 DECEMBER 24 • 2020 | 19

either did not have a vigorous 
understanding of publishing, of 
university press publishing or of 
management making major deci-
sions for the Press.
” She declined 
to elaborate further.
Now, though, Williams is “very 
pleased” with the administration’s 
current level of support for the 
Press.
“I would not have taken the 
job, and I certainly would not 
have moved to Detroit, I defi-
nitely would not have bought a 
house … if I did not believe that 
the Press was in a position to 
succeed,
” she said.

JEWISH STUDIES CONTINUE
The Press published around a 
dozen titles last year in the field 
of Jewish Studies, Williams said. 
Its relationship to the field is 
historic: Leonard M. Simons, 
an early donor to the Press in 
the 1950s, helped support its 
early publishing efforts in Jewish 
topics.

At this year’s Association 
for Jewish Studies Conference, 
the Press is showing off recent 
publications including Nancy 
Sinkoff’s award-winning From 
Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, 
The New York Intellectuals, and 
Politics of Jewish History; and a 
reprinting of Emma Wolf’s novel 
Heirs of Yesterday. 
Its upcoming titles for 
2021 include a book by Erin 
McGlothlin about depictions of 
Holocaust perpetrators in fiction 
and nonfiction, and a compre-

hensive Jewish Cultural Studies 
research book from Simon J. 
Bronner.
Going forward, Williams said, 
the Press hopes to find further 
ways to intersect its Jewish 
Studies arm with a larger pub-
lishing focus on social justice 
issues. “We’re looking for areas 
where we can be more inclusive,
” 
she said.
Williams further credits Elaine 
Driker, chair of the WSU Press 
board, for being “absolutely 
invaluable in helping me under-

stand people, places and things I 
need to know about” within the 
Detroit Jewish community.
The pandemic has forced 
the Press to push many of its 
high-profile book launch events 
into the digital realm. Shortly 
after Williams joined, the Press 
was launching just such a 
big-ticket Jewish Studies book: 
Invisible Ink, the highly antici-
pated memoir by Guy Stern, a 
former Ritchie Boy, WSU dis-
tinguished professor emeritus 
and director of the Institute for 
the Righteous at the Holocaust 
Memorial Center.
“We have a tremendous num-
ber of people who love him,
” 
Williams said about the expe-
rience of promoting the book 
online. Students and faculty alike, 
she said, were desperate to shake 
the nearly 99-year-old author’s 
hand. The Press is hopeful they 
can have a makeup event featur-
ing Stern once COVID restric-
tions lift. 

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