This post is part of the blog tour curated by the Association of University Presses in celebration of University Press Week. To see the rest of the posts in the tour, click here.
This year, blog tour posts will examine ways that university presses Speak UP or give voice to the scholarship and ideas that shape conversations around the world, using some common interrogatives.
Today’s post is written by Purdue University Acquisitions Editor, Andrea Gapsch.
Our mission with every book we publish is to provide quality research that adds to our understanding of the world. With our focus on Jewish studies, Purdue University Press publishes books that Speak Up for voices that have been historically marginalized.
Purdue University Press has long published in the fields of Jewish, Holocaust, and Genocide studies. We publish two ongoing Jewish studies series (Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review and Studies in Jewish Civilization), the acclaimed and widely-read journal Shofar, and we are continually growing our Holocaust studies list.

From exploring Jewish relationships with other minority groups in Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America, to exploring gender roles from biblical to modern times in Jews and Gender, the scholars published by Purdue generate fruitful discussion and research. Tastes of Faith highlights the vibrancy of Jewish foodways, New Paths in Jewish and Religious Studies: Essays in Honor of Professor Elliot R. Wolfson celebrates the legacy of an established scholar, and Transleithanian Paradise: A History of the Budapest Jewish Community, 1738–1938 writes the history of how Budapest became one of the most diverse and lively Jewish cities in the world. With these publications we shine light on Jewish communities, traditions, scholarship, and ways of life.

In our Holocaust studies program, we publish histories that better our understanding the horrors of the Nazi regime. With anti-Semitism and xenophobia on the rise, it is vital that we continue to discuss, unearth, and examine how the perpetrators of the Holocaust enacted such violence. Our recent titles include The Nazis, the Vatican, and the Jews of Rome by Patrick Gallo and A Summer of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal for the Hungarian Holocaust by George Eisen. Gallo’s work reveals the Vatican’s involvement in the forced deportation of Italian Jews to concentration camps and offers new insight into the Pope’s collaboration in the plots against Hitler. Eisen’s book focuses on an unexplored facet of the Holocaust, the genocide by bullets in Galicia. Not only a detailed history of the Holocaust in Hungary, Eisen’s work also offers a personal story: among the victims are two of the scholar’s uncles.

Forthcoming titles include From Schmelt Camp to “Little Auschwitz”: Blechhammer’s Role in the Holocaust by Susanne Barth, the first in depth study of the second largest Auschwitz subcamp. This microhistory traces the start of Blechhammer as a forced labor camp, and covers women’s experiences in the camp, how ordinary people became perpetrators, and the strategies prisoners used to survive the brutal conditions. Barth argues that though Blechhammer was not a concentration camp, the Nazis used this camp tactically and intentionally in the Holocaust. Barth’s work Speaks Up for the many victims of Blechhammer and the Holocaust writ large, and Purdue University Press is proud to publish this important work and others.
You can get 30% off books in these series or any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE30 at checkout.