Twenty-fifth Annual Book Prize (2024)

Joshua Schuster is the recipient of the Twenty-fifth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize for his book What is Extinction? A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals, published by Fordham University Press in 2023. Joshua Schuster is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Theory and Criticism at Western University in Canada. He is the author of What Is Extinction? A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals (2023), co-author of Calamity Theory: Three Critiques of Existential Risk (2021), and The Ecology of Modernism: American Environments and Avant-Garde Poetics (2015).

Life on Earth is facing a mass extinction event of our own making. Human activity is changing the biology and the meaning of extinction. What Is Extinction? examines several key moments that have come to define the terms of extinction over the past two centuries, exploring instances of animal and human finitude and the cultural forms used to document and interpret these events.

Offering a critical theory for the critically endangered, Joshua Schuster proposes that different discourses of limits and lastness appear in specific extinction events over time as a response to changing attitudes toward species frailty. Understanding these extinction events also involves examining what happens when the conceptual and cultural forms used to account for species finitude are pressed to their limits as well. Schuster provides close readings of several case studies of extinction that bring together environmental humanities and multispecies methods with media-specific analyses at the terminus of life.

What Is Extinction? delves into the development of last animal photography, the anthropological and psychoanalytic fascination with human origins and ends, the invention of new literary genres of last fictions, the rise of new extreme biopolitics in the Third Reich that attempted to change the meaning of extinction, and the current pursuit of de-extinction technologies. Schuster offers timely interpretations of how definitions and visions of extinction have changed in the past and continue to change in the present.

Twenty-fourth Annual Book Prize (2023)

James M. Turner is the recipient of the Twenty-fourth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for his book Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future, published by University of Washington Press in 2022. Jay Turner is a professor in the Environmental Studies Department at Wellesley College, where he teaches courses on US environmental history, politics, and policy.  Jay has a PhD in History, with a focus on environmental history.  He has written books on topics including public lands protection, conservatives and the environment, and his most recent book on the history of batteries.  Jay enjoys playing pick-up soccer, carpentry, and canoe trips.  Jay lives outside of Boston, Massachusetts, in a house he and his family have renovated to be a net-zero all-electric home.

In Charged, James Morton Turner unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving "the battery problem" is critical to a clean energy transition. As climate activists focus on what a clean energy future will create—sustainability, resiliency, and climate justice—the history of batteries offers a sharp reminder of what building that future will consume: lithium, graphite, nickel, and other specialized materials. With new insight on the consequences for people and communities on the front lines, Turner draws on the past for crucial lessons that will help us build a just and clean energy future, from the ground up.

Twenty-third Annual Book Prize (2022)

Nadia Y. Kim is the recipient of the Twenty-third Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA, published by Stanford University Press in 2021. Kim's research focuses on US race and citizenship injustices regarding Korean/Asian Americans and South Koreans, race and nativist racism in Los Angeles (e.g., 1992 LA Unrest), environmental (in)justice (racism, classism), immigrant women activists’ politics of the body and emotions, comparative racialization of Latinxs, Asian Americans, and Black Americans, and critical race theory. Throughout her work, Kim’s approach centers (neo)imperialism, transnationality, and the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and citizenship. Refusing Death examines race, class, gender and citizenship with respect to the growing social phenomenon of marginalized and unauthorized immigrants – especially women and youth – making political inroads by way of grassroots activism, at times, sidestepping the need for formal political channels.

 

 

Twenty-second Annual Book Prize (2021)

Nicole Fleetwood, writer, curator, MacArthur Fellow, and the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, is the recipient of the Twenty-second Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, published by Harvard University Press in 2020. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration highlights artists who are currently and formerly incarcerated and is based on interviews, prison visits, and the experience of families of the incarcerated. Despite the brutal dynamics of prison life creating isolation and depravity, artists nonetheless assert their humanity through their drive to create art out of ordinary objects with meager supplies in unimaginable conditions. Through art, the imprisoned have a political voice. Marking Time captures the contemporary art that testifies to the racial injustices that underpin the American penal system.

 

 

 

 

Twenty-first Annual Book Prize (2020)

Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, is the recipient of the Twenty-first Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2019. Learning from the Germans drives an urgently needed perspective for a country to see its wrongdoings. Professor Neiman draws upon her experiences growing up during the civil rights era in the US South and a Jewish woman living much of her adult life in Berlin to write her book on assessing the past and present in order to create a better future. She uses philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. As Americans become increasingly polarized, Learning from the Germans observes the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront their history of racial violence, and asks what we can learn from the Germans in the wake of white nationalist attacks, ongoing debates about reparations, and controversies concerning Confederate monuments in the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twentieth Annual Book Prize (2019)

Louis Hyman, a historian of work and business at the ILR School of Cornell University, where he also directs the Institute for Workplace Studies in New York City, is the recipient of the Twentieth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for his book Temp: How American Business, American Work, and the American Dream Became Temporary, published by Penguin Random House in 2018. Dr. Hyman received his PhD in American history from Harvard University and is the founding editor of the Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism book series from Columbia University Press.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nineteenth Annual Book Prize (2018)

Ruth Carbonette Yow, Service Learning and Partnerships Specialist at Georgia Tech’s Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain, is the recipient of the Nineteenth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book Students of the Dream: Resegregation in a Southern City, published by Harvard University Press in 2017. Dr. Yow is an historian and ethnographer of justice struggles and public education. She has a PhD in American Studies and African American Studies from Yale University.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eighteenth Annual Book Prize (2016)

Mark Greif, Associate Professor of Literary Studies at The New School, is the recipient of the Eighteenth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for his book The Age of the Crisis of Man: Thought and Fiction in America, 1933-1973, published by the Princeton University Press in 2015.

The external reader for the eighteenth book prize was Dr. Sabine Hake, Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture, University of Texas at Austin

Seventeenth Annual Book Prize (2015)

Natalia Molina, Professor of History and Urban Studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the recipient of the Seventeenth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for her book How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts, published by the University of California Press in 2014.

The external reader for the seventeenth book prize was Debra A. Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Chair of Hispanic Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University.

Sixteenth Annual Book Prize (2014)

Raúl Coronado, Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, received the Sixteenth Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship for his book A World Not to Come: A History of Latino Writing and Print Culture, published by the Harvard University Press in 2013.

The external reader for the sixteenth book prize was Colleen Boggs, Professor of English and Director of Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Fifteenth Annual Book Prize (2013)

Gabrielle Hecht, Professor of History and Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Michigan, received the fifteenth book prize for her book Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade, published by the MIT Press in 2012.

The external reader for the fifteenth book prize was Mary Jean Green, Edward Tuck Professor of French Professor of Comparative Literature, Dartmouth University.

Fourteenth Annual Book Prize (2012)

Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English at Princeton University received the fourteenth book prize for his book Slavery and the Culture of Taste, published by Princeton University Press in 2011. Gikandi gave a public lecture entitled “Slavery and Modern Identity” and accepted the book prize on 27 February 2013.

The external reader for the fourteenth book prize was David William Foster, Regents’ Professor of Spanish and Women’s and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. Foster gave a public lecture on 28 February 2013 entitled “Guille and Belinda: A Lesbian Arcadian Romance, a Photobook by Allesandra Sanguinetti.”

Thirteenth Annual Book Prize (2011)

Karla Mallette, Associate Professor of Italian and Near Eastern Studies and Associate Director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan, was awarded for her book,  European Modernity and the Arab Mediterranean: Toward a New Philology and a Counter-Orientalism(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Mallette gave a pubic lecture and accepted the book prize for 2011 on Wednesday, 15 February 2012.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Howard Marchitello, Associate Professor of English, Rutgers University presented a lecture entitled “The Macbeth Bubble” on Thursday, 16 February 2012.

Twelfth Annual Book Prize (2010)

Matt Cohen, Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, was awarded for his book, The Networked Wilderness: Communicating in Early New England (The University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Cohen gave a pubic lecture and accepted the book prize for 2010 on Wednesday, 9 February 2011.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, John O’Brien, Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia presented a lecture entitled “Insurance: Persons, Things, Sentiment.”

Eleventh Annual Book Prize (2009)

Christopher S. Wood, Professor of the History of Art, Yale University, was awarded for his book, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German Renaissance Art (The University of Chicago Press, 2008). Wood gave a public lecture and accepted the book prize for 2009 on Wednesday, 17 February 2010.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Susan Amussen, Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at University of California, Merced, made a presentation entitled “Violence, Gender and Race in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic.”

Tenth Annual Book Prize (2008)

Maggie Nelson (Critical Studies, California Institute of the Arts) was awarded for her book, Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). Nelson gave a public lecture and accepted the book prize for 2008 on Wednesday, 4 March 2009.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Paul Jones(Ohio University) made a presentation entitled “The Americanization of Jack Sheppard: Antebellum Crime Fiction and Anti-Gallows Sympathy.”

Ninth Annual Book Prize (2007)

Lois Parkinson Zamora, Professor of Comparative Literature and Art History at the University of Houston, was awarded for her book The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction (University of Chicago Press, 2006). Zamora gave a public lecture and accepted the book prize for 2007 on Wednesday, 13 February 2008. Zamora gave a public lecture, “The Baroque Self: Frida Kahlo and Gabriel García Márquez,” and accepted the book prize for 2007 on Wednesday, 13 February 2008.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Suzanne Poirier (University of Illinois at Chicago), made a presentation entitled “Stories Out of School: Memoirs and the Emotional Education of Medical Students.”

Eighth Annual Book Prize (2006)

Beth Fowkes Tobin, the Department of English at Arizona State University, for her monograph, Colonizing Nature: The Tropics in British Arts and Letters, 1760-1820, published in 2005 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

The presentation of the prize and Professor Tobin’s public lecture, “The Duchess’s Shells: Accumulation, Exchange, and Regimes of Value in Natural History Collecting,” took place on 7 February, 2007.

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Stacy Wolf, professor of theatre at the University of Texas, made a presentation entitled “‘We’re Not in Kansas Anymore’: The Broadway Musical, Women, and Wicked.”

Seventh Annual Book Prize (2005)

Anthony Harkins, Assistant Professor of History, Western Kentucky University, for his book Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, (Oxford University Press, 2004). He presented a paper entitled, “”‘Flyover Country’ and the Politics of Imagining the ‘Middle of Nowhere.'”

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, William Cohen, professor of English at the University of Maryland, made a presentation entitled “Inside Hopkins.”

Sixth Annual Book Prize (2004)

Jay Clayton, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Vanderbilt University for his book Charles Dickens in Cyberspace: The Afterlife of the Nineteenth Century in Postmodern Culture, (Oxford University Press, 2003). He presented a paper entitled, “Crimes of the Genome: Literature and the Gene for Violence.”

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Debbie Nelson, professor at the University of Chicago, made a presentation entitled “Cold Comfort: Simone Weil in Postwar America.”

Fifth Annual Book Prize (2003)

Debbie Lee, Assistant Professor of English at Washington State University, for her book Slavery and the Romantic Imagination(University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). She presented a public lecture entitled, “Imperialism and Impostors: The Notorious Case of Princess Caraboo.”

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Brian Cowan, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Yale University, made a presentation titled “An Open Elite: Virtuosity and Peculiarities of English Connoisseurship.”

Fourth Annual Book Prize (2002)

Keith Wailoo, of the Department of History and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University, for his book Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (The University of North Carolina Press, 2001). He presented a public lecture entitled, “From White Plague to Black Death: The Strange Career of Race & Cancer in 20th Century America.”

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Audrey Jaffe, Center for Cultural Studies, UC-Santa Cruz, made a presentation titled “Bodies on the Line: Figures of Nineteenth-Century Studies.”

Third Annual Book Prize (2001)

Daniel Albright, Richard L. Turner Professor in the Humanities, University of Rochester, for his book Untwisting the Serpent: Modernism in Music, Literature, and Other Arts (The University of Chicago Press, 2000). He presented a public lecture entitled “Noble Savages in Armani Suits: Poetry, Painting, and Music in Late Twentieth-Century America.”

The outside reader on the Glasscock Book Prize committee, Samuel Gladden, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, also made a presentation titled “Lacunae and Textual Summation:  Absences, Gaps, and Other Sexy Spaces in the British Nineteenth Century.”

Second Annual Book Prize (2000)

Mary Baine Campbell, Professor of English at Brandeis University, for her book, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Cornell University Press, 1999). She accepted the award and delivered a public lecture entitled “Dreaming, Motion, Meaning: Oneiric Transport in Seventeenth-Century England.” Wonder and Science also won the Modern Language Associations James Russell Lowell Prize in 2001. Dr. Campbell also received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for her research in 2002.

First Annual Book Prize (1999)

Dana D. Nelson, Professor of English and Social Theory at the University of Kentucky, for her book, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men (Duke University Press, 1998). She accepted the award and delivered a public lecture entitled “Representative/Democracy: Presidential Management and Civic Identity.”