“Indigenous Foodways Of Texas And Northern Mexico” Book Series Is Seeking Writers and Cooks

Indigenous Foodways: A Call To Writers, Researchers, Cooks

(Versión Español)

The New Book Series, “Indigenous Foodways of Texas and Northern Mexico,” is a collaboration of Texas Tech University, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and Series Editor, Adán Medrano. Launched early this year, the book series will explore, preserve, and propagate food traditions, techniques, and histories from the region bound by the US state of Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. In some cases, other regions of Mexico will be considered if there are clear links about influential figures, histories, and practices. We will sometimes include New Mexico in the region whenever scholarship identifies strong relevance, especially because of its role in the interrelated trade routes. In those cases, we will seek out books that focalize the food confluences among indigenous groups in New Mexico, Spanish Colonists, and Tejas people in the El Paso and West Texas Region.

Focusing on books for a general audience, the series will feature:

• Historical cookbooks in the UTSA Mexican Cookbook Collection that could be republished for a new audience.
• Scholarly or general audience commentary or reviews of one or several of the books in the UTSA Mexican Cookbook Collection which consists of over 2,000 books dating from 1789 to the present.
• Collecting and anthologizing historical materials—for instance, a collection of pieces about South Texas food throughout history.
• Popular history with Tejano, Norteno, or Indigenous food as the subject.
• Scholarly books that integrate with food studies programs: cultural histories of food, anthropological, archaeological, and Mexican-American studies scholarship.
• We will publish the work of scholars who are interested in integrating their work into conversations with nontraditional (outside the academy) sources of knowledge and tradition

We will seek to promote books that make cooking accessible and that foreground native ingredients and approaches, especially being mindful of the relationship between food and climate change, history, colonialism, gender identity, economic circumstance, health (particularly diabetes and heart disease), and the myriad of contexts that attend to our understanding of food and the self.

For more information, or to discuss any questions, please contact Series Editor, Adán Medrano, (adan@jmcommunications.com).

Submitting a Proposal

Please email a single file PDF book proposal to Series Editor, Adán Medrano (adan@jmcommunications.com) that includes the following elements.

• A cover letter, which includes: a short abstract of the work, word count, intended audience
• Sample Text: the table of contents and an introductory chapter or two
• Vita/Resume

Feel welcome to email Adán with any questions about your submission: adan@jmcommunications.com

The Publishing Process at Texas Tech University Press

(Reprinted from the Texas Tech University Press Website)
Once acquisitions received a submission, you can expect an initial response within two weeks. If we are interested in possibly publishing your book, we will request the full manuscript for exclusive consideration. All manuscripts undergo a rigorous peer review process, which can take several months.

In addition to the standards of peer review laid out by the Association of University Presses, we at TTUP are committed to using peer review to change who holds power in the publishing industry.

A 2019 survey found that the publishing workforce was 76% white and a staggering 85% white at the editorial level. 80% of both book reviewers and literary agents are white. While University Presses specifically are committed to finding the kinds of books often passed over by commercial publishers, our demo

graphics can and do blind us to valuable stories that need to be told.

Peer review is supposed to be an equalizing mechanism. The blind review of manuscripts means that a project is evaluated for the power of its argument, the breadth of its research, and the sheer necessity of its storytelling. We know, however, that pure meritocracy is a myth that reinforces white hegemony. We can do better.

The problem is compounded by the fact that tenured professors are standard reviewers for academic presses such as TTUP. According to a 2016 study, 78% of tenured faculty members are white and only 38% are women. These disproportionate demographics mean that brilliant research and important stories will continue to be neglected.

We at TTUP are committed to strive to have at least 50 percent of our total peer reviewers, who will be paid equitably for their time and expertise, to come from our community of black, indigenous, people of color, non-cisgender and non-binary scholars. We are simultaneously committed to equal distribution of gender identity of our total peer reviewers. At the same time, we recognize that service to the profession is undervalued by promotion and tenure committees. Undervalued and uncredited work at universities often falls off the shoulders of women and BIPOC. We at TTUP will attempt to balance these concerns while also giving these same people a voice in contemporary scholarship.

We are committed to this not just because it is right but because it helps us meet the mission of Texas Tech University, which is to advance knowledge through innovative research and scholarship and to commit to ethical leadership.
Your editor will work with you through the review process and guide you through any necessary revisions. After revisions are made (and sometimes taken through another round of peer review), the manuscript will be reviewed by the TTUP Editorial Committee for final approval to publish.

We usually offer a contract after successful completion of peer review. We are happy to work with both agented and unagented projects. We will occasionally offer an advance contracts in special circumstances or to authors with proven publishing track records.

Please do note that it is an author’s responsibility to secure third-party permissions for any copyrighted material to appear in a book, including illustrations and photographs. Individual, high resolution files must also be supplied by the author. TTUP cannot guarantee that all supplementary material will be printed in the book.

From the submission of the final manuscript file, after editorial committee approval, it can take 8-10 months to produce the physical book. We work with authors every step of the way for copyediting, typesetting, design, and marketing.

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