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Ken Wissoker is Senior Executive Editor at Duke University Press, acquiring books in anthropology, cultural studies, and social theory; globalization and post-colonial studies; Asian, African, and American studies; music, film and television; race, gender and sexuality; science studies; and other areas in the humanities, social sciences, media, and the arts. He joined the Press as an Acquisitions Editor in 1991; became Editor-in-Chief in 1997; was named Editorial Director in 2005; and assumed his current position in 2020. In addition to his duties at the Press, he serves as Director of Intellectual Publics at The Graduate Center, CUNY in New York City. He is a member of the Board of Directors of CAA.
Ken has published over a twelve hundred books that have won over 170 prizes. Among the authors whose books he has published are Stuart Hall, Donna Haraway, Achille Mbembe, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jack Halberstam, Charles Taylor, Kellie Jones, Lisa Lowe, Lauren Berlant, Brian Massumi, Arjun Appadurai, Sara Ahmed, José Muñoz, Fred Moten, Christina Sharpe, Chandra Mohanty, Greg Tate and Cherríe Moraga. In addition he has published the work of artists and musicians including Randy Weston, Lorraine O’Grady, Horace Tapscott, Tony Allen, Fred Wesley, and Renée Green.
In addition to the work of these leading scholars, he is particularly proud of the number of pioneering first books he acquired. When asked what he looks for, Ken says, “I love seeing a project that changes my thinking, that is more than a recognizable approach well-applied.”He has written on publishing for The Chronicle of Higher Education and in Cinema Journal, and writes a column for the Japanese cultural studies journal “5.” A three-part interview with him by Adeline Koh appeared in April 2013 on the Prof. Hacker blog. He speaks regularly on publishing at universities in the US and around the world.
