A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras by Carol Symes is the winner of the David Pinkney Prize given by the Society for French Historical Studies for the best book in French history published in 2007.
Deaf in Japan: Signing and the Politics of Identity by Karen Nakamura is the winner of the 2008 John Whitney Hall Book Prize given by the Association for Asian Studies.
The newly appointed U.N. Peace Messenger, George Clooney, gave a press conference on January 31 in which he discussed the seemingly intractable situation in Darfur: Clooney Aims to Shine Celebrity Light on U.N. (via the New York Times) Cornell University Press has published one of the premier books on the conflict in Darfur, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (Revised and Updated Edition) by Gérard Prunier, and there are other books on our list that may also be of interest in this connection: Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite by Carne Ross and The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda by Scott Straus. Straus’s book, which won the Award for Excellence in Government and Political Science given by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers, addresses the issue of how the motivations of aggressors in ethnic conflict may be quite different than they are imagined from a distance. Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo by Iain King and Whit Mason is an analysis of UN intervention in a very different conflict that may also provide lessons for the future.
Several of us here in Sage House have read and enjoyed Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union—perhaps you have, too. If you are fascinated by Chabon’s imagining of a parallel history in which the focus of Jewish resettlement was not Israel, but rather Alaska, you may be interested in our recent book Architect of Justice: Felix S. Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism by Dalia Tsuk Mitchell, which recently won the American Historical Association’s 2007 Littleton-Griswold Prize. Cohen, who is best known for his work with the Department of the Interior in the 1930s and 1940s, was a major voice in support of the real Alaska Development Program, which was intended to provide northern refuge for the Diaspora.
Tsuk Mitchell’s book provides a detailed and concise account of the program and its eventual nonimplementation. Two samples:
“Cohen believed that bringing various occupations and talents to Alaska would be a foundation for strengthening Alaska’s economy and for promoting American values and culture. In a letter to Warner Brothers Pictures, discussing the possibility of a documentary on the Alaska Development Program, Cohen stressed the similarities between Alaska and the Western frontier in the late nineteenth century. ‘As the West was built through the pioneer spirit of persecuted and poor immigrants from Europe, so can Alaska be transformed into one more industrial and cultural star on the American shield,’ he explained.”
“Editorials in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner asserted that Alaska could not ‘afford to carry on with a mass of misfits’ and that German-Jews are unsuited for Alaska settlers.’ ‘They are not the type of hardy Scandinavians who have had so much to do with the development of Alaska.’ . . . Even the Alaska Weekly, which condemned ‘opposition to Jewish refugees based on racial antipathy,’ declared that ‘Jews would be the least desirable of immigrants because of being the least adaptable.’”
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Listen to an interview with Michael Chabon about The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on the nextbook site here: Land of the Lost
New York Times article about The Yiddish Policemen’s Union: The Frozen Chosen
Valerie Kivelson’s Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia has won the Heldt Prize given by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies for the best book by a woman in Slavic studies. Cartographies of Tsardom also won the 2007 Bainton History and Theology Prize given by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.
Francine Hirsch’s Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2007 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize. Empire of Nations is also the cowinner of the 2006 Council for European Studies First Book Award and the winner of the 2006 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize given by the AAASS.
Dalia Tsuk Mitchell’s Architect of Justice: Felix S. Cohen and the Founding of American Legal Pluralism is the winner of the American Historical Association’s 2007 Littleton-Griswold Prize.
The Order of Genocide by Scott Straus has received an honorable mention for the African Studies Association’s 2007 Melville J. Herskovits Award. The Order of Genocide is also the winner of the Award for Excellence in Government and Political Science (Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers).
Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000–1125 by Susan Boynton is the winner of the Lewis Lockwood Award given by the American Musicological Society.
Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion by Celia Applegate is the winner of the DAAD Book Prize given by the German Studies Association.
Claiming the Pen: Women and Intellectual Life in the Early American South by Catherine Kerrison is the winner of the 2007 History of Education Society Outstanding Book Award.
Congratulations one and all!
