Graduate Assistant, Diversity Fellow, and Interns

Northwestern University Press Graduate Assistantship

Now accepting applications for the 2024-2025 assistantship

Deadline: April 26, 2024

The Northwestern University Press Graduate Assistantship is a competitive twelve-month position awarded to an outstanding graduate student at Northwestern University working on a PhD in any field of the humanities or social sciences. This position will provide the student with an invaluable in-depth, comprehensive introduction to scholarly publishing. The student will gain familiarity with the publication process and goals of the university press in the context of the larger campus community; have access to the acquisitions, editorial and production, and marketing staff, who possess expertise in scholarly communications and current scholarship across many disciplines; and enjoy a mentored team environment in which to build analytical skills that will be useful across many careers. Students are expected to make progress on their dissertation while working at NUP; this assistantship is a 40% full-time equivalent position (2 full days per week) and is designed to approximate typical assistantship time commitments and responsibilities.

Principal Responsibilities:

· Assist acquisitions in evaluating projects at the proposal phase, as well as additional research projects as needed

· Work with the rights manager on rights and permissions projects as they arise

· Work with the editorial and production department to learn the basics of The Chicago Manual of Style and help with proof corrections, file prep, and indexing. This can be tailored to the subject specialty of the student if it is relevant to NUP titles (http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/subjects)

· Participate in the preparation of digital book records and images for distribution to the book industry, Amazon, etc.

· Research and prepare lists of book reviewers for scholarly, library, and mainstream media

· Develop a graduate workshop on publishing for their home department or broader subject area, which will increase exposure for the Press on campus and promote the student as an advocate for scholarly publishing

The successful candidate will have the following:

· Expertise in one or more humanities, arts, or related disciplines

· Strong interest in inter- and transdisciplinary work

· A deep interest in scholarly communications and scholarly publishing

· Strong written and verbal skills

· The ability to work independently

· Excellent computer skills, especially with the intricacies of Microsoft Office

· Great organizational and project management skills

Eligibility:

· Student must be a PhD student in the humanities, arts, or social sciences who is eligible for a Graduate School assistantship (entering years three through seven), preferably in their third or fourth year.

· Students may be funded on Interdisciplinary GAships through their 7th year. Interdisciplinary GAship quarters for 6th and 7th years are not bankable – quarters may still only be banked through year 5.

· Student must be available locally from the beginning of fall quarter 2024 through summer 2025.

Funding:

Funding and stipend for four quarters

Application Requirements:

· A statement of purpose, explaining why and how this opportunity would be essential to your professional and academic achievement

· An abstract of your dissertation topic

· Your CV

Please write your response/complete the application requirements in a word document, save it as a pdf, and upload the document (and any accompanying pdfs) through this TGS interdisciplinary GAship application portal.

Also required:

· Candidates invited to interview will also be asked for a letters of recommendation from their dissertation advisor to be sent directly to Courtney Smotherman at c-smotherman@northwestern.edu ahead of their interview time.


Internships

Subject to availability, Northwestern University Press hosts internships throughout the calendar year. Please contact Courtney Smotherman (c-smotherman@northwestern.edu) to learn out about current openings.


Mellon Diversity Fellow

Northwestern University Press was honored to host a Mellon University Press Diversity Fellow funded by the Mellon Foundation between 2019 and 2022. This job existed as a fourteen-month, full-time, entry-level position that immersed three successive fellows in the acquisitions department of a leading scholarly press, working closely with senior acquisitions editors, authors, and projects through the entire acquisitions process. Through this apprenticeship, the fellow acquired deep and specialized knowledge of how editors identify emerging areas of scholarship, worked with authors to develop manuscripts, managed the process of peer review and revision, presented projects for approval, and represented them through each stage of publication. Fellows also worked with other press departments including marketing, design, manuscript editorial, and production on behalf of specific book projects.

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