-quality books, music, and journals for the students, scholars, and citizens of West Virginia.

The list of WVU Press publications under the directorship of Dr. Conner speaks for itself. Vandalia Press, an imprint of WVU Press, promotes the advancement of creative works by Appalachian writers. Works by West Virginia Poets Laureate Louise McNeill and Irene McKinney sit alongside the controversial work of Lee Maynard in Crum and Screaming With the Cannibals and new voices in West Virginia fiction and literature. The WVU Press Sound Archive makes aluminum disc collections of Appalachian music available to the public in compact disc form, including the acclaimed fiddle music of James Johnson and Edden Hammons, field recordings from southern West Virginia that give musical voice to African-American experience, and the gospel, blues, and country-inspired music of Depression-era West Virginia coal miners. Books such as Robert C. Byrd: Child of the Appalachian Coalfields, Afflicting the Comfortable: Journalism and Politics in West Virginia, and reprints of classics like Charles Henry Ambler’s Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776-1861 demonstrate the unique people, politics, and history of the state. West Virginia’s landscape is made visible to all in books such as Mountain Memories: An Appalachian Sense of Place. And, the genius of West Virginia artists is in full view in Blanche Lazzell: The Life and Work of an American Modernist and Early Art and Artists in West Virginia.

Carrie Mullen: 2008-Present

After directing WVU Press for nine years, Dr. Conner stepped down, though he remains as an editor for WVU Press’ Medieval European Studies series. Carrie Mullen was then appointed the new director of WVU Press.
Under new direction, the press has maintained the standards and practices set forth by Dr. Conner, but has also begun taking steps towards modernization. In early 2009, the press joined the Chicago Distribution Center, run by the University of Chicago Press

University of Chicago Press

The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including Critical Inquiry, and a wide array of...

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Education and Treatment of Children

Education and Treatment of Children is an important journal for researchers, educators, and clinical practitioners, as well as graduate students and others with a professional interest in the development of children and youth and a mission to improve teaching, training, and treatment effectiveness. The contents include experimental studies, literature reviews, data-based case studies, and book reviews. Education and Treatment of Children is devoted to the dissemination of information concerning the development of services for children and youth. A primary criterion for publication is that material be of direct value to educators and other child care professionals in improving their teaching/training effectiveness.

Essays in Medieval Studies

This is an online-only journal and is available to libraries through Project Muse

Project MUSE

Project MUSE is an online database of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. It was founded in 1993 by Todd Kelley and Susan Lewis and is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It had support from the Mellon...

. Essays in Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary journal of medieval studies. Contents for each volume are selected from papers delivered at the annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association. The annual volume appears in late spring each year and carries articles focused round the conference topic from scholars of both the literature and history of the period. Each volume focuses on the theme or topic of the annual meeting. Recent themes have included children and the family, medieval communities, and emotions in the Middle Ages.

Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review

Tolkien Studies

Tolkien Studies

Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review is an academic journal publishing papers on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Douglas A. Anderson, Michael D. C. Drout, and Verlyn Flieger. It states that it is the first scholarly journal published by an academic press in the area of Tolkien...

: An Annual Scholarly Review presents the growing body of critical commentary and scholarship on both J. R. R. Tolkien's voluminous fiction and his academic work in literary and linguistic fields. The founding editors are Douglas A. Anderson (The Annotated Hobbit), Michael D. C. Drout (Beowulf and the Critics), and Verlyn Flieger (Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World).

Victorian Poetry

Founded in 1962 to further the aesthetic study of the poetry of the Victorian Period in Britain (1830-1914), Victorian Poetry publishes articles from a broad range of theoretical and critical angles, including but not confined to new historicism, feminism, and social and cultural issues. The journal has expanded its purview from the major figures of Victorian England (Tennyson, Browning, the Rossettis, etc.) to a wider compass of poets of all classes and gender identifications in nineteenth-century Britain and the Commonwealth. Victorian Poetry is edited by John B. Lamb and sponsored by the Department of English at West Virginia University.

West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies

Since 1939, West Virginia History has been the premier source of scholarship and research on the history of the Mountain State. Now published in a new series by the West Virginia University Press, West Virginia History: A Journal of Regional Studies will have two issues a year—in the spring and fall—and will continue to cover the political, social, economic, and cultural history of the state and its regional context.

Medieval European Studies

Medieval European Studies represents contemporary developments in the best scholarship in English on the culture and history of Europe throughout the medieval period, which is defined as beginning as early as the establishment of the new pan-European religion, Christianity, in 325 CE at the Nicene Council to the end of the period which may, in Northern Europe, be dated as late as circa 1500 CE. The series seeks original works of scholarly significance, newly edited texts with full textual apparatus where these are not otherwise available, and newly corrected and annotated editions of earlier scholarship of continuing use to scholars and students. All manuscripts selected for inclusion in the series is based on a rigorous peer review by experts in the appropriate sub-fields.

Regenerations

Regenerations: African American Literature and Culture is a new series devoted to reprinting editions of important African American texts that either have fallen out of print or have failed to receive the attention they deserve. Regenerations encourages research that develops and extends the understanding of African American literary and cultural history, while promoting regional and local research that represents the complex dynamics of African American experience.

West Virginia and Appalachia

This series is dedicated to the publication of works on the history and culture of the Mountain State and its region. We anticipate that by publishing the best of a new generation of scholarship we can integrate the historical and cultural experience of West Virginia and Appalachia into their comparative regional, national, and international contexts. The editors feel that West Virginia University Press is the ideal location for such a series, considering the state's critical position in the region's and the nation's history. From its vital importance as a borderland between empires in the 18th century and between warring sections in the Civil War era to its vital role in America's industrialization and even its "culture wars," the story of West Virginia and Appalachia is an essential part of the story of America.

Awards

The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart was a fiction finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle award and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Potomac Canal: George Washington and the Waterway West was awarded a Book of the Year Award silver medal in history by ForeWord Magazine, an American Institute of Graphic Arts award, and a Washington Book Publishers Design and Effectiveness award. A bronze medal Independent Publishers Book Award—a competition of over 3,000 total entries from across the world—was awarded to Monongah: The Tragic Story of the 1907 Monongah Mine Disaster, The Worst Industrial Accident in US History. In 2001 Early Art and Artists in West Virginia won an American Graphic Design Award. Old South, New South, or Down South? won the 2010 Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award.