Thoth Archiving Network Pilot at Cambridge
Cambridge University Library (CUL) is piloting participation in the Thoth Archiving Network, which will allow small presses to use a simple deposit option to archive their publications in multiple repository locations, creating the opportunity to safeguard against the complete loss of their open books catalogue, should they cease to operate.
This is a pilot repository site hosting open access books by a range of publishers depositing content in Thoth. This site is maintained and managed by the Open Research Systems Team at Cambridge University Library (CUL).
More information about this pilot and the Open Book Futures Project is available at this page.
Open Book Futures
Recent Submissions
Autotheory and Its Others
(punctum books, 2026-07-22) McLaughlin, Becky; Daffron, Eric; Gil Ulldemolins, Maria; Pint, Kris
Ever since Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts gave the word fresh currency a decade ago, autotheory has infiltrated scholarly, literary, and artistic practices. Autotheory and Its Others contributes to this nascent metacritical conversation. An inclusive discourse, autotheory embraces its uncanny double, allotheory, and, thus, this collection invites to the table a host of uncanny others: psychoanalysis, queer theory, and crip theory as well as art writing, postcriticism, and autofiction, among other genres and discourses.
Bringing together four editors and thirteen contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, this collection of critical and creative-critical essays grapples with what it means to couple the personal with the theoretical. The volume’s chapters feature geographical settings as far-flung as New Zealand, Iran, and Mississippi and its wide-ranging topics include anecdotal theory and dialogia–theoria, the bodymind and illness, artificial intelligence and experimentation, accident and fantasy, collages and fragments, unlearning and autopractices, unknowing and the unconscious, uncertainty and art writing, narcissus and trauma, kudzu and pedagogy, memory and legend, autofabulation and religion, and lo-fi critique and academia. Ultimately, Autotheory and Its Others showcases this emergent genre’s diversity while also charting its multivalent future directions.
Malleus Daemonum: The Hammer of Demons
(punctum books, 2026-07-29) Albertino, Alessandro
The Malleus Daemonum provides an exciting introduction into the religious world of early modern Italy. It consists of a series of personal exorcisms which the Italian Observant Franciscan Alessandro Albertino composed and which he claims have proven themselves by experience. It bears witness to the end of a period in which priests could freely compose their own exorcisms as a regular part of their pastoral functions.
Albertino’s exorcisms faithfully follow the Passion narrative in the four Gospels designed both to parallel and to empower the Vulgate text. His strategy is to employ the words and instruments used against Christ by his detractors against the demons occupying the possessed individual in order to expel them. Those words and weapons which were once used to torment, harass, and crucify Christ thus become spiritual weapons which the exorcist may use to treat their patient. Albertino introduces each exorcism with an epigram based on Classical mythology followed by litanies, invocations, and prayers, and he also includes a general exorcism to expel demons from specific parts of the body, along with general blessings and prayers to drive out all sorcery and diabolical intervention from particular articles of clothing.
This edition comprises a comprehensive historical and theological introduction, a Latin edition, and the first-ever English translation of The Hammer of Demons. The translation, research, and commentary unveil a long-buried gem of the seventeenth century, offering readers an alluring narrative about the evolving face of the ancient convention of exorcism. More than just a book, this introduction, edition, and translation are an essential contribution to the understanding of the intersection of exorcism, history, and religion in early modern Italy.
Rethinking Social Justice: Theory and Action in an Age of Transition
(Open Book Publishers, 2026-07-15) Karlberg, Michael; Smith, Derik
This book offers a compelling and original rethinking of social justice at a moment of global uncertainty and transformation. Tracing the emergence and evolution of modern social justice discourse, it addresses two fundamental questions: what ends should we aspire toward, and what means are most effective in pursuing them? Moving beyond familiar critiques of injustice, the authors identify a shared, though often implicit, horizon that diverse traditions of thought all orient toward: contributive justice. This positive vision of social justice centers on the creation of social conditions that enable every individual and group to develop their capacities to contribute meaningfully to collective flourishing.
Drawing on a wide range of philosophical, historical, and empirical sources, the book critically examines the strategies that have shaped social justice movements. It argues that, in the current transitional period, contentious and oppositional approaches are reaching a point of diminishing returns. In their place, the authors propose radical constructive agency: purposeful, collective efforts to build new social forms and institutions capable of supplanting anachronistic and unjust ones.
Ambitious in scope yet accessible in style, this work brings clarity to complex debates while offering a hopeful and forward-looking framework for change. Its rigorous synthesis of key concepts and traditions, combined with its innovative theoretical contributions, makes it an essential resource for scholars, activists, and anyone seeking new pathways toward a more just and inclusive society.
Teaching Dido: Critical Perspectives on Aeneid 4
(Open Book Publishers, 2026-07-03) Ingo Gildenhard
A companion to Virgil, Aeneid 4, with Study Questions, Vocabulary, and Commentary (https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0527) (OBP 2026), Teaching Dido includes five essays that explore aspects of Virgil’s poetry in a student-friendly way. They range from issues in poetics (verse design, allusion) to key themes (‘historiographical Dido’, religion, pietās). Six reprinted scholarly articles follow, allowing students and their teachers to engage directly with some of the research that informs the essays and the commentary and to broaden their appreciation of Dido, the Aeneid, Virgil, and the wider historical context. Topics covered include the ethics of hospitality, the interface of intertextuality and psychology in the construction of character, Carthage and Rome as imperial powers, racecraft in Aeneid 4, Virgil’s authorial self-fashioning and negotiation of the Augustan new normal, the myth of Troy in Rome’s cultural imaginary, and Dido’s place within Virgil’s philosophy of history.
Verbal Multi-Word Expressions in Corpus Languages: Data, Methodology, and Analysis
(Open Book Publishers, 2026-07-14) Fendel, Victoria Beatrix
This volume brings together a diverse, interdisciplinary cohort of scholars to shed new light on verbal multi-word expressions in corpus languages such as Greek, Latin, and Egyptian. Addressing in particular corpora related to in-groups, which are often overlooked due to entrenched research traditions or limited accessibility, the volume makes these corpora newly visible and methodologically relevant.
Contributions critically examine language-specific descriptive categories derived from comparative concepts used in cross-linguistic comparison and interrogate how corpus languages, with their non-expandable and historically bound data, challenge existing frameworks, language-internally, cross-linguistically, and typologically. Drawing on expertise from linguistics, computer science, papyrology, and Egyptology, Verbal Multi-Word Expressions in Corpus Languages explores both the theoretical and practical dimensions of studying verbal multi-word expressions, including cutting-edge digital solutions. Grounded in original data, the research pushes beyond current boundaries, advancing typological understanding and methodological precision.
The volume firmly supports multilingual research practices and challenges the dominance of English in academic discourse. The result is a critical, data-rich resource that advances our understanding of how verbal multi-word expressions function across historically significant but methodologically under-explored corpora.
Verbal Multi-Word Expressions in Corpus Languages will be essential reading for historical linguists focused on corpus methods and the syntax-lexicon interface; general linguists studying multi-word expressions comparatively; and digital humanities scholars developing tools for large-scale corpus analysis, as well as those interested in specific, underexplored corpora like those related to Galen and Hippocrates or the Herculaneum papyri.
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