Celebrating Pride Month

By: Madison Allums | Date: June 6, 2024

In October 2023, I came on board at University of Michigan Press as the new Senior Acquiring Editor in Political Science and International Relations, taking over a longstanding and well-respected list.

From the beginning, University of Michigan Press has impressed me with a collaborative spirit and deep commitment to equity and responsible publishing practices. Among university presses, UMP is a leader in Open Access publishing, an important step toward our goal of knowledge equity. Another important facet of that endeavor is making our books as accessible as possible for readers with disabilities. The Press is also explicitly anti-racist in an environment where lukewarm language is the norm. In addition to Press leadership that directs these efforts, we are lucky to have the support of a faculty Executive Committee that shares these goals and thinks through questions of representation and social responsibility with us.

All of these things contribute to an environment that is welcoming of the editorial work I do, which is largely focused on queer politics, environmental politics, women in politics, and critical theory. In fact, this type of work is hardly something new at Michigan, which has long been invested in women's studies, Black studies, disability studies, and queer studies. We owe much of this legacy to our colleague LeAnn Fields, who recently retired after forty years at UMP. LeAnn was a visionary editor who had a knack for identifying exciting fields before other publishers began to actively acquire in them. We're grateful for the foundation she created not only for the press, but also for scholarship more broadly.

The study of queer politics is essential not only to global politics and human rights but also to political science as a discipline. As Martha Ackelsberg noted in her chapter of LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader (2017), there is an argument to be made that the study of queer politics can help expand political science by challenging established ways of understanding what is political and how we study it (Ackelsberg 2017). I feel grateful to work at a press that understands and embraces the importance of this work not only during Pride Month but year round.

Interested in submitting a proposal? You can read about our process here. Reach out to Madison about queer politics or other political science projects at mallums@umich.edu.