The imprint was co-founded in 2011 by Eileen A. Joy (amedievalist and advocate of open access[1]) and Nicola Masciandaro (Brooklyn College, CUNY), who left the project in 2012. The imprint was conceived partly as an offshoot of the BABEL Working Group,[2] a "non-hierarchical scholarly collective"[3] with an emphasis on medieval studies. Punctum Books was joined in 2016 by co-director Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei. Since its inception, Punctum Books has sought to bring scholarly works, often with a transdisciplinary or unconventional nature, to a broader public. It publishes print editions through Kindle Direct Publishing, but buyers can get a PDF version of the book for free through the publisher's website.[4]
In the past, Punctum Books published issues of the journals Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies,[5]Badiou Studies,[6]Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest,[7]Helvete: A Journal of Black Metal Theory,[8]Itineration: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media and Culture,[9]Networks and Neighbours,[10]O-Zone: A Journal of Object Oriented Studies,[11]Radical Criminology,[12] and Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism.[13]
Punctum Books was a partner on the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project which ran from 2019-2023[14], and is now a partner on the Open Book Futures project funded by the Arcadia Fund and Research England[15].
