For the past decade I have worked as a freelance editor of academic books. Every writer works differently, but in most cases I help hone early drafts into readable, enjoyable, and compelling book manuscripts ready for formal peer-review. I accept 3 - 4 manuscripts (or, massive piles of pages aspiring to become manuscripts) per year. I also help with book proposals and consult with academic writers on publishing strategies.

Machiavelli and the Orders of Violence

by Yves Winter

♦ 2020 Canadian Political Science Association’s CB Macpherson Prize for the best book in political theory

♦ 2019 Best First Book Prize from the Foundations of Political Theory organized section of the American Political Science Association

“In this richly theorized and elegantly written book, Yves Winter offers a systematic treatment of Machiavelli’s distinctive approach to political violence… The book is a major contribution to scholarship on Machiavelli and it reveals how Machiavelli’s ideas fundamentally shape contemporary understandings of political violence in relation to popular democracy and class inequality.”

Canadian Political Science Association

“A tour de force: one of the most perspicacious contemporary investigations into the nature of political violence; an outstanding contribution to the recent wave of republican, populist and democratic readings of Machiavelli.”

John P. McCormick, University of Chicago

Tokyo Listening
Sound and Sense in a Contemporary City

by Lorraine Plourde

“This is an excellent, much-needed study of the ‘gentle, ubiquitous, cacophonous’ soundscapes of Tokyo. Plourde combines descriptions of Tokyo’s sites of listening—experimental-music venue, classical-music café, department store, office—with insightful analyses to link seemingly disparate listening cultures in compelling and unexpected ways.”

David Grubbs, author of Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording

“With this groundbreaking, long-anticipated ethnography of sonic experiences, Plourde plunges the reader, ears first, into the deep noisiness of contemporary urban Japan. Tokyo Listening brings to life a world of environmental sounds, auditory sites, and sensory resonances, vibrating sympathetically with this special city and its subjects.”

David Novak, author of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation

The Little Old Lady Killer
The Sensationalized Crimes of Mexico’s First Female Serial Killer

by Susana Vargas Cervantes

“This brilliant mixed-genre meditation on the life and crimes of Juana Barraza combines the pulse of true crime, a picaresque cast of historical characters, the contextual nuance of cultural history, the sophistication of queer theory, and disturbing new insights into Mexican identity and its complicated relationship with human mortality. A (trans)historical achievement of the highest order.”

Robert Marshall Buffington, author of A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910

“Focusing on a case that challenged what Mexicans thought they knew about crime, Vargas examines performance, images, media languages and expert discourses, and uncovers their racist and machista premises. Her criticism is original but also urgently needed, as we see how the neglect of certain victims and the criminalization of those who do not conform to gender norms contribute to the dehumanizing levels of violence that Mexico is witnessing today.”

Pablo Piccato, author of A History of Infamy: Crime, Truth, and Justice in Mexico

Encoding Race, Encoding Class
Indian IT workers in Berlin

by Sareeta Amrute

♦ Diana Forsythe Prize for best book in the anthropology of work, technology, or science (including medicine) in 2017

♦ International Convention for Asian Studies Best Book Award in 2019

“What stands out in her well-crafted and thoroughly researched ethnography is how various notions of Indianness… permeate the transnational/Germany workplace and how it is interpreted, negotiated, and occasionally also appropriated. Drawing on a vast array of representations of Indian IT professionals in German media and elsewhere, Amrute’s analysis… provides insight on a changing world.”

Michiel Baas, Economic and Political Weekly

“A riveting ethnography of the personal and professional lives of short-term Indian IT workers in Berlin, Germany. . . . This book has a wide potential audience, and is essential reading for scholars interested in transnational migration and labour, neoliberal knowledge economies, as well as contemporary South Asia and its diasporas.”

Anar Parikh, Social Anthropology

Singing Yoruba Christianity

by Vicki L. Brennan

♦ Finalist for the 2020 Isaac Oluwole Delano Book Prize for Yoruba Studies

“By looking at song and sound as critically important aspects of worship, Vicki L. Brennan provides an excellent and detailed analysis of Yoruba Christianity, its practice, and its impact on church members.”

Elisha P. Renne, author of Yoruba Religious Textiles

“In exploring the ethnography of time and place, Brennan is able to articulate the history and effectiveness of the activities of the churches and its members. It is important to mention that through observer participation, researchers are able to probe deeper into the ideas and practices that define groups, building on that to develop a powerful narrative that provides nuanced analysis.”

Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, African Studies Review

Jean-Luc Godard’s Political Filmmaking

by Irmgard Emmelhainz

Proposal only

“In this wide-ranging and incisive study, Irmgard Emmelhainz situates Jean-Luc Godard’s output―both his feature films and lesser known audiovisual pamphlets and essays―within the history of materialist aesthetics. Her theoretically sophisticated examination of his oeuvre in this perspective underpins a compelling retrieval of him as a fundamentally political artist and offers an enormously rich contribution to how we think about his work.”

Michael Witt, University of Roehampton, UK