In this episode, I talk to Dean Smith, who’s been director of Duke University Press for almost a year and a half, before which he was director of Cornell University Press. Earlier in his career, Dean held posts at Chapman & Hall as director of electronic publishing and the American Chemical Society as vice president for sales and marketing. Earlier still, he was the director of Project MUSE at the Johns Hopkins University Press. All of which adds up to a wealth of experience in the university press world.
When his departure from the Cornell University Press, I read on their blog:
So when I spoke to him during his convalescence after hip surgery, I wanted to know more about how Dean saw the role of university press director. I also wanted to find out a bit more about his hinterland.
Dean was born and raised in Baltimore; that city is clearly still close to his heart, as are its sports. He wrote about the Baltimore Ravens’ 2013 against-the-odds Superbowl triumph in Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A City, A Championship Season.
Dean’s also a published poet and when we spoke a few weeks back, we talked about his debut collection, American Boy, which draws on his 1960s Baltimore childhood.
In this interview, you’ll also hear what Dean thinks are the lessons of the recent Jessica Krug affair, as that author was published by Duke, and why he compares his press to a spaceship in the desert. But our conversation began with something lighter. If you type ‘Dean Smith John Cleese’ into a search engine, you’ll find video from 2017 of an event at which Dean interviewed the veteran English comedian on stage …
The titles Dean mentioned in the interview are:
- Achille Mbembe: Necropolitics
- Tiffany Lethabo King: The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies
- Christina Sharpe: In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
