“The only thing as much fun as working with the UT Press is reading its many wonderful books.”
Roy Herron, Tennessee senator, 1997–2013
“The University of Tennessee Press has a remarkable history of achievement in the publication of outstanding intellectual books by noted authors, making the University of Tennessee proud of academic excellence, sales, and well-deserved recognition.”
Joe Johnson, UT President, 1991–1999
Mission Statement
The University of Tennessee Press is the Volunteer State’s book publisher, committed to preserving and promoting the rich cultural and intellectual heritage of Tennessee and the region. Through our focused publishing program, we strive to deepen appreciation for the communities, ecosystems, and histories that make this place unique. Ultimately, our mission is to enlighten readers, foster cultural dialogue, and improve the quality of life for the people of Tennessee and around the world.
A Brief History
In 1940, Coach Robert Neyland’s University of Tennessee football team went undefeated, President Franklin D. Roosevelt drove down Knoxville’s Gay Street on his way to dedicate the new Great Smoky Mountains National Park, construction began on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Fort Loudon Dam, and UT’s Alumni Memorial Gymnasium presented big band concerts led by Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey.
That same year, UT President James D. Hoskins was convinced that the university needed “to assume a more aggressive program of publications.” Hoskins allowed that the university had brought out a few bulletins of general interest but bemoaned the fact that “other universities of equivalent size and rank are publishing important periodicals and dozens of volumes of a more or less popular but significant nature.” He thus proposed that the Board of Trustees establish a University of Tennessee Press. Its mandate was threefold:
- To stimulate scientific and scholarly research in all fields to ensure superior work would reach publication
- To channel such studies, either in scholarly or popular form, for the public benefit
- To extend the university’s regional leadership by stimulating research in the South and by publishing worthy projects by non-university authors
The Press’s first book was Tennessee: A Political Study by William H. Combs and William E. Cole, followed quickly by The Frozen Food Industry by Harry Carlton and Shakespeare and Democracy by Alwin Thaler. In the decades since, UT Press has retained its focus on subjects of interest to Tennessee, the Appalachian region, and beyond; recent titles, such as Tennessee Samplers: Female Education and Domestic Arts, 1800–1900 by Jennifer C. Core and Janet S. Hasson, Agricultural Scientists: A Cultural History by Alan I. Marcus, and These Vivid American Documents by Joseph Millichap show a remarkable affinity with our earliest titles. UT Press has earned a national reputation for excellence with its lists in Southern history, Appalachian and Tennessee studies, African American history and religion, and material culture. Evergreen classics, such as Durwood Dunn’s Cades Cove: The Life and Death of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1818–1937, Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, and Jo Ann Gibson Robinson’s memoir The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, continue to inform readers about the cultural heritage of the region.
Several outstanding series strengthen the press’s output of thirty-five to forty titles per year, including the presidential papers of Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James K. Polk and the correspondence of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore. Books in the Outdoor Tennessee series range from hiking guides to studies of environmental problems, while the Voices of the Civil War series brings into print the memoirs, journals, and letters of those who endured America’s costliest conflict. The Tennessee Three Star series offers primers on topics of interest to the Volunteer State. Other series include Sport and Popular Culture, America’s Baptists, Studies in Vernacular Architecture, Legacies of War, and the Western Theater in the Civil War.
The press continually strives to meet its traditional commitments to scholarly research, to its wide range of readers, and to its place within the larger mission of the university. It remains committed to excellence in scholarly and regional publishing.
UT Press Directors
- Louis T. Iglehart, 1957–1978
- Carol Wallace Orr, 1978–1993
- Jennifer Siler, 1993–2008
- Scot Danforth, 2008–2024
- Katie Hannah, 2024–present