Three books published by Clemson University Press have been included in the first batch of books in JSTOR’s Path to Open program, which is designed to expand access to peer-reviewed academic books.
Path to Open is a community collaboration with libraries and publishers to increase access to scholarly publications, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Books published as part of the program are exclusively available to participating libraries for the first three years after publication. After that period, those books become open access, available to everyone for free.
The three Clemson University Press books, which are now available open access, are:
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson, by Kristin M. Franseen
Imagining Musical Pasts explores the complicated archive of sources, interpretations, and people present in queer writings on opera and symphonic music from ca. 1880–1935. It focuses primarily on the work of three turn-of-the-twentieth-century music scholars—philosopher and horror writer Vernon Lee (pseud. Violet Paget), biographer and program note annotator Rosa Newmarch, and critic and amateur sexologist Edward Prime-Stevenson.
Faking It: Victorian Documentary Novels, by Ellen Stockstill
Faking It analyzes Victorian novels that present themselves as non-fiction works. These documentary novels contain supposedly authentic transcriptions of letters, diary entries, memoirs, travelogues, witness testimonies, newspaper clippings, and other documentary evidence that purportedly verify a narrative’s claims of truth. Narrated entirely through artificial documents, these books are “fake” works of non-fiction.
Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism, edited by Katherine Ebury, Bridget English and Matthew Fogarty
Establishing a new theoretical foothold at the crossroads of human, nonhuman, and posthuman studies in literary modernism, Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism broadens our current understanding of modernist ethics. Analyzing a wide range of poetry, drama, prose fiction, and non-fiction writing, these essays expand the vertical and horizontal boundaries of modernist studies while addressing a number of the thematic concerns and critical approaches that are currently at the vanguard of modernist studies.
JSTOR is reporting that it has already seen an increase in people accessing the newly open access books. In just the first two months of the year, usage of the Path to Open books has surpassed all 2025 usage by 30 percent. Clemson University Press has seen similar trends with these three books. For example, Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism was used 76 times in 2025. In the first two months of 2026, it has already been used 117 times.
About Clemson University Press
Established in 2000, Clemson University Press has expanded in recent years, adding approximately 25 books and journal issues per annum to its strong backlist of more than 100 titles. In 2014, the Press entered into partnership with Liverpool University Press, an award-winning publisher of distinguished scholarship since 1899. Through this strategic international partnership, the Press is a global ambassador for Clemson University, distributing increasingly diverse and impactful scholarship worldwide. In 2021, the Press became a member of the Association of University Presses, a distinguished international community of publishers committed to the highest caliber of research-based scholarship.