Duke University Press Celebrates 100 Years of Ideas and Innovation

A new exhibit at Duke Libraries traces the Press's journey from a small campus operation to one of the world's leading university presses

Gisela Fosado looks at a library exhibit
Gisela Fosado looks at the Duke University Press exhibit at Duke Libraries. Photo by Jodie Valade

In the spring of 1903, editor John Spencer Bassett was walking to the printer with the latest issue of the South Atlantic Quarterly when he pulled out a pencil and changed a line in the manuscript by hand. The sentence he added declared Booker T. Washington the second most important figure in the South in the previous century, behind Robert E. Lee.

According to current Duke University Press Director Dean Smith, that claim "as you can imagine, caused an amazing ruckus."

Bassett resigned. Trinity College's trustees refused to accept it, voting 18 to 7 to keep him.

A display of the Duke University Press library exhibit
A Duke Libraries exhibit highlights the Duke University Press' 100th anniversary. Photo by Jodie Valade

The “Bassett Affair” became an early test of academic freedom at what would become Duke University. It also became an important moment for the South Atlantic Quarterly, a scholarly journal still published by Duke University Press, and set the tone for the future of the Press.

"For me, the South Atlantic Quarterly really typifies what the Press is from the beginning," Smith said. "It was doing things in an interesting way."

This year, Duke University Press celebrates 100 years since it adopted that name in 1926, growing out of what had been Trinity College Press. Duke University Libraries will mark the milestone with an exhibit that opens Aug. 24 and runs through Feb. 7 in the Mary Duke Biddle Room. The exhibit traces the Press's evolution from a small campus operation into one of the world's leading university presses.

"It's been so rewarding to do the research," said Gisela Fosado, Duke University Press’ Editorial Director who has spent months digging through the archives with Duke University Libraries' Conservator and Exhibits Coordinator Meg Brown to curate the exhibit. "In some ways, looking at the history of the press is also looking at the history of the university more broadly."

Growing to an influential press

For its first 50 years, the press published 12 books annually on average, some years as few as three. Its earliest offerings are part of the exhibit's opening case, including Alice Baldwin's “The New England Clergy and the American Revolution” from 1928, Charles Ellwood's “Methods in Sociology” in 1933, from the scholar who founded Duke's sociology department, and a 1938 book by Duke economist and demographer Joseph Spengler, who later became president of the American Economics Association.

books about Duke basketball are displayed in a library exhibit
Books published by Duke University Press cover a range of topics, including Duke basketball. Photo by Jodie Valade

Four journals became the operation's financial and intellectual bedrock — American Literature, the South Atlantic Quarterly, the Duke Mathematical Journal and the Hispanic American Historical Review — and all four are still publishing today.

Everything changed in the 1980s and '90s, when Duke made a deliberate push into the humanities, recruiting a cluster of scholars that included Fredric Jameson and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick among others, who published with Duke University Press. As interdisciplinary scholarship became a focus of the Press's catalog, its reputation soared to what Smith calls one of the “top five to 10” university presses in the world.  

Today, Duke University Press publishes about 150 books and 65 journals per year, with nearly 5,000 titles in print. According to Fosado, its publication list includes field-defining books in areas such as Black studies, anthropology, critical theory and feminist studies. Its “World Readers” series, born from a Peru-focused volume by Duke faculty, has since expanded to include other countries, including Mexico, Russia and South Africa. Recent trade successes include a book Bad Bunny and on coach Mike Krzyzewski's basketball dynasty.

The ‘unsung hero’s work’

Gisela Fosado poses in front of a library exhibit
Duke University Press’ Editorial Director Gisela Fosado worked with Duke University Libraries to curate the exhibit. Photo by Jodie Valade

The exhibit also makes room for the people behind the books. A staff poster will include a section Fosado calls the “Quarter-Century Club,” honoring the 25 employees who have worked at the press for 25 years or longer. As Smith said, the people who shape university presses rarely get the credit.

"Universities don't even understand how talented the people of their university presses are," he said. "It's sort of like an unsung hero's work. This is going on behind the scenes."

Visitors will also find a touchable table with 15 to 20 books chosen to showcase the press's design work, along with maps charting the global reach of its publications.

For Smith, the anniversary is a chance to reflect on what a century of that work has meant.

"We're really lucky to be at 100 years," he said. "And what we do reflects the excellence of this university in multiple ways."

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