Prize-Winning Publications
With reputations for seeking out creative, top-quality scholarship, as well as for high editorial and review standards, it is no surprise that AAUP member presses publish a large number of prize-winning books and journals. Scholarly societies, regional institutions, national and international bodies regularly recognize the publications of university presses for their contributions to the academy and to the wider society.
Browse All Prizes by Press:
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Nota Bene
Featuring a few recent awards of note for AAUP members' books and authors. Use the alphabet menu above to browse more prizes.
2013 Grawemeyer Award for Education
Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?
Pasi Sahlberg
Teachers College Press, 2011
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The purpose of the Grawemeyer Award for Education, awarded by the University of Louisville, is "to stimulate ideas that have the potential to bring about significant improvement in educational practice and attainment." Pasi Sahlberg has been honored for Finnish Lessons (Teachers College), which explores the surprising success of Finland's school system, in which elementary-level students have a four-hour day, do little homework, rarely take tests and wait to start school until age seven. The Finnish system also works to ensure the same opportunities for all students and to show a high regard for the teaching profession.
2013 Grawemeyer Award for Religion
A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence from the Middle East to America
Leila Ahmed
Yale University Press, 2011
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Leila Ahmed's award-winning book, A Quiet Revolution, explains why a growing number of Muslim women in the United States are wearing veils. Ahmed interviewed young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants and Islamic activists, discovering that in the context of contemporary American Islam, wearing a veil can represent a call for equality. The Grawemeyer Award in Religion honors and publicizes insights into the relationship between human beings and the divine and the ways this relationship may empower human beings to attain wholeness, integrity or meaning.
2013 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan
Columbia University Press, 2011
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Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan's Columbia-published title has received this year's Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, awarded by the University of Louisville. The award is intended to stimulate the recognition, dissemination and critical analysis of outstanding proposals for improving world order. Why Civil Resistance Works explains that non-violent resistance brings about political change much more effectively than the use of violence. Chenoweth and Stephan collected and analyzed data on all known uprisings between 1900 and 2006, learning that the non-violent campaigns succeeded twice as often as the violent ones—even in the face of brutal repression.
2012 National Book Award, Poetry
Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations
David Ferry
University of Chicago Press, 2012
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Once again, the National Book Award in Poetry has gone to a university press-published work. Poet David Ferry has been honored with the 2012 award for his new volume Bewilderment, published this year by University of Chicago Press. The award notes that "In poem after poem, his diction modulates beautifully between plainspoken high eloquence and colloquial vigor, making his distinctive speech one of the most interesting and ravishing achievements of the past half century."
2012 Nobel Prize in Literature
Chinese novelist and story writer Mo Yan has been honored with this year's Nobel Prize in Literature: "Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition." Yan's work has been published by AAUP members Chinese University Press and in translation by University of Oklahoma Press, and three of his titles are distributed through Columbia University Press and University of Chicago Press.
2012 Edgar Award
On Conan Doyle: Or, the Whole Art of Storytelling
Michael Dirda
Princeton University Press, 2011
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For the second year running, a university press title has been awarded an Edgar Award for mystery writing. Princeton University Press's On Conan Doyle, by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, was honored with the Critical/Biographical prize (after a 2011 Edgar went to Nebraska's Scoreboard, Baby). Combining memoir and appreciation, On Conan Doyle is an engaging personal introduction to Holmes's creator, as well as a rare insider's account of the curiously delightful activities and playful scholarship of The Baker Street Irregulars.
2012 Bancroft Prizes
The 2012 Bancroft Prize, awarded by Columbia University, honors three works that, while disparate in subject matter, demonstrate the powerful impact of re-examination of historical events in an ever-changing, ever-evolving world. Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 by Anne F. Hyde, published by University of Nebraska Press; Age of Fracture by Daniel T. Rodgers, published by Belknap Press at Harvard University Press; and Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement by Tomiko Brown-Nagin and published by Oxford University Press were all honored this year.
2012 Kate Tufts Discovery Award
Radial Symmetry
Katherine Larson
Yale University Press, 2011
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The Kate Tufts Discovery Award, given by Claremont University's School of Arts and Humanities, honors a first book by a poet of genuine promise. Katherine Larson, a molecular biologist and field ecologist by trade, was presented with this year's award for her 2011 book, Radial Symmetry, "a transcendent body of poems" published by Yale University Press.
2012 Frost Medalist
Marilyn Nelson was awarded this year's Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America for distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry. Past winners include Previous winners of this award include Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Moore, and Charles Simic. Louisiana State University Press has published four volumes of Nelson's poetry.
