Ideas on Fire Publishing Series

Cathy Hannabach is the founder and CEO of Ideas on Fire, where she helps interdisciplinary academics transform vibrant ideas into powerful books and public projects that can spark meaningful social change.

Cathy’s vision for the future of publishing centers on creating pathways for interdisciplinary, community-grounded intellectual exchange that can drive real-world change.

Through her strategic approach to “editing as worldmaking,” Cathy helps scholars navigate the evolving landscape of scholarly communications, where traditional publishing models are being challenged and reimagined.

Dawn Durante is the Wyndham Robertson Editorial Director at the University of North Carolina Press, where she acquires in African American history, Black feminist studies, women’s history, girlhood studies, and social justice and carceral studies.

Prior to joining UNC Press, she was editor in chief at the University of Texas Press, and before that, senior acquisitions editor at University of Illinois Press.

She is coeditor of H-Net’s Feeding the Elephant, a forum for discussions about the scholarly communication landscape.

Dawn is committed to demystifying scholarly publishing—both for aspiring publishing professionals and authors—and to fostering conversations about scholarly communications across the higher education ecosystem.

Mike Baccam is an acquisitions editor at the University of Washington Press in Seattle, where he primarily works in the fields of Asian American studies, critical ethnic studies, environmental history, and western US history.

In recent years, he has launched interdisciplinary series focused on Filipinx studies, abolition, and the outdoors and recreation.

He also acquires crossover and regional trade titles focused on the Pacific Northwest.

Sara Cohen is the editorial director at University of Michigan Press, where she handles acquisitions in music, dance, theater, and performance studies. 

She holds a PhD in English from the University of Minnesota and has been working in scholarly publishing since defending her dissertation in 2011.

Dominique J. Moore is a senior acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press, where she acquires in American ethnic studies; Black studies; and women, gender, and sexuality studies.

She appreciates projects that use interdisciplinary methods to discuss marginalized groups and their material lives, and she is particularly interested in scholars who grapple with identity, shared experiences, and daring to exist in the world.

One question Dominique likes to see authors tackle: How do marginalized people assert themselves and establish communities in ways that defy time and space?

Elizabeth Ault, Senior Editor, joined Duke University Press in 2012 after receiving her PhD in American studies at the University of Minnesota.

Trained in an interdisciplinary field, she is most interested in projects that reach outward across disciplines and academic conversations in surprising ways (including work by activists and organizers), that connect historical and emerging conditions, and that are committed to engaging with race, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability.

She's particularly proud of her recent work with Margret Grebowicz on the Practices series.

You can find Elizabeth at conferences including American studies, women's studies, African studies, sociology, and geography, and working with scholars in trans studies, disability studies, critical ethnic studies, Black geographies, witch studies, and more.

Alyssa M. Napier is the sociology and Black studies editor at Columbia University Press, where she acquires books that engage the subject of inequality from a range of domains and methodologies.

She manages Columbia’s series Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past, Present, and Future, a partnership between Columbia and Howard University.

Prior to her work at Columbia University Press, she worked at MIT Press.

Cameron M. Ludwick is the associate director for books marketing and sales at Duke University Press and has been in university press book publishing for more than fifteen years.

She was previously the publicity and communications manager at the University of Texas Press and got her start in academic publishing as an intern at the University Press of Kentucky before her first permanent job there in marketing and publicity.

She’s also been on the other side of the publishing process as coauthor of five books under the My Old Kentucky Road Trip brand, the newest of which, Kentucky, Y'all, was released in September 2024 by the University Press of Kentucky.

Jennifer C. Nash is the Jean Fox O’Barr Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University.

She is the author of four books (all published on Duke University Press):

• The Black Body in Ecstasy: Reading Race, Reading Pornography
• Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality
• Birthing Black Mothers 
• How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory 

She is also the editor of Gender: Love (Macmillan, 2016), and a co-editor (with Samantha Pinto) of The Routledge Companion to Intersectionalities (Routledge, 2023). 

She co-edits (with Samantha Pinto) the Black Feminism on the Edge book series on Duke University Press and is the editorial director of Feminist Studies.

Adrienne Shaw is an associate professor in Temple University’s Department of Media Studies and Production and a member of the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication graduate faculty. 

She is author of Gaming at the Edge: Sexuality and Gender at the Margins of Gamer Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) and co-editor of Planet Digital: A Global Media Cultures Reader (NYU Press, 2026), Interventions: Communication Research and Practice (Peter Lang, 2018), Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence (Routledge, 2017), and Queer Game Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).

She is the co-editor of the Critical Cultural Communication book series for NYU Press and serves on the boards of the Journal of Communication; Eludamos; International Journal of Cultural Studies; Media, Culture, & Society; Critical Studies in Media Communication; Game Studies; Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; Not Your Mama’s Gamer; and the Research Center for Communication and Culture, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

Françoise N. Hamlin is an associate professor of Africana studies and history at Brown University.

She co-edits (with Karen L. Cox) the Boundless South series for the University of North Carolina Press and serves as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Black Military Studies. In addition to numerous articles, she has published four books: From Rights To Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle (co-edited, Vanderbilt University Press, 2024); Struggle of Struggles by Vera Mae Pigee, republished with edits, annotation, and a new introduction (University Press of Mississippi, 2023); These Truly Are The Brave: An Anthology of African American Writings on War and Citizenship (co-edited, University Press of Florida, 2015, 2018); and Crossroads At Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle In The Mississippi Delta After World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

Amber Jamilla Musser is chair of the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Program and a professor of English at the CUNY Graduate Center.

She is the author of Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (Duke, 2024), Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018), and Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014).

She is co-editor of Keywords for Gender and Feminist Studies from NYU Press and with Jonathan Beller is co-editor of Social Text. 

Courtney Berger is Executive Editor at Duke University Press.

She joined the Press in 2003, after receiving a PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University.

Courtney acquires books across the humanities and social sciences, including American studies, Native American and Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies, Black studies, Asian American studies, media and technology studies, and environmental humanities.

Courtney seeks out books that are theoretically and politically engaged and that speak to a wide, interdisciplinary audience.

She has published books by many prominent scholars, but she also enjoys collaborating with first-time authors who are in the process of establishing their critical voice.

Tara Cyphers is the assistant director of the Ohio State University Press and has been in the publishing industry for 20 years.

With current roles acquiring rhetoric/communications scholarship; overseeing the editorial/production departments; and advising on business/finance issues (and past stints as a journals manager and textbook editor), she enjoys learning, talking, and sharing about all-things publishing.

She just finished service on the Board of Directors for the Association of University Presses (2023–2026).