Sharon Harris Book Award

The 2024 Sharon Harris Book Award

UCHI is honored to announce the winner of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2024:

headshot of Debapriya Sarkar

Debapriya Sarkar

Associate Professor, English, UConn

for her book

Possible Knowledge: The Literary Forms of Early Modern Science (Penn Press, 2023)

The Sharon Harris Book Award Committee notesBook cover for Possible Knowledge by Debapriya Sarkar, “Possible Knowledge brilliantly foregrounds literature as an imaginative and epistemological form, re-conceptualizing literary works that remake reality. A work of broad interdisciplinary relevance, it prompts its readers to reconceive the history of science as a history of the imagination by understanding poeisis, literary making, as a philosophical as well as literary endeavor. The result is at the same time a vigorous defense of the importance of imaginative arts for the creation of knowledge and a demonstration of the enduring relevance of the humanities. It will broaden the mind of its readers.”

Honorable mention:

Jason Oliver Chang
Alexis Dudden headshot

Jason Oliver Chang

Associate Professor, History & Director, Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, UConn

and

Alexis Dudden

Professor, History & Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn

for their book

The Cargo Rebellion: Those Who Chose Freedom (PM Press, 2023)

Book cover for The Cargo RebellionThe Sharon Harris Award Committee notes, “The Cargo Rebellion is an innovative combination of scholarly research and accessible writing that breaks new ground in reaching young audiences. We felt this engaging translation of intellectual expertise offered a fresh model for humanistic and artist collaboration.”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship. The 2024 award was open to UConn tenured, tenure-track, emeritus, or in-residence faculty who published a monograph between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023.

The 2023 Sharon Harris Book Award

UCHI is honored to announce the winners of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2023:

Melanie Newport headshot

Melanie D. Newport

Assistant Professor, History, UConn

for her book

This is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (Penn Press, 2022)

The Sharon Harris Book Award Committee notesBook cover for This is My Jail by Melanie Newport, “An incisive and timely political history, Melanie Newport’s This is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) features previously under-engaged stories of resistance by jailed people and their allies to challenge conventional accounts of the inevitable or recent emergence of mass incarceration in the U.S. Long predating the rise of conservatism and neo-conservatism, Newport persuasively shows how, in experimental and contingent ways, local governments relied on jails to manage the freedom of people of color from the founding of the nation and its cities. An indispensable player in ongoing negotiations over what local government could and should do, the functions of jails evolved with their role as urban regulatory institutions. As Black and Latinx urban residents resisted them as criminalizing the poor and perpetrating purposeful racialization, the response, through the twentieth century, was jail expansion. Drawing from these lessons, Newport states unequivocally that jails are barriers to collective freedom that cannot deliver a solution to violence in Chicago or beyond. We are delighted that this important, must-read study was authored by a UConn colleague!”

Dimitris Xygalatas headshot

Dimitris Xygalatas

Associate Professor, Anthropology, UConn

for his book

Ritual: How Seemingly Pointless Acts Make Life Worth Living (Little, Brown Spark, 2022)

The Sharon Harris Book Award Committee notesBook cover: Ritual by Dimitris Xygalatas, “Dimitris Xygalatas’ Ritual: How Seemingly Pointless Acts Make Life Worth Living, is an exceptional combination of meticulous research and vivid prose, a first-rate scholarly book which has garnered attention well beyond the academy. Xygalatas combines scientific methodology with a deeply humanistic perspective to argue that rituals which seem initially without purpose constitute deep wells of comfort, connection, and meaning in societies across the world. Ritual, a book which enlightens and entertains, is the focus of multiple special issues in academic journals and has been covered by NPR, the BBC, Nature, and others.”

Honorable mentions:

Martha Cutter headshot

Martha Cutter

Professor, English, American Studies, & Africana Studies, UConn

for her book

The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown (Penn Press, 2022)

Book cover for The Many Resurrections of Henry Box Brown by Martha CutterThe Sharon Harris Award Committee notes, “This book both excavates the radical effects of the performances of Henry Box Brown, both in the nineteenth-century world in which he lived, and in the imaginations and artistry of Black innovators in the twenty-first century. Henry Box Brown self-emancipated in 1849 by having himself mailed in a large postal crate to free soil in Philadelphia. He then created a career in which he built on his own remarkable story as an abolitionist lecturer, magician, actor, singer, and hypnotist. Cutter scrutinized a far-flung archive that included materials in England, the US, and Canada to reveal aspects of Brown’s life and work that had been previously unknown. This book manages the difficult feat of both creating an impeccably-researched engagement with this remarkable man and tracing his legacies in compelling close readings of current literature and artistry. This truly interdisciplinary work offers an important new perspective in how we engage the work of nineteenth-century African American artistry, but how that artistry continues to influence our present moment.”

Nu-Anh Tran headshot

Nu-Anh Tran

Assistant Professor, History & Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn

for her book

Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022)

Book cover of Nu-Anh Tran's Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of VietnamThe Sharon Harris Award Committee notes, “Nu-Anh Tran’s book Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam, offers a fresh perspective on the Vietnam War and its legacies by engaging and analyzing a largely neglected archive of Vietnamese-language sources. In doing so, Tran makes a persuasive case that overturns the conventional wisdom that the U.S’s hand was forced in propping up up the dictatorial Ngô Đình Diệmin as the only feasible option in the fight against communism. Tran’s research reveals that the U.S. could have chosen any number of Vietnamese allies as it sought to stop the expansion of communism. Rather, the US chose to invest in the most authoritarian option because of colonialist skepticism around the Vietnamese capacity for democracy. This remarkable book adds complexity and nuance to the ever-present American justification of violent intervention as a means of ‘spreading democracy.’”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship. The 2023 award was open to UConn tenured, tenure-track, emeritus, or in-residence faculty who published a monograph between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2022.

The 2022 Sharon Harris Book Award

UCHI is honored to announce the winner of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2022:

Robert A Gross headshot

Robert A. Gross

Draper Professor of Early American History, Emeritus, UConn

for his book

The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)

The Sharon Harris Book Award Committee notesTranscendatalists and their World book cover, “A monumental work of scholarship, this book allows us to view one of the central movements in American literature and philosophy through the magnifying lens of the community of Concord, MA.”

Honorable mention:

Peter Zarrow headshot

Peter Zarrow

Professor of History, UConn

for his book

Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880–1940 (SUNY Press, 2021)

Book cover for Abolishing Boundaries by Peter Zarrow“A thorough exploration of the writings of four important figures of 20th century Chinese political philosophy, Abolishing Boundaries makes a case for the importance of utopianism in shaping Chinese modernity.”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship. The 2022 award was open to UConn tenured, tenure-track, emeritus, or in-residence faculty who published a monograph between January 2019 and December 31, 2021.

The 2021 Sharon Harris Book Award

UCHI is honored to announce the winner of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2021:

Grégoire Pierrot headshot

Grégory Pierrot

Associate Professor of English, UConn

for his book

The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture (University of Georgia Press, 2019)

The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture book coverThe Harris Book Award Committee notes, “Grégory Pierrot’s The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture is a brilliantly focused and highly original exploration of the political aims of the shifting narratives of exceptional black avengers who rise in violence and retribution against their oppressors. This expansive and in-depth study is, as Pierrot points out, ‘a history of an essential trope of Atlantic modernity.’ Examining literary and historical texts from Haiti to the United States, to Britain and France, from the late seventeenth century forward, this is an expansive and groundbreaking work that explores new scholarly territories in racism and resistance.”

Honorable mention:

Ariel Lambe headshot

Ariel Mae Lambe

Assistant Professor of History, UConn

for her book

No Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War (UNC Press, 2019)

No Barrier Can Contain It book coverNo Barrier Can Contain It: Cuban Antifascism and the Spanish Civil War offers a fascinating, transnational study of Cuban antifascists and activists during the 1920s and 1930s, in Cuba and beyond. Drawing on archival material from Cuba, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and the United States, this well-researched work frames antifascism as an international movement and in so doing contributes not only to the field of Cuban history but also to the history of the Spanish Civil War.”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship. The 2021 award was open to UConn tenured, tenure-track, emeritus, or in-residence faculty who published a monograph between January 2018 and December 31, 2020.

The Sharon Harris Award Winner and Finalists Announced

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) is proud to announce the winner and the two finalists of this year’s Sharon Harris Book Award. The Sharon Harris Annual Book Award is given for a monograph published by UConn Tenure, Tenure-Track, Emeritus, or In-Residence faculty that best demonstrates scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship.

This year’s winner is Kathryn Blair Moore, an Assistant Professor of Art History, for her book The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

The finalists are Hassanaly Ladha, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, for The Architecture of Freedom: Hegel, Subjectivity, and the Postcolonial State (Bloomsbury, 2020)and Anna Mae Duane, Associate Professor of English, for Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation (NYU Press, 2020).

 

 

Winner


Kathryn Blair Moore, The Architecture of the Christian Holy Land: Reception from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Professor Kathryn Moore’s book is a wonder of scope, methodology, and scholarly creativity that examines buildings enclosing spaces associated with the bodily presence of important religious figures as foci for real and imagined pilgrimages.  Moore employs the destruction and re-creation of architecture as a lens for viewing interchanges of cultures and religions, providing a compelling historical account that challenges current dominant narratives of age-old, intractable faith-based conflicts. Noteworthy for drawing upon both visual and material culture as well as textual sources from four continents, this monumental work advances the fields of history of art, architecture, and religion, and contributes broadly to the humanities by demonstrating the mediated nature of the experience of the architecture of the Holy Land.

 

Finalists

 

Hassanaly Ladha, The Architecture of Freedom: Hegel, Subjectivity, and the Postcolonial State (Bloomsbury, 2020)

Professor Hassanaly Ladha’s groundbreaking work brings new and important insights to Hegelian philosophy. It sheds light on misunderstood areas in Hegel’s works, particularly relating to his view and presentation of Africa within the prism of his ideas on the master-slave dialectic and the political state; it is the first work to clarify the place occupied by Africa in Hegel’s understanding of the aesthetic origin of freedom, and underlines Hegel’s relevance as a modern philosopher in modern discussions on slavery and post-colonialism. Professor Ladha’s work is a remarkable reassessment of both Hegel’s major works and also neglected and misunderstood writings.

Anna Mae Duane, Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation (NYU Press, 2020)

Professor Duane’s exquisite book tells the entwined stories of James McCune Smith and Henry Highland Garnet, two classmates at the Mulberry Street New York African Free School in the 1820s, as they become renowned public figures and leaders in the struggle for black freedom. With an innovative narrative approach and creative archival work, Duane draws from their individual journey’s fresh insights to big historical questions and concerns, shedding new light on American racial formation, childhood, and the very meanings of freedom, belonging, and realized human potential. Duane’s eminently readable work demonstrates the expansive capacities of the humanities with beautiful craft and style.

Sharon Harris Book Award 2019 Winners

UCHI is honored to announce the winners of the Sharon Harris Book Award for 2019:

Daniel Hershenzon

Daniel Hershenzon

The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

The Captive Sea Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean by Daniel HershenzonThe Harris Book Award Committee notes, “Prof. Hershenzon’s book is an illuminating study of the redemption of captives in the early modern Mediterranean. The Captive Sea traces the seizure of Christians and Muslims by pirates, their enslavement in hostile lands, and their occasional return through complicated systems of ransom. Deeply researched in Spanish archives, the book examines the flourishing of a slave system that differs from the Atlantic slave trade, and it shows the ways in which the trade in captives encouraged intercultural communication between Southern Europe and North Africa.”

Helen M. Rozwadowski

Helen M. Rozwadowski

Vast Expanses: A History of the Oceans (London: Reaktion Books, 2018)

Vast Expanses, A History Of The Oceans  By  Helen M. Rozwadowski“Prof. Rozwadowski’s book is an engaging overview of the oceans from deep prehistory to the present. It focuses on the relationship between people and an environment that once seemed beyond human influence. The idea of the ocean as a limitless frontier flourished but eventually withered in the late twentieth century, as people began to confront the damage they had done through pollution and overfishing. In order for us now to produce positive environmental change, Rozwadowski concludes, “We must jettison our perception of the ocean as a timeless place, apart from humans.” This concise and readable book demonstrates the value of the humanities in addressing the planet’s looming environmental crisis.”

We thank the award committee for their service. The Sharon Harris Book Award recognizes scholarly depth and intellectual acuity and highlights the importance of humanities scholarship.