What does it mean to write against permanent war, the weaponization of infrastructure, and the militarization of our every day? Within the parameters of academic publication, can we approach the interwoven publication network – between the author, the reviewers, the editor, the readers — and emphasize the stakes in our writing and our desire to write the world anew? Drawing on the newly founded Critical Militarization Studies (CMS) Book Series (University of Michigan Press, UMP) as a starting point, participants of this roundtable conversation - including the UMP CMS editorial team; a CMS editorial collective member; a public scholar; and an acquisitions editor from the University of Washington Press – will discuss the urgent necessity of supporting public-facing scholarship that engages militarization, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and decolonization in rigorous and unexpected ways. Our roundtable will address both the practical matters of publication and challenges with writing, as well as the intellectual necessity of researching the lived, ecological, and relational consequences of militarization for studies of diaspora and transnational Asian/America.

As part of this conversation, we will discuss different genealogies of militarization studies (including Asian/American studies and ethnic studies), as well as the stakes of supporting – through mentorship, publication, and community-building – scholarship invested in addressing the everyday consequences of militarization on racialized and poor communities in and beyond the United States. The Critical Militarization Studies series is committed to a feminist praxis that supports intellectual relationships beyond a single publication. The series aims to build a collaborative community of scholars by providing a formal structure of mutual guidance, peer accountability, and writing support, especially for junior scholars and first-time authors. Through this series, the editorial team is starting to ask questions about challenges that first-time authors face in publishing their first books and what structural/systemic support might look like, especially for BIPOC, first-generation, and working-class authors. While this conversation will be facilitated by the CMS series editorial team, it asks larger questions about public-oriented scholarship and publishing, and will be welcoming to anyone concerned about these issues. The editorial team will also hold space to brainstorm with and converse with audience members, who may want to share questions and/or their own experiences with academic publishing. Indeed, given this prolonged moment of emergency and crisis – when structural asymmetries, the logic of scarcity, job precarity, austerity, and institutional pressures deeply impact authors in and beyond the neoliberal settler university – this urgent conversation is long overdue and more necessary than ever.