Book Prize Winners for 2012

BEST CONTRIBUTION TO LANGUAGE PEDAGOGY

Nedashkivska, Alla. Ukrainian Through Its Living Culture.

Edmonton [Alberta], Canada: The University of Alberta Press, 2010.

Out of a strong field of submissions the committee is pleased to recognize Ukrainian Through Its Living Culture by Alla Nedashkivska as the winner of 2012 AATSEEL Book Prize for Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy.

As a textbook for upper-level students of Ukrainian, Alla Nedashkivka's Ukrainian Through Its Living Culture is an ambitious project for a rather select market. At the same time, it may provide a solution to the vexed problem of upper-level textbooks for the less commonly taught languages. Each of the nine theme-based chapters has been divided into two sections, with "part I" designed to accommodate the intermediate-level language learner and "part II" the advanced-level one, thus allowing for two "tours" of the same textbook over the course of multiple semesters, with additional suggestions for use in study abroad programs. The textbook also includes a set of five, well-organized appendices (those on classroom vocabulary, grammar and orthographic conventions are particularly excellent), and there is an attractive website with additional materials, including workbook and listening exercises. Offering a range of materials and language inputs, Nedashkivka's textbook promises to be an important new resource for intermediate and advanced students of Ukrainian.

BEST BOOK IN LITERARY/CULTURAL STUDIES

Roth-Ey, Kristin. Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.

With Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire that Lost the Cultural Cold War, Kristin Roth-Ey has written an ambitious, original, and fascinating account of Soviet film, television, and radio in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when the Soviet Union cultivated a mass culture intended to rival western dominance internationally. To her considerable credit, Roth-Ey's does not tell the typical story of a Soviet Cold War failure, however. Indeed, the very success of the Soviet mass culture enterprise upended cultural politics, individual freedoms, and public tastes in unexpected ways. Adducing evidence from archives, interviews, and printed sources, Roth-Ey convincingly argues that during those three transformative decades, as sundry forms of public experience became private, Soviet culture gradually came to mirror those of its western counterpart. Meticulously researched, well-written, and extremely engaging, Moscow Prime Time is an extraordinary "must read" for students and scholars of 20th-century history and culture.

BEST LITERARY TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

Mysliwski, Wieslaw. Stone Upon Stone.

Brooklyn: Archipelago Books, 2010. Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston.

Bill Johnston's Stone upon Stone is a monumental achievement in the art of translation—and not only because the novel is huge and begins and ends with a tomb. Wieslaw Mysliwski's Kamien na kamieniu, widely considered one of the best works of postwar Polish literature, conveys a rich array of history, human experience, and literary delight through the narrative voice of Szymek Pietruszka, a garrulous peasant, steady but nimble, simple but shrewd, sensitive but unsentimental. Johnston's translation renders this compelling voice with no lapse in tone, no excessive sophistication or stylized coarseness, but rather an unobtrusive balance that perfectly fits the narrator's outlook. The English reader has been in Bill Johnston's debt before, and is now once again.

BEST SCHOLARLY TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH

Różewicz, Tadeusz. Sobbing Superpower: Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewicz.

New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak.

Sobbing Superpower: The Selected Poems of Tadeusz Różewiczis the first collection in English to encompass the poet's full career, from his first collection Anxiety (Nepokój, 1947) to the tender poem addressed to his son, "Mystery that Grows," dated 2008. As the reader learns in Anxiety, Różewicz is a "survivor": "I'm twenty-four / Led to slaughter / I survived." Różewicz's stark, minimalist anti-poetry, with its abrupt shifts and pregnant silences, "justifies nothing/ explains nothing / renounces nothing / encompasses no whole / fulfills no hope" ("My Poetry," 1965). Part of the remarkable generation of poets that includes Szymborska and Herbert (and Milosz, an older contemporary), Różewicz redefined the essence and form of poetry after the Holocaust. In addition to her hauntingly spare translations of this major poet, Joanna Trzeciak provides extensive notes that shed light on subjects ranging from Ezra Pound to Polish history and literature, as well as a biographical note and foreword by Edward Hirsch. With Sobbing Superpower, Trzeciak joins the remarkable cohort of translators who have made it possible for the English reader to enjoy the riches of contemporary Polish poetry.

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Nominees for the 2013 AATSEEL Book Prizes

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy (books or other material published in 2010, 2011 and 2012 eligible):

• Andrews, Edna and Elena A. Maksimova. Russian Translation: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010.
• Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Кроткая: Фантастический рассказ. The Meek One: A Fantastic Story. An Annotated Russian Reader. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Edited by Julia Titus
• Kudyma, Anna S., Frank J. Miller, and Olga E. Kagan. Beginner's Russian with Interactive Online Workbook. New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 2010.
• Lubensky, Sophia and Irina Odintsova. От текста к речи: Advanced Russian: From Speaking to Reading. 2 volumes. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2010. Interactive Multimedia Disc by Slava Paperno.
• Mëniku, Linda and Héctor Campos. Discovering Albanian 1: Textbook, Workbook, Audio Supplement. Madison, WI: University of Madison, 2011.
• Nemtchinova, Ekaterina. Послушайте! : A Listening and Speaking Course. New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 2011.
• Shevchuk, Yuri. Beginner's Ukrainian with Interactive Online Workbook. New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 2011.

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Best Contribution to Slavic Linguistics (books published in 2011 and 2012 eligible):

• Friedberg, Nila. English Rhythms in Russian Verse: On the Experiment of Joseph Brodsky. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011.

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Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies (books published in 2011 and 2012 eligible):

• Apollonio, Carol and Angela Brintlinger eds. Chekhov for the 21st Century. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2012.
  
• Bolton, Jonathan. Worlds of Dissent: Chapter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
  
• Clowes, Edith W. Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.
  
• Diment, Galya. A Russian Jew of Bloomsbury: the Life and Times of Samuel Koteliansky. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011.
  
• Dobrenko, Evgeny and Marina Balina (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  
• Dobrenko, Evgeny, and Galin Tihanov (eds.). A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.
  
• Dragunoiu, Dana. Vladimir Nabokov and the Poetics of Liberalism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011.
  
• Edmond, Jacob. A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2012.
  
• Emerson, Caryl. All the Same the Words Don't Go Away: Essays on Authors, Heroes, Aesthetics, and Stage Adaptations from the Russian Tradition. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2011.
  
• Frede, Victoria. Doubt, Atheism, and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Intelligentsia. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
  
• Ghodsee, Kristen. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life after Communism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
  
• Glaser, Amelia M. Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands: From the Shtetl Fair to the Petersburg Bookshop. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012.
  
• Goldberg, Stuart. Mandelstam, Blok, and the Boundaries of Mythopoetic Symbolism. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011.
  
• Gurianova, Nina. The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in the Early Avant-Garde. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2012.
  
• Holmgren, Beth. Starring Madame Modjeska: On Tour in Poland and America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012.
  
• Kleespies, Ingrid. A Nation Astray: Nomadism and National Identity in Russian Literature. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012.
  
• Longinović, Tomislav Z. Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.
  
• Morson, Gary Saul. The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.
  
• Mucz, Michael. Baba's Kitchen Medicines: Folk Remedies of Ukrainian Settlers in Western Canada. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada: The University of Alberta Press, 2012.
  
• Murav, Harriet. Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolutionary Russia.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011.
  
• Peschio, Joe. Poetics of Impudence and Intimacy in the Age of Pushkin Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.
  
• Platt, Kevin M. F. Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011.
  
• Romanska, Magda. The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor: History and Holocaust in Akropolis and Dead Class. London, UK: Anthem Press, 2012.
  
• Soroka, Mykola. Faces of Displacement: The Writings of Volodymyr Vynnychenko. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2012.
  
• Steiner, Lina. For Humanity's Sake: The Bildungsroman in Russian Culture.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.
  
• Wachtel, Michael. A Commentary to Pushkin's Lyric Poetry. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
  
• Wanner, Adrian. Out of Russia: Fictions of a New Translingual Diaspora. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011.
  

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Best Translation into English (books published in 2011 and 2012 eligible):

• Adamova-Sliozberg, Olga. My Journey: How One Woman Survived Stalin's Gulag. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Katherine Gratwick Baker.
  
• Aygi, Gennady. Into the Snow: Selected Poems. Seattle, WA: Wave Books, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Sarah Valentine.
  
• Albahari, David. Leeches. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Translated from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursać.
  
• Chekhov, Anton. Five Plays.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Marina Brodskaya. Introduction by Tobias Wolff.
  
• Chulkov, Mikhail, Matvei Komarov, and Nikolai Karamzin. Three Russian Tales of the Eighteenth Century: The Comely Cook, Vanka Kain, and "Poor Liza". DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012. Translated from the Russian by David Gasperetti.
  
• Dichter, Wilhelm. God's Horse and the Atheists' School. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012. Translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine.
  
• Florian, Filip. The Days of the King. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth.
  
• Herzen, Alexander. A Herzen Reader. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2012. Translated from the Russian by Kathleen Parthé.
  
• Gogol, Nikolai. Dead Souls. New York, NY: New York Review Books, 2012. Translated from the Russian by Donald Rayfield.
  
• Hrabal, Bohumil. Gaps: A Novel . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011. Translated from the Czech by Tony Liman.
  
• Ilf, Ilya and Evgeny Petrov. The Twelve Chairs . Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Anne O. Fisher.
  
• Jergoviс́, Miljenko. Mama Leone . Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012. Translated from the Croatian by David Williams.
  
• Kertész, Imre. Fiasco. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House, 2011. Translated from the Hungarian by Tim Wilkinson.
  
• Konstantinov, Aleko. Bai Ganyo: Incredible Tales of a Modern Bulgarian. Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. Edited by Victor A. Friedman. Translated from the Bulgarian by Christina E. Kramer, Grace E. Fielder and Catherine Rudin.
  
• Krzhizhanovsky, Sigizmund. The Letter Killers Club. New York, NY: New York Review Books, 2012. Translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull with Nikolai Formozov. Introduction by Caryl Emerson.
  
• Nádas, Péter. Parallel Stories. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein.
  
• Norwid, Cyprian. Poems. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2011. Translated from the Polish by Danuta Borchardt in collaboration with Agata Brajerska-Mazur.
  
• Pilch, Jerzy. My First Suicide. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, University of Rochester Press, 2012. Translated from the Polish by David Frick.
  
• Platonov, Andrey. Happy Moscow. New York, NY: New York Review Books, 2012. Translated from the Russian by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler and others.
  
• Propp, Vladimir Yakovlevich. The Russian Folktale. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2012. Edited and translated from the Russian by Sibelan Forrester.
  
• Pyetsukh, Vyacheslav. The New Moscow Philosophy. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Krystyna Anna Steiger.
  
• Shishkin, Mikhail. Maidenhair. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, University of Rochester Press, 2012. Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz.
  
• Smilevski, Goce. Freud's Sister. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2012. Translated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer.
  
• Sorokin, Vladimir. Day of the Oprichnik New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell.
  
• Sorokin, Vladimir. Ice Trilogy. New York, NY: New York Review Books, 2011. Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell.
  
• Stănescu, Nichita. Wheel with a Single Spoke and other poems. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012. Translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter.
  
• Starova, Luan. My Father's Books. Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. Translated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer.
  
• Starova, Luan. The Time of the Goats. Madison, WI : University of Wisconsin Press, 2012. Translated from the Macedonian by Christina E. Kramer.
  
• Stasiuk, Andrzej. On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. Translated from Polish by Michael Kandel.
  
• Suceavă, Bogdan. Coming from an Off-Key Time: A Novel. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2011. Translated from the Romanian by Alistair Ian Blyth.
  
• Tulli, Magdalena. In Red. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2011. Translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston.
  
• Ugresic, Dubravka. Karaoke Culture. Rochester, NY: Open Letter, University of Rochester Press, 2011. Translated from the Croation by David Williams.
  
• Zabuzhko, Oksana. Fieldwork in Ukrainian Sex. Las Vegas, NV: Amazon Crossing, 2011. Translated from the Ukrainian by Halyna Hryn.
  
• Zagajewski, Adam. Unseen Hand. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh.
  

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Eligibility requirements and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes:

AATSEEL  awards prizes to outstanding publications in the fields of 1) language pedagogy, 2) linguistics, 3) literary and/or cultural scholarship, and 4) translations into English. For more on the specific eligibility requirements of the individual prizes, and for recent recipients of the prizes, see below. General eligibility requirements and nomination procedures pertinent to all the prizes include:

1. In order to be eligible for consideration for an AATSEEL Book Award, the author (not the nominator) must be a member of AATSEEL. In the case of books written by more than one author, at least one one of the authors must be a member of AATSEEL. Books by individuals who are not members of AATSEEL (or books written by teams of authors none of whom is a member of AATSEEL) cannot be considered for an AATSEEL book award.
   
2. Nominated works must be devoted to the languages and the literary/cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
   
3. For the prizes in linguistics, literary/cultural scholarship and translation, works nominated must have been published within the two preceding calendar years. For the prize in language pedagogy, works nominated must have been published within the three preceding calendar years.
   
4. The nomination process will normally end on 1 May. Prizes will be announced at the annual meeting of AATSEEL in early January.
   
5. Both members of AATSEEL and non-members may make nominations for the prizes.
   
6. In order to make a nomination for one of the prizes, one need only send an e-mail message to the chair of the publications committee (see "contact information" below). The chair will then contact the press. Presses wishing to nominate books should send a single copy of the work to the chair, who will (shortly after May 1) supply a list of the relevant jurors and their addresses. Presses are then asked to send a copy of the book directly to each of the jurors.
   

Specific eligibility guidelines for each prize:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy:

The prize in pedagogy may recognize either language-pedagogical materials or contributions to literature on the theory and practice of language teaching. The former category should be understood broadly to include textbooks, computer software, testing materials, and other instructional tools. Nominated works in the latter category should be single or multi-author books. At the committee's discretion, the prize may in some years be granted not to a single publication, but to the aggregate works of one individual whose publications as a whole have made an outstanding contribution to the field of language pedagogy.

Best Contribution to the Study of Slavic Linguistics:

Nominated works should be scholarly monographs (including grammars and dictionaries) that treat topics in any field of linguistic inquiry. Typically, translated and edited volumes would not be considered.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship:

Nominated works should be scholarly books which treat topics in any field of literary or cultural studies. Normally, this will exclude works of historical scholarship, unless these are devoted to the history of literary or cultural institutions or to interdisciplinary topics uniting history and cultural life.

Best Translation into English:

Nominees for this prize should be book-length translations of a literary work, an epiliterary genre (letters, memoirs, essays, etc.), or a scholarly work. At the discretion of the jury, two prizes may be awarded, one for a literary or epiliterary work, the other for a translation of a strictly scholarly character.

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An explanation of recent modifications in eligibility and selection procedures for the book prizes

The Publications Committee of AATSEEL, with the approval of the Executive Council, has instituted the following changes in the eligibility and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes, which became effective during the 2002 competition.

Eligibility for the prizes in linguistics, literary/cultural criticism, and translation extends to books published in the preceding two calendar years (in the present case 2011 and 2012), but does not include those published in the current year (2013). For the prize in language pedagogy eligibility extends for the preceding three calendar years (2010-2012, in this case), but not the current year (2013).

Rationale: In the past, eligibility for all prizes has extended to books published in a three year period including the year in which the competition takes place. This gave an unfair advantage to books published early in the year, which in effect were eligible for a year longer than books published late in the year. It also made it difficult for jury members to examine some nominated books, which were not available in time for the committee's deliberations. This change addressed these issues. Further, the reduction of the eligibility window from three years to two for all prizes except that for pedagogy reflects the well-established nature of these prizes, which ensures that books are nominated in a timely manner. The prize for pedagogy has been implemented more recently than the others and needs more time to come into its own before a similar reduction in the eligibility window can be instituted.

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Publications Committee membership and contact information

The AATSEEL Publications Committee consists of fifteen members who serve staggered three-year terms, each of whom is assigned to one of four book-prize juries corresponding to his or her disciplinary affiliation and qualifications. All correspondence for the committee should be addressed to the current chair (term ends Dec. 2014):

Professor Justin Weir
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
Harvard University
326 Barker Center
12 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 496-3737 (phone)
(617) 496-4466 (fax)
Email: weir@fas.harvard.edu

Language pedagogy jury:

• William Comer, University of Kansas (term ends Dec. 2013)
  
• Elisabeth Elliott, Northwestern University (term ends Dec. 2014)
  
• Nicole Monnier, University of Missouri (term ends Dec. 2014)
  

Linguistics jury:

• Christina Bethin, State University of New York Stony Brook (term ends Dec. 2013)
  
• Jindrich Toman, University of Michigan (term ends Dec. 2014)
  
• Cynthia Vakareliyska, University of Oregon (term ends Dec. 2012)

Literary/cultural studies jury:

• Catherine Ciepiela, Amherst College (term ends Dec. 2013)
  
• Gabriella Safran, Stanford University (term ends Dec. 2015)
  
• Ilya Vinitsky, University of Pennsylvania (term ends Dec. 2014)

Translation jury:

• Tim Langen, University of Missouri (term ends Dec. 2014)
  
• Ronald Meyer, Columbia University (term ends Dec. 2014)
  
• Marian Schwartz, professional translator (term ends Dec. 2013)
  

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