04August2015

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Melville J. Herskovits Award

The African Studies Association (ASA) invites publishers to nominate titles for the Herskovits Award. The ASA presents the Herskovits Award to the author of the most important scholarly work in African studies published in English during the preceding year. This annual award is named in honor of Melville J. Herskovits, one of the ASA's founders.  The winner of the Herskovits Award is announced each year at the ASA Annual Meeting, where he or she receives an honorarium of $500. A list of the finalists for the Award is published in the Annual Meeting program. Past winners have included some of the most prominent names in African Studies.

Nominations for the Herskovits Award are made directly by publishers who may nominate as many separate titles in a given year as they desire. Nominations must be original non-fiction scholarly works published in English and distributed in the United States. The subject matter must significantly deal with Africa and/or related areas (Cape Verde, Madagascar, or Indian Ocean Islands off the East African coast). Works that are not eligible include collections and compilations, proceedings of symposia, new editions of previously published books, bibliographies, and dictionaries. Only books with a 2014 copyright are eligible for the 2015 Herskovits Award.

Nominations must be postmarked on or before April 30. 

To nominate a publication, send a letter indicating the publisher you represent, address, email address, telephone, fax, the title(s) nominated, and one copy of each title to each committee member, including the ASA Secretariat.

Also, please send a form or letter indicating the publisher, address, email address, telephone, fax, and the title(s) of the nominated publication(s) to the African Studies Association at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

2015 Herskovits Committee

Adeline Masquelier (Chair)
20 Rue Bertrand Akar
Verton 62180 France

Allen Isaacman
0847 S.W. Pennoyer
Portland Oregon, 97239

Peter Limb
Africana
366 W. Circle Drive (Room E224B)
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, 48824

Adeleke Adeeko
Department of English
421 W. 17th Avenue
Ohio State University
Columbus, OH 43210

Victoria L. Rovine
305 E Poplar Ave
Carrboro, NC  27510


Melville J. Herskovits Award Winners (1965-Present)


 

2014 Allen and Barbara Isaacman, Dams, Displacement and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965-2007 (Ohio University Press)

2014 Carola Lentz, Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa (Indiana University Press)

2013 Derek Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935-1972 (Cambridge University Press)

2012 Simon Gikandi, Slavery and the Culture of Taste (Princeton University Press)

2012 David T. Doris, Vigilant Things: On Thieves, Yoruba Anti-Aesthetics, and the Strange Fates of Ordinary Objects in Nigeria (University of Washington Press)

2011 Neil Kodesh, Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda (University of Virginia Press)

2010 Trevor H.J. Marchand, The Masons of Djenne (Indiana University Press)

2010 Adeline Masquelier, Women and Islamic Revival in a West African Town (Indiana University Press)

2009 Sylvester Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (University of Rochester Press)

2008 Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660 (Cambridge University Press)

2008 Parker Shipton, The Nature of Entrustment, Intimacy, Exchange, and the Sacred in Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press)

2007 Barbara Cooper, Evangelical Christians in the Muslim Sahel (Indiana University Press)

2006 Matory Lorand, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé (Princeton University Press)

2005 Adam Ashforth, Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa  (University of Chicago Press)

2004 Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, A SAINT in the CITY: Sufi Art in Urban Senegal (University of California Los Angeles)

2003 Joseph Inikori, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study in International Trade and Economic Development (Cambridge University Press)

2002 Judith Carney, Black Rice (Harvard University Press)

2002 Diana Wylie, Starving on a Full Stomach: Hunger and the Triumph of Cultural Racism in Modern South Africa (University Press of Virginia)

2001 Karin Barber, Generation of Plays (Indiana University Press)

2001 John Peel, Religious Encounter & the Making of Yoruba (Indiana University Press)

2000 Nancy Rose Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon: Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (Duke University Press)

1999 Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (Kumarian Press)

1998 Susan Mullin Vogel, Baule: African Art Western Eyes (Yale University Press)

1997 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press)

1996 Jonathon Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888 (Heinemann)

1995 Henrietta L. Moore and Megan Vaughn, Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990 (Heinemann, James Curry, University of Zambia)

1994 Keletso E. Atkins, The Moon is Dead! Give Us Our Money! The Cultural Origins of an African Work Ethic, Natal, South Africa, 1843-1900 (Heinemann)

1993 Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford University Press)

1992 Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Senegalais in French West Afrca, 1857-1960 (Heinemann Educational Books)

1991 Johannes Fabian, Power and Performance: Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba, Zaire (University of Wisconsin Press)

1991 Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (University of Chicago Press)

1990 Edwin Wilmsen, Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari (University of Chicago Press)

1989 Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730 -1830 (University of Wisconsin Press)

1989 V.Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge (Indiana University Press)

1988 John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge University Press)

1987 Paul M. Lubeck, Islam and Urban Labor in Northern Nigeria: The Making of a Muslim Working Class (Cambridge University Press)

1987 T.O. Beidelman, Moral Imagination in Kaguru Modes of Thought (Indiana University Press)

1986 Sara Berry, Fathers Work for Their Sons: Accumulation, Mobility, and Class Formation in an Extended Yoruba Community (University of California Press)

1985 Claire Robertson, Sharing the Same Bowl (Indiana University Press)

1984 Paulin Hontoundji, African Philosophy (Indiana University Press)

1984 J.D.Y. Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom (Cambridge University Press)

1983 James W. Fernandez, Bwiti: An Ethnography of the Religious Imagination in Africa (Princeton University Press)

1982 Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters: Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890-1925 (Yale University Press)

1982 Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, The Psychology of Literacy (Harvard University Press)

1981 Gavin Kitching, Class and Economic Change in Kenya: The Making of an African Petite Bourgeoisie, 1905-1970 (Yale University Press)

1981 Gwyn Prins, The Hidden Hippopotamus: Reappraisal in African History: The Early Colonial Experience in Western Zambia (Cambridge University Press)

1980 Richard B. Lee, The !Kung San (Cambridge University Press)

1980 Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975 (Yale University Press)

1979 Hoyt Alverson, Mind in the Heart of Darkness: Value and Self-Identity Among the Tswana of Southern Africa (Yale University Press)

1978 William Y. Adams, Nubia: Corridor to Africa (Princeton University Press)

1977 M. Crawford Young, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (University of Wisconsin Press)

1976 Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press)

1975 Lansine Kaba, Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa (Northwestern University Press)

1975 Elliott Skinner, African Urban Life (Princeton University Press)

1974 John N. Paden, Religion and Political Culture in Kano (University of California Press)

1973 Allen F. Isaacman, Mozambique The Africanization of a European Institution: The Zambezi Prazos, 1750-1902 (University of Wisconsin Press)

1972 Francis Deng, Tradition and Modernization (Yale University Press)

1971 René Lemarchand, Rwanda and Burundi (Praeger Publishers)

1970 Stanlake Samkange, Origins of Rhodesia (Praeger Publishers)

1969 Paul and Laura Bohannan, Tiv Economy (Northwestern University Press)

1968 Herbert Weiss, Political Protest in the Congo (Princeton University Press)

1967 Jan Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (University of Wisconsin Press)

1966 Leo Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie (Yale University Press)

1965 Ruth Schachter Morganthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford University Press)

 

 

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