The University of Pennsylvania Press received a grant of $1.16 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation last week.
The money will go toward publishing scholarly books on literatures of the non-Anglophone world.
Penn Press will share the grant with Fordham University Press, University of California Press, University of Virginia Press and University of Washington Press.
The initiative will support the publication of 20 titles by each press over the next five years.
The grant money will help with "identifying, publishing and disseminating first books by scholars in fields such as rhetoric, film, performing arts and popular culture, as well as language and literature," according to a press release by the University of Washington Press.
"The focus of this initiative is on language itself, especially as manifested in literature and other cultural narratives," the release said.
Penn Press views this funding as an opportunity to support new and unusual projects.
"The sales don't readily support the publications of some of the most interesting books, and yet it's our mission to be publishing new scholarship work," said Jerry Singerman, the senior humanities editor at Penn Press.
He plans to support first-time authors, "who are most vulnerable because they are not yet established names."
Singerman noted that the presses will continue to receive book proposals individually, just as they always have.
"We have this great advantage of being able to cooperate with other presses to pool our resources," he said.
Penn Press is beginning to solicit proposals through advertisements, and Singerman said to look for some of these new books in about a year.
