November 11-17 marks University Press Week 2012! All week long, presses around the Web will be hosting special posts as part of a UP Week Blog Tour. The Digital Digest will be following the tour with a daily round up.

MONDAY

Harvard University Press: “My Blue-Bound Loves”
Anthony Grafton (Professor of History, Princeton University; co-editor, The Classical Tradition) writes of being seduced by the physical and intellectual beauty of the Oxford Classical Texts. The seriousness, the courage, and the beauty of university press publishing still draw him to the stacks.

Duke University Press: “Why University Presses Matter”
Judith Halberstam (Professor of English, American Studies and Ethnicity, and Gender Studies, University of Southern California; author, The Queer Art of Failure) advocates for university presses as supporters of radical knowledge and the cross-pollinators of culture, learning, and unlearning.

Stanford University Press: “Steve Levingston on Why University Presses Matter”
Levingston, Nonfiction Editor of the Washington Post Book World, picks out a few favorite university press titles reviewed in the Post and the Political Bookworm—memorable for the continuing fascination of  the conversations the books inspired, and illustrating what we mean when we say that university presses “contribute to an informed society.”

University of Georgia Press: “Small is Better: Why University Presses are Sustainable Presses”
Claire Bond Potter, (Tenured Radical, Professor of History at the New School for Public Engagement, and co-author of Doing Recent History) writes the “bottom line” of university presses: “We can help you write the book you want to write, and we get it to your readers. That’s publishing.”

University of Missouri Press: “Why Do We Need University Presses?”
The extraordinary co-organizers of the “Save the University of Missouri Press” campaign, Ned Stuckey-French (professor of English, Florida State University; author, The American Essay in the American Century) and Bruce Miller (sales representative and President, Miller Book Trade Marketing) explore what people don’t know about university presses and the works that “stay on shelves for years, get taught in our schools, and change the way we think.”