Opening Scholarship to New Readers with Path to Open
About Path to Open
One of the ways University of Michigan Press works toward our goal of delivering the best scholarship to the broadest possible audience is by publishing open access (OA) content. We’re very proud to partner with JSTOR’s Path to Open initiative to help us publish even more OA books.
Path to Open has aimed to “showcase impactful research, diverse scholarly perspectives, and timely topics across the humanities and social sciences.” While the program initially offers the licensed books exclusively to participating libraries for the first three years, the books are then made open access to benefit readers all over the world.
2026 marks the year that the first batch of Path to Open titles are released as OA editions. We are excited to share that six of our books are in the list of 100 titles. Many of these books are already award winners, and we are excited to bring this scholarship to more readers!
The 2026 Books
Continuous Pasts: Frictions of Memory in Postcolonial Africa by Sakiru Adebayo
“Continuous Pasts offers a much-needed Africa-centered contribution to memory and trauma studies from a literary perspective, and Adebayo is just the scholar to make such a contribution. As the book reveals, he has a near encyclopedic knowledge of recent approaches to trauma and memory as well as a broad knowledge of African literature, history, culture, and criticism. This is the book we’ve been waiting for!” —Michael Rothberg, author of The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators
Continuous Pasts is the winner of the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literary Criticism.
On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming For Everyone by Philip Ewell
"This book may represent the cusp of a racial reckoning for music theory in the US. [E]veryone—students and faculty—involved in music theory should read it. . . Essential." —Choice
"It should be required reading for all who teach music theory and for all who aspire to work toward racial justice in the academy. Ewell’s book is a gift and an invitation. We must not squander either." —Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association
On Music Theory is the winner of the 2024 PROSE Award for Music and Performing Arts.
Reimagining the Educated Citizen: Creole Pedagogies in the Transatlantic World, 1685-1896 by Petra Munro Hendry
"Reimagining the Educated Citizen is a must read. It masterfully illustrates the continued movement and creolization of people in the transatlantic world and unequivocally demonstrates the centrality education played, as both a tool of freedom and oppression, amid this mass movement and struggle to define what it meant to be enlightened, equal, worthy, and free." —Christopher Span, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Reimagining the Educated Citizen is the winner of the 2023 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Division B: Curriculum Studies Outstanding Book Award.
"Destined to Fail": Carl Seashore's World of Eugenics, Psychology, Education, and Music by Julia Eklund Koza
“With deep research, readable prose, an interdisciplinary scope, and a judiciously balanced critique, Koza probes the disturbing impact of eugenics on the influential early 20th-century psychologist and educator Carl Seashore. This is history with a long reach, revealing the stubborn lineage of attitudes about race, ability, disability, education, and testing.” —Carol J. Oja, Harvard University
“Destined to Fail” is the winner of the 2022 American Educational Research Association (AERA) Outstanding Book of the Year Award in Division B: Curriculum Studies.
Lagos Never Spoils: Nollywood and Nigerian City Life by Connor Ryan
“This is an exciting and original book. This deeply informative study of the connections between Lagos and Nollywood is in dialogue with research on media capitals and urbanism around the world. This study does not simply retrace the history of Nollywood, but rather offers a rich and vivid portrait of Lagos as an African media capital in tandem with its constantly evolving status as a cinematic and televisual city over several decades in Nigerian screen media.” —Moradewun Adejunmobi, University of California, Davis
Lagos Never Spoils is the winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the SCMS Media Industries SIG.
Toward a Gameic World: New Rules of Engagement from Japanese Video Games by Ben Whaley
“Toward a Gameic World argues that video games have the potential to work through and play out social anxieties and traumatic events in contemporary Japanese society. In contradistinction from extant studies of gaming in Japan that tend to be more historical, ethnographical, and sociological, the book takes on a multidisciplinary approach with an emphasis on ‘textual’ analysis of video games. While embedded in the context of modern Japan, the book reflects on the larger global implications of video games as a viable genre of scholarly inquiry.” —Leo T. S. Ching, Duke University
