Finalists for 25th Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize
Announcing the finalists for the 25th Annual Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize
Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press)
Orisanmi Burton
From the shortlisting committee—
“The book’s innovative methodology (including historical material, oral histories, and prison documents) along with its broad disciplinary appeal (Anthropology, Sociology, Race & Ethnic studies, Gender Studies, Social Movements, Black Studies) makes this book an important contender for the award. Dr. Burton provides an important account of not only the prison revolt in Attica in 1970s, but also draws connection between the revolt and anticolonial and antiimperialist struggles outside the prison. The book offers a thick description of strategies that are deployed by the state to repress Black Radicalism, as well as powerful account of Black radical struggles against the prison industrial complex.”
Encyclopédie noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World (University of North Carolina Press)
Sara E. Johnson
From the shortlisting committee—
“Creative and erudite, Encyclopédie Noire: The making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World represents interdisciplinary humanities scholarship at its finest. The book’s focus on Moreau de Saint-Méry, a canonical source in French Caribbean studies, allows Johnson to follow the intertwined circuits of eighteenth-century print culture, knowledge production, slavery, and empire in the Atlantic world and to historicize the archive built on Moreau’s writing and print work. Johnson brilliantly close reads written and visual texts to surface marginal details, addendums, and omissions typically thought devoid of meaning, and she demonstrates that the documents through which we interpret the past are always situated and ideological.”
Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis (Harvard University Press)
Sara Marcus
From the shortlisting committee—
“Sara Marcus’s Political Disappointment: A Cultural History from Reconstruction to the AIDS Crisis (Harvard Belknap Press, 2023) is well-researched, well-organized, and highly relevant to our modern political landscape. While writing about the theme of disappointment in America's political arena over the last century, Marcus highlights its role in reenergizing the nation’s commitments to its lofty goals and ideals. Political Disappointment is a learned and penetrating re-framing of the nation’s political and literary culture that deepens our collective triumphs in creating a more egalitarian nation by looking at the decades of disappointment that spurred them.”
Into the Amazon, The Life of Candido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.)
Larry Rohter
From the shortlisting committee—
“Larry Rohter's Into the Amazon presents a compelling narrative of Cândido Rondon's dedication to protecting both the Indigenous people of Brazil (a group to which he himself belonged) and the Amazonian environment. The biography does an excellent job situating Rondon in both place and time and thus making for a fascinating read about a man I'd never heard of before but feel as though I should have. Rondon’s pacifistic masculinity is a welcome redefinition of what “manliness” implies. ”
What is Extinction? A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals (Fordham University Press)
Joshua Schuster
From the shortlisting committee—
“Joshua Shuster’s rich, innovative intellectual history of the concept of extinction demonstrates how humanistic approaches can enrich our understanding of the most critically important issues facing us today. What is Extinction? answers the question posed by its title through examining several crucial moments in modern history that have determined the way we think about extinction, from the American buffalo to fictions of the ends of humanity to the racial ideology of the Third Reich. Taking a rigorous interdisciplinary approach that combines critical theory, environmental humanities, and a wide variety of close readings, Schuster explores the complexities that lie beneath the concepts we use to talk about the origins and ends of species, including our own. As the planet undergoes a mass extinction wave and we confront myriad anxieties about the future viability of humanity in the face of climate change, Schuster’s study will be of interest to anyone who is interested in life on Earth and how we imagine its past, present, and finite future.”
Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories from the Animal Archive (University Press of Kansas)
Daniel Vandersommers
From the shortlisting committee—
“Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo is an engaging and insightful look at how the National Zoo in D.C. came into existence, from its early funding battles to how it collected animals for exhibition. Throughout the work, Vandersommers highlights the often-misguided passions of its founder and the tribulations of its animals, resulting in a work that raises questions about the ability of any zoo to bridge entertainment, education and animal welfare.”