In a move that marks the end of an era in cultural studies, William Germano, vice president and publishing director of Routledge, has been abruptly ousted from the publishing house after 19 years. Mr. Germano blamed a restructuring of Routledge’s parent company, the London-based Taylor & Francis Group, for his departure.
“I understand that editorial reporting is moving to the U.K.,” he wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Tuesday. “The position of vice president and publishing director disappears, and I disappear along with it.”
He said he learned on September 6 that his services would no longer be needed, effective September 9. Mary MacInnes, Routledge’s vice president for editorial and marketing, declined to discuss the situation. “We never comment on people who leave the company,” she said. The Chronicle was unable to reach Jeremy North, managing director of Taylor & Francis’ books division, for comment.
As an editor and publisher, Mr. Germano played an essential role in establishing cultural studies as a recognized discipline. In 1982 he became the editorial director of Columbia University Press. While there, Mr. Germano published such heavy hitters as Paul Bové and Gayatri Spivak. He acquired the theorist Paul de Man’s last book, The Rhetoric of Romanticism. Subsequently, during his nearly two decades at Routledge, he oversaw its emergence as a powerhouse in the cultural-studies field, publishing and promoting such authors as Judith Butler, Cornel West, bell hooks, Marjorie Garber, and Andrew Ross.
“Bill Germano has been one of the most influential figures in literary criticism and theory over the past two decades,” according to Jeffrey Williams, a professor of literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon University and editor of The Minnesota Review. Mr. Williams worked with Mr. Germano at Routledge from 1989 to 1990, and shared his thoughts via e-mail.
“We frequently think of editors as ‘handmaids’ to academic work, but Germano was an important force in inventing and affirming some of the new currents in contemporary criticism, such as gay and lesbian studies -- and then queer theory -- in the early 1990s, science studies (Donna Haraway and Andrew Ross), and cultural studies in the U.S. (with his risky publishing of the enormous volume Cultural Studies).”
Mr. Germano, who has been a regular contributor to The Chronicle Review since 2001, is no stranger to the vagaries of corporate restructurings. “I’ve been through many during the two decades since I was recruited to start up the North American scholarly program for Routledge (symptomatically, it was Methuen when I joined),” he observed. He survived one especially difficult period of change at Routledge about 10 years ago, when the house was owned by International Thomson Publishing. A venture-capital company, Cinven, bought it in 1996, then sold it to Taylor & Francis.
The terms of what Mr. Germano described in an e-mail message as “my divorce from T&F” are not yet final, but he appears determined to make the best of the situation. “This has not been an easy week,” he wrote, “but I’m thinking of myself not strictly as a pretty good editor summarily disposed of and more in terms of all the things that interest me and that I haven’t had time to do -- faculty development, teaching and writing, foundation work, arts administration -- it’s pretty likely that my next move will be working with or within the academy in some way. At this point it really depends on who’s interested.”
For the short term, Mr. Germano will lecture and give workshops related to his book From Dissertation to Book (University of Chicago, 2005). “My life has been enriched,” he said, “in ways both intellectual and personal, by two decades’ worth of talented colleagues and extraordinary authors. I’m upbeat and looking forward to what’s ahead for me.”
Background articles from The Chronicle:
Essays by Mr. Germano for The Chronicle Review: