Description
Silk Roads is a new book series at the University of Chicago Press that seeks to explore the reality and the imaginary of the “Silk Road.” The series will be devoted to the interconnections and exchanges linking ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary Eurasia and the Indian Ocean world, the latter often termed the maritime Silk Road, as viewed through such fields as history, international relations, anthropology, geography, environmental studies, religious studies, art history, literature and musicology.
The geographic framing the Silk Road invokes is timely, presenting an opportunity to place multiple fields and disciplines, often isolated and specialized, in conversation with one another and with broader trends in world history. Series editor James Millward, an historian and specialist on Xinjiang at Georgetown University and alumnus of the Luce-funded Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, writes, “The notion of the ‘silk road’ lays a romantic gloss upon one of the most significant historical phenomena: the exchange of things and ideas across, and mutual development among, societies of the Old World. Trans-Eurasian interactions since ancient times have bequeathed manifold legacies, undergirding us with a common, if neglected, cultural infrastructure. In short, globalization began with the silk road. Seeking to redress the disjuncture between the popularity of Silk Roadiana and the obscurity of academic publishing about the silk road’s actual people and places, our series plans to publish works that, while grounded in rigorous scholarship, can also speak to broader academic, student, and general audiences.”
The series is open to research monographs, synthetic studies, translations and books for general readers, with a plan to have two books published or under contract each year beginning in 2018. The first volume in the series, titled Sacred Mandates: Asian International Relations Since Chinggis Khan and edited by the historian Timothy Brook, will trace the history of international relations in Asia from the imperial age to the modern Chinese nation-state and is designed as a compendium for scholars and global security specialists. Several other titles are under formal consideration for publication in 2018 and 2019.
The Press requests a grant from the Luce Foundation to cover a portion of the cost of producing and marketing at least 11 books between 2018 and 2023. Recovery of the remainder of the costs will be through expected book sales. The Press will also look to limited funding, on a book-by-book basis, from sources such as an author’s institution and grants tied to specific research projects. An internally-administered grant to the university from the National Endowment for the Humanities may be available in some cases as well, to match external funding.
That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a five-year grant of $105,000 to the University of Chicago Press to support the new Silk Roads publication series.
