And to study the past, we must have access to as much material as possible. This includes primary sources like manuscripts and material objects, but also the scholarship and ancestries of thought that inform our present knowledge.
The embrace of access is not ubiquitous. Many scholarly texts remain prohibitively expensive or behind paywalls that require institutional affiliation to access. Libraries and museums often do not
allow general public access to their collections of manuscripts and artifacts. While the digitization of materials at institutions like The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Folger Shakespeare Library are examples of a trend towards digital open access archives, it is more often than not that these materials remain behind well-guarded doors.
In the spirit of Arizona State University’s charter, the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies aims to make knowledge produced at the center available to all who seek it. We measure our success not by whom we exclude, but by whom we include and how they succeed. That inclusion is not simply about who walks through our doors, but also about who engages with our work—whenever and wherever they are.
Thus, ACMRS Press, the publishing arm of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, publishes projects that are historically grounded and theoretically and pedagogically expansive, with the aim of fostering dialogues that reach into the present moment and point us to different, more inclusive, futures. The scholarship published in our catalogue asks readers to think across vast expanses of time and experience.
In partnership with the ASU Library, ACMRS Press publishes all monographs in open access formats on Pressbooks. We also publish open access journals, including "Borrowers and Lenders" and the forthcoming "Sonance: Journal of Early Modern Sound Studies."
We are currently working with our authors to publish as much of our backlist on Pressbooks as possible. Because our backlist features texts in translation that are available only in these editions, making them openly available allows audiences to read and study texts they would otherwise not be able to access.
In addition to the scholarship published through ACMRS Press, the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies works with field-leading scholars and educators to create open educational and pedagogical resources. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, Throughlines is a robust repository of critical junctures in teaching the premodern past, including videos, close readings, lectures, activities, reading lists, assignments and exemplar syllabi.
All of this we do at no cost to authors, contributors or their institutions. We aim to lead the charge in open access publishing, and to become a model for knowledge production that is truly inclusive, expansive and forward-looking.
--Leah Newsom, ACMRS Press
Dive into open access
Read all of our International Open Access Week articles celebrating open access publishing at ASU.