AATSEEL Annual Awards

The AATSEEL Publications Committee is responsible for overseeing the appointment of editors for the AATSEEL Newsletter and Slavic and East European Journal, and also for the award of prizes for publications in the various disciplines participating in AATSEEL. For information on our activities, please follow the appropriate link below:

Nominees for the 2008 AATSEEL book prizes (Nomination will be closed as of 1 May)

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy (books or other material published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 eligible):

Alexander, Ronelle and Ellen Elias-Bursać. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. A Textbook With Exercises and Basic Grammar. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Hawkesworth, Celia. Colloquial Serbian: The Complete Course for Beginners. London: Routledge, 2006.

Kagan, Olga, Mara Kashper, and Yuliya Morozova. Cinema for Russian Conversation Volumes 1 & 2. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishers, 2005.

Marder, Stephan, ed. A Supplementary Russian-English Dictionary, Second edition. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2007.

Rifkin, Benjamin and Olga Kagan (with Anna Yatsenko). Advanced Russian through History. Дела давно минувших дней. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Rifkin, Benjamin, Shannon Spasova, Viktoria Thorstensson, Nina Familiant, and Dianna Murphy. "The RAILS: Russian Advanced Interactive Listening Series Project." Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006. (http://www.languageinstitute.wisc.edu/rails/)

Rosengrant, Sandra Freels. Russian in Use An Interactive Approach to Advanced Communicative Competence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Back to top

Best Contribution to Slavic Linguistics (books or other material published in 2006 and 2007 eligible):

Alexander, Ronelle. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Bermel, Neil. Linguistic Authority, Language Ideology, and Metaphor: The Czech Orthography Wars. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007.

Corbett, Greville G. Agreement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Fink-Arsovski, Željka, et al. Croatian-Slavic Dictionary of Idiomatic Similies. Zagreb, Croatia: Knjigra, 2006.

Marder, Stephan, ed. A Supplementary Russian-English Dictionary, Second edition. Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2007.

Šipka, Danko. A Comparative Reference Grammar of Bosnian/Croation/Serbian. Hyattsville, MD: Dunwoody Press, 2007.

Sussex, Roland and Paul Cubberley. The Slavic Languages. Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Back to top

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies (books published in 2006 and 2007 eligible):

Allen, Elizabeth Cherish. A Fallen Idol Is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Bird, Robert. The Russian Prospero: The Creative World of Viacheslav Ivanov. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Blakesley, Rosalind P. and Susan E. Reid, eds. Russian Art and the West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007.

Bojanowska, Edyta M. Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. P., 2007.

Chernetsky, Vitaly. Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization. Montreal & Kingston, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2007.

Clark, Katerina and Evgeny Dobrenko (with Andei Artizov and Oleg Naumov). Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

De la Durantaye, Leland. Style is Matter: The Moral Art of Vladimir Nabokov. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Dobrenko, Evgeny. Political Economy of Socialist Realism. Trans. Jesse M. Savage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Frazier, Melissa. Romantic Encounters: Writers, Readers, and the “Library for Reading.” Stanford, CA: Stanford U. P., 2007.

Fusso, Susanne. Discovering Sexuality in Dostoevsky.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Gorsuch, Anne E. and Diane P. Koenker, eds. Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Goscilo, Helena and Andrea Lanoux, eds. Gender and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006.

Hellbeck, Jochen. Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary under Stalin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Johnson, Emily D. How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006.

Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Litvak, Olga. Conscription and the Search for Modern Russian Jewry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Nepomnyashchy, Catharine Theimer, Nicole Svobodny, and Ludmilla A. Trigos, eds. Under the Sky of My Africa: Alexander Pushkin and Blackness. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Orwin, Donna Tussing. Consequences of Consciousness: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. Stanford, CA: Stanford U. P., 2007.

Painter, Kirsten Blythe. Flint on a Bright Stone: A Revolution of Precision and Restraint in American, Russian, and German Modernism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Palmer, Scott W. Dictatorship of the Air: Aviation Culture and the Fate of Modern Russia. Cambridge Centennial of Flight. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Platt, Kevin M. F. and David Brandenberger, eds. Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Plokhy, Serhii. The Origin of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Randolph, John. The House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Robinson, Harlow. Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press (published in Hanover, NH by University Press of New England), 2007.

Rylkova, Galina. The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and Its Legacy. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2007.

Schönle, Andreas, ed. Lotman and Cultural Studies: Encounters and Extensions. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006.

Sharp, Jane Ashton. Russian Modernism between East and West: Natal'ia Goncharova and the Moscow Avant-Garde. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Shternshis, Anna. Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

Thomas, Alfred. The Bohemian Body: Gender and Sexuality in Modern Czech Culture. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.

Tomoff, Kiril. Creative Union: The Professional Organization of Soviet Composers, 1939-1953. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Tosi, Alessandra. Waiting for Pushkin: Russian Fiction in the Reign of Alexander I (1801-1825). Studies in Slavic Literature and Poetics 44. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.

Transchel, Kate. Under the Influence: Working-Class Drinking, Temperance, and Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1895-1932. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.

Ungurianu, Dan. Plotting History: The Russian Historical Novel in the Imperial Age. Madison, WI: Wisconsin University Press, 2007.

Wachtel, Andrew Baruch. Remaining Relevant after Communism: The Role of the Writer in Eastern Europe. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

White, Frederick H. Memoirs and Madness: Leonid Andreev through the Prism of the Literary Portrait. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2006.

Zalambani, Maria. Literatura fakta: Ot avangarda k sotsrealizmu (La morte del romanzo: Dall' avanguardia al realismo socialista. St. Petersburg, Russia: Akademicheskii proekt, 2006.

Back to top

Best Translation into English-Listed by Translator (books published in 2006 and 2007 eligible):

Efron, Ariadna and Ada Federolf. Unforced Labors: The Memoirs of Ada Federolf and Selected Prose of Ariadna Efron. Compiled, edited, and translated with commentary and introduction by Diane Nemec Ignashev. Moscow: Vozvrashchenie, 2006.

Goncharov, Ivan. Oblomov. Translated by Stephen Pearl. New York, NY: Bunim and Bannigan, 2006.

Ignatova, Elena. The Diving Bell. Translated by Sibelan Forrester. Brookline, MA: Zephyr Press, 2006.

Khodasevich, Vladislav. Derzhavin: A Biography. Translated and with an introduction by Angela Brintlinger. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007.

Matvejević, Predrag. The Other Venice. Translated by Russell Scott Valentino. London: Reaktion Books, 2007.

Prokofiev, Sergey. Diaries (1907-1914): Prodigious Youth. Translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

Pushkin, Alexander. The Captain’s Daughter. Translated Robert and Elizabeth Chandler. London: Hesperus Classics, 2007.

Trubetskoi, Vladimir Sergeevich. A Russian Prince in the Soviet State: Hunting Stories, Letters from Exile, and Military Memoirs. Translated and edited by Susanne Fusso. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006.

Back to top

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 (with the exception of East Germany, which is covered by prizes granted in other professional organizations) 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 late December.
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 should send a single copy of the work or materials to be nominated to the chair of the publications committee (see "contact information" below).

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) or articles 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 translation of either a literary work or an epiliterary genre (letters, memoirs, essays, etc.). Normally, this will exclude translations of a strictly scholarly character.
Back to top

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.
Beginning in the present year, eligibility for the prizes in linguistics, literary/cultural criticism, and translation extends to books published in the preceding two calendar years (2006-2007 in this case), but does not include those published in the current year (2008). For the prize in language pedagogy eligibility extends for the preceding three calendar years (2005-2007, in this case), but not the current year (2008).
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 (books considered for 2001 prizes were published in 1999, 2000 and 2001). 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 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.
Back to top

Recent recipients of the AATSEEL book prizes

2007 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy
Robert A. DeLossa, R. Robert Koropeckyj, Robert Romanchuk, and Alexandra Isaievych Mason, Rozmovljajmo! (Let's Talk!): A Basic Ukrainian Course with Polylogs, Grammar, and Conversation Lessons (Bloomington, IN: Slavica, 2005).
Rozmovljajmo is a much needed textbook in the dramatically changing landscape of Slavic studies, where a truly diverse expertise of Slavic languages and cultures is in increasing demand. The book covers the basic grammar of Ukrainian and aims to develop all basic language skills. It is a result of years of classroom teaching and is built on a strong foundation in the latest teaching methodologies. Written with a profound knowledge of the recent linguistic development, the textbook represents the dominant conversational standard in post-Soviet Ukraine. Each lesson opens up with situational polylogs and communicative exercises, which are followed by grammatical explanations with practice exercises. The main chapters are supplemented by further dialogs, rozmovnyky, and their English translations. Rozmovljajmo contains impressively rich spoken language input that can be used for conversational as well as structured tasks. Numerous authentic photographs also provide a good sense of today's Ukraine. The book includes an additional section that presents the frequent pitfalls for speakers of Russian, tabular appendices, a glossary, and a detailed index. Rozmovljajmo is an excellent textbook that will be used in colleges and high schools as well as in self-study for many years to come.

Best Contribution to Slavic Linguistics
Laada Bilaniuk, Contested Tongues: Language Politics and Cultural Correction in Ukraine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).
Laada Bilaniuk’s Contested Tongues stands out for its thorough and insightful investigation of the language situation in contemporary Ukraine. Impressively readable and informative, the study is based on extensive fieldwork conducted by the author over an eleven-year period beginning in 1991. Professor Bilaniuk analyzes the social, cultural, political and linguistic differences between Ukrainian, Russian and surzhyk, carefully situating them in the socio-historical context in which they have developed. She devotes careful attention to the role of language attitudes and biases with regard to the current and historical position of Ukrainian, exemplified nicely by a second chapter featuring interviewees’ personal narratives on language embedded in more general oral histories. The book also offers a solid overview of the history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian language, including the pre-soviet standardization and codification of the language, as well as the anti-communist symbolism the language acquired in the decades following the Bolshevik revolution—a symbolic tension that was only enhanced by the close linguistic affinities between Ukrainian and Russian.

Best Book of Slavic Literary/Cultural Criticism:
Catherine Ciepiela, The Same Solitude: Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
Catherine Ciepiela’s The Same Solitude has rightly been praised for its “impeccable scholarship, theoretical acumen, and rich, resourceful close readings,” its “degree of insight that borders on the uncanny,” and its “very careful, illuminating, and nuanced analysis.” These readers have recognized the achievement of The Same Solitude, after which no reader will see the poetry of Pasternak and Tsvetaeva as fully separable. Professor Ciepiela tells the story of the poets' connection, which was made all the more passionate by their living in different cities, almost in different worlds. She demonstrates brilliantly how the performance of intense emotion, long recognized as Tsvetaeva’s signature, characterizes Pasternak’s poems and letters to her just as aptly. New readings of individual poems abound in this book, which is written with remarkable elegance and lucidity. The readings draw deftly on rhetorical, psychoanalytical, and feminist theory, always with exemplary clarity. Professor Ciepiela also shows herself to be a splendid translator of these two fantastically difficult poets. The translations as well as the overall argument open this book to readers far beyond specialists in the Silver Age or in Russian poetry. To quote one last review of the book, it is a “remarkable and moving work of criticism and biography,” for which it handsomely wins the AATSEEL Award for the Best Book in Literary and Cultural Scholarship, 2007.

Best Translation into English
Robert Chandler, for his translation of Hamid Ismailov, The Railway (London: Harvill Secker, 2006).
Hamid Ismailov’s multi-voiced, quasi-surreal novel The Railway poses almost every possible challenge to the literary translator, from puns and “talking” names to complex symbolism and detailed depictions of life in a provincial Central Asian town under Soviet rule. In his masterful translation, Robert Chandler deals with every one of these challenges with enormous creativity and panache. Never simplifying Ismailov’s work or losing the particularity of any of its unique narrative voices, Chandler makes the novel accessible to English-language readers, with all its dense word play, wide-ranging cultural allusions, and complex tone, at once profoundly dark and absurdly comical. He also provides a thoughtful and informative preface, copious footnotes, an essential list of characters’ names, and a map of the region. Leading his readers deftly through this remote world, Chandler introduces us to a cast of characters that appear humorously quaint and at the same time thoroughly human in their capacity for cruelty and suffering.

2006 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy
Christina E. Kramer, Macedonian = Makedonski jazik: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students, Second edition (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003).

Christina Kramer’s book Macedonian: A Course for Beginning and Intermediate Students is the only textbook of the Macedonian language available for English-speaking learners. This book boasts a complete grammar of the language, with appendices containing grammatical summaries, supplementary readings, answer keys and glossaries. A companion CD offers interactive exercises and multimedia materials for comprehension practice. In addition to the all-skills approach to the language, users are provided essential information about Macedonian culture, history, and literature. Kramer’s book represents years of linguistic research on and personal experience with the Macedonian language, and is presented in a format that has been meticulously edited and beautifully illustrated.

Best Book in Slavic Linguistics
Alan Timberlake, A Reference Grammar of Russian (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Alan Timberlake’s Reference Grammar of Russian systematically covers all aspects of Russian grammar from the orthography and sound patterns to syntax and word order. The book is thoroughly researched, well written and easy to use, but its most important and far-reaching contribution is in the areas of syntax and word order. Timberlake devotes significant space to these topics, and he supports his conclusions with statistical data from online corpora and the internet. This grammar makes a valuable contribution to the field of Slavic Linguistics and it should be on every Russian teacher’s desk.

Best Book of Slavic Literary/Cultural Criticism:
Boris Gasparov, Five Operas and a Symphony: Words and Music in Russian Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
Boris Gasparov’s Five Operas and a Symphony is a virtuoso combination of musicology, literary analysis, and cultural history that will appeal to readers coming from any of those fields. Focusing on select masterpieces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gasparov carefully shows how these distinctly Russian works draw on and intersect with the Western European tradition. In considering the operas, Gasparov offers strikingly original readings of both the source texts and their subsequent musical transformations. Thus, the chapter on “Ruslan and Liudmila” is not only a subtle interpretation of the way Glinka incorporated elements of Rossini and Mozart, but also a brilliant study of Pushkin’s long poem and its play with folklore. In a fascinating chapter on Chaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” Gasparov shows how the composer read Pushkin’s novel in verse through the prism of a realist novel in the Turgenev mold. The emphasis is not on deformation or misreading, but on a new set of artistic goals and their realization on the musical stage. In the one chapter devoted to a musical work without a text, Shostakovich’s fourth symphony is interpreted as a narrative and placed in the broader context of Stalinist culture (literature, radio, and film). Whether the subject is Glinka, Chaikovsky, Musorgsky, Shostakovich or the Soviet national anthem, readers will be amazed by the depth of Gasparov’s knowledge and provoked by the range of his comparisons.

Best Translation into English
Michael Henry Heim, for his translation of Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, 1901-1969, ed. Victor Erlich (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005).
This translation represents perhaps the perfect marriage of translator and text: the diaries of one of Russia’s greatest literary translators—among other things—rendered in English by one of America’s most respected translators of Russian literature. Portraying the ups and downs in the personal life of a man with prodigious energy, a forceful personality, a voracious intellectual curiosity, broad circles of friendship, and a gift for telling lively anecdotes, the diaries submerge the reader in the rich flow of history. The translation, which is convincing from start to finish, manages to retain the engaging intimacy of a diary and all the sparkle of Chukovsky’s prose. Heim’s renditions of poetry, especially of Chukovsky’s own poetry for children, are also brilliant. Moreover, the text, which has been very tactfully abridged with the general reader in mind, first by Kornei Chukovsky’s daughter, Lydia, then by Victor Erlich, includes first rate scholarly apparats(useful and convenient footnotes by Chukovskaya, Erlich, and Heim; a helpful list of periodicals, acronyms, etc.; biographical references; a full index). Everything you might need to look up is there. This masterful translation of Chukovsky’s diaries offers a uniquely personal look at a complex personality living in a very complicated time.

2005 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2005:
Janda, Laura A. and Stephen J. Clancy. The Case Book for Russian. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica Publishers, 2002.
The Case Book (with CD) represents an innovative application of modern linguistic theory to pedagogy. The book identifies patterns of case usage in clearly defined networks, using easy-to-follow terminology. It is unlike any other textbook in its flexibility. Parts of this book can be used in any order to address specific case-related problems. It is applicable in a variety of levels and settings, and can easily combine with other textbooks. Most importantly, the book demonstrates the relevance and usefulness of serious up-to-date linguistics to language teaching.

Leighton, Lauren G. Modern Russian Culture: A Course of Ideas and Images, a multimedia course on CD-ROM and Video, DVD Conceptual design and programming by Slava Paperno. Ithaca, NY: Lexicon Bridge Publishers, 2004.
Modern Russian Culture represents the culmination of more than three years of intensive work by its author, Lauren G. Leighton. This impressive collection of six DVDs crafts 38 lectures around five classic themes of Russian culture and illustrates them with slides and video covering material from the 18th through the 21st centuries in Russia. More than just a series of lectures on Russian culture, Modern Russian Culture offers a multi-disciplinary wealth of authentic materials, including still photos, music, art, and hypertext to give the teacher and student the chance to explore Russia both in and out of classroom. The additional disc of reference materials can be incorporated into almost any curriculum in need of high-quality sound and image support. It is a tremendous resource for the teaching of Russian language and culture.

Best Book in Linguistics 2005:
Greenberg, Robert D. Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croat and its Disintegration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Language and Identity in the Balkans presents a compelling narrative, surveying the unique peculiarities of Serbo-Croatian language planning from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the present. In contradistinction to the unifying processes that marked the formation of other European national languages, the impulse to create a Serbo-Croatian linguistic and national unity gave way to a continuous dialogue about fragmentation along ethnic and religious lines ending in the breakup of Yugoslavia and the emergence of new national standards - Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. Greenberg's book synthesizes linguistic, legal, historical material and views the interplay among the sides from a non-partisan perspective. The detailed exposition and copious citation of relevant scholarly literature in many languages, together with the eminently readable text providing a masterful summation of a unique constellation of sociolinguistic phenomena, suggest that the book will become a classic reference for those who wish to study the dramatic rise and fall of the language-formerly-known-as-Serbo-Croatian.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2005:
Lovell, Stephen. Summerfolk: A History of the Dacha, 1710-2000. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Summerfolk is an outstanding work of architectural, social, and cultural history, based on extensive archival research and interviews, and written in a clear and elegant style. Lovell tells the story of the development of the dacha, from its origins in the 17th century as a gift of land from the state, through its somewhat disreputable image in the later nineteenth century and the Soviet era of privileged settlements for the nomenklatura, ending with the red-brick palaces of post-Soviet Russia. At every step Lovell carefully situates the story of the dacha in its historical and social context. Despite the wealth of detail, the story is told with irresistible narrative drive. Summerfolk will be an indispensable resource for students of Russian architecture, literature, and culture. Summerfolk is a tour de force of synoptic scholarship and it represents cultural studies in its widest breadth. Who would have imagined the dacha was attached to so many architectural shapes, legal definition,demographic shifts, or contrary cultural values? Few of us would have, without Lovell's excellent guidance through the literary, visual, sociological, journalistic, and anthropological sources that so richly illuminate this uniquely Russian (and typically unstable) signifier. Summerfolk is both a history of the dacha and a history of something much larger, Russian culture itself, as reflected in the use of and discourse around the dacha.

Best Translation into English 2005:
Johnston, Bill. Dreams and Stones, by Magdelena Tulli. Archipelago Books, 2004.
In Dreams and Stones, Bill Johnston recreates Magdalena Tulli's lyrical yet labyrinthine prose in his own equally lyrical and labyrinthine yet wholly English style. In this remarkable translation, Johnston conveys a deeply felt sense of Tulli's fantastic organic image and spiraling story of an unnamed city that could be any city, while maintaining both Tulli's original tone and her tongue-in-cheek humor. It is as if translator and author were speaking with one voice. Archipelago Books has produced an elegant edition, aptly choosing Paul Klee's "Luftschloss" for the jacket. This translation will be invaluable in introducing Magdalena Tulli, one of Poland's leading authors, to students of literature in the United States.

2004 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2004:
Kagan, Olga, Tatiana Akishina, and Richard Robin. Russian for Russians. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2002.
Russian for Russians fulfills a critical and growing need in the profession to provide language and culture instruction to heritage speakers. Firmly grounded in current pedagogical research, Russian for Russians offers a completely new approach to teaching heritage students, building on their already existing skills, extending them, and adapting them to literary Russian. Films and texts related to various aspects of Russian history and culture are juxtaposed with materials that encourage the students to explore their Russian heritage. This combination of modalities provides a personal motivation for the students, and brings the language to life for them in a unique and effective way.

Best Book in Linguistics 2004:
Oscar E. Swan, A Grammar of Contemporary Polish. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica Publishers, 2002.
Swan's grammar of Polish is a shining example of what every grammar of a "difficult" language should be -- a masterpiece of conciseness and breadth. It has been suggested that no grammar of any language could ever be "complete," but this book goes a long way toward disproving that statement. Swan's reference grammar is more than a superficial guide to features of Polish, since it explains in extended detail every important aspect of modern Polish. Yet throughout, the text is inviting and accessible, and the author has an uncanny ability to predict and clear up in advance likely areas of confusion. In short, this is the clearest description of the complexities of Polish grammar available. It will be a valuable tool for Polish learners at all levels, language students as well as linguists who depend on the grammars of particular languages to gather data for the cross-linguistic analyses of specific phenomena. It is the "answer book" for modern Polish grammar. It is moreover evident that this book was a monumental labor of love and we can only hope that Slavica Publishers will publish other grammars of Slavic and Baltic languages that come up to Swan's standards.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2004:
Michael S. Gorham, Speaking in Soviet Tongues: Language Culture and the Politics of Voice in Revolutionary Russia. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003.
Gorham's study explores the process by which the authoritative Party-State voice of Stalinism was formed from a multitude of "Soviet tongues" in the early 1920s. The author undertakes a study of the institutional forces behind these linguistic changes, offers detailed analyses of critical debates over newly emerging revolutionary discourse, and demonstrates how the Soviet vox populi found its way into works of literary fiction. Tracing the transformation of these various "tongues" from oral modes of communication to institutionalized forms of "proletarian language," this brilliant study shows how such new linguistic practices contributed to the formation the new Soviet citizen. Gorham's innovative book highlights the anomaly of Soviet fiction: the fact that the language and the literary works written in this language were created simultaneously. In a truly interdisciplinary approach to his topic, he finds support for his arguments in works of journalism, pedagogy manuals, linguistic debates, and works of fiction. Gorham provides a comprehensive analysis of Lingua Sovietae from its formation to its canonization as the official discourse of Soviet culture. This outstanding book brings the study of linguistic practices back into the realm of literary and cultural studies and provides new venues for future scholarship.

Best Translation into English 2004:
Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson, with Jane Chamberlain, Olga Kouznetsova and Eric Naiman. Soul, by Andrei Platonov. London: The Harvill Press, 2003.
The Harvill Press translation of Platonov's Soul -- a collaborative effort -- accomplishes the seemingly impossible in bringing the notoriously idiosyncratic language of this talented writer to English-language readers. The superb yet compact apparatus includes an essay on "Platonov and Central Asia," an introduction explicitly treating the challenges of translating Platonov, a map, a pronunciation and meaning guide to names, and endnotes. This translation and accompanying material will be invaluable in bringing Platonov into the English-language classroom and making his work accessible to our students.

2003 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2003:
Boyle, Eloise M. and Genevra Gerhart, eds., The Russian Context: The Culture behind the Language. Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica, 2002.
Innovative and full of valuable information, this book has major implications for a restructuring of Russian language/culture/literature curricula, as it provides instructors for the first time with a compact, structured view of what Russians consider part of their general background. The authors present an interdisciplinary overview of historical and contemporary Russian culture, and focus on the reflection of culture in language. The accompanying CD makes excellent use of technology to provide substantial aural input as well as far more visual input than could possibly have been incorporated in the print volume. This collection of cultural information will be immensely useful in teaching both non-native speakers and heritage learners.

Best Book in Linguistics 2003:
Collins, Daniel E. Reanimated Voices: Speech Reporting in a Historical-Pragmatic Perspective. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, vol. 85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2001.
Collins's book breaks new ground in Russian philology with its pragmatic and functionalist study of secular Old Russian texts. In a thorough and circumspect examination, Professor Collins reconstructs the discursive choices made in rendering reported speech in texts. The results of his examination deepen our understanding of the construction of Old Russian texts and, by extension, provide fresh insight into the nature of Old Russian speech. Professor Collins's methodological innovations already noted in domestic and international reviews of his work are certain to be influential in steering a course for this new vein of research both in the Slavic and general linguistic fields.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2003:
Olcott, Anthony. Russian Pulp: The Detektiv and the Russian Way of Crime. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001.
This book--highly readable and witty-- treats key aspects from Soviet and post-Soviet life. Because the detiktiv is close, but not identical to the Anglo-American murder mystery, Olcott is able to offer a nuanced, comparative and interdisciplinary framework for his work. He details Soviet attitudes toward sexuality, crime, law, and something that is far more difficult to pin down: the boundaries between the public and the personal. Olcott shows that attitudes inculcated and developed during the years of Soviet rule have not faded away with the collapse of the Soviet Union. His book makes Russian literature and culture accessible to non-Slavists, explicating how Russian culture is different from Western liberal democracy, and grappling with Russian difference without trying to make that Otherness merely edifying.

Best Translation into English 2003:
Levine, Madeline G. Milosz's ABC's, by Czeslaw Milosz. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.
This translation represents the achievement of a veteran craftsman instrumental in making contemporary Polish literature accessible to the English-speaking world. A miscellany of highly personal reflections on the relationship between poetry and politics in the twentieth century, Milosz's ABC's encompasses a number of sub-genres under the umbrella of the mock encyclopedia entry. This variety requires the translator to identify and reproduce a great diversity of tone, to which occasion Professor Levine rises again and again. When in "Angelic Sexuality" Milosz wanders into Swedenborgian theosophy, she follows suit with the appropriate philosophical diction and terminology; when in "Arcata" he evokes the beauty of a town on the California coast, she renders it as the prose poem it really is. Everywhere she displays the accuracy and sensitivity we have come to expect of her.

2002 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2002:
ACTR. Business Russian (1999). http://www.russnet.org/home.html
The Business Russian web site developed under the auspices of Russnet is a well-designed and user-friendly series of business-related modules for novice, intermediate and advanced learners. The modules were based on the textbook Russkyj jazyk v delevom obshchenii by Klobukova, Mikhalkina, Soltanovskaja, and Khavronina (ed. Dan Davidson, Washington, D.C.: ACTR/ACCELS, 1997). The modules themselves are complete, but continue to be enhanced with real-life case studies for users at higher levels of proficiency. The site also contains a video clip from a lecture on how to use the related textbook by one of its authors. The activities in the modules are based on textual, visual and aural prompts which focus on the development of business vocabulary and basic grammar. A preliminary module introduces users to reading and typing the Cyrillic alphabet. A Russian-English dictionary offers translations for select vocabulary words. The site is designed to be used either as part of a class or for individual study.Its online format makes it available to everyone and helps fill a void in Russian programs which do not have the resources to offer courses in Business Russian. At a time when economic and business ties between Russia and the West are on the rise, this site provides a valuable contribution to an important area of Russian language pedagogy.

Best Book in Linguistics 2002:
Marc L. Greenberg. A Historical Phonology of the Slovene Language. Heidelberg, DE: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 2000.
Professor Greenberg's monograph, A Historical Phonology of the Slovene Language, is a major contribution to the Carl Winter series in Slavic historical linguistics and an outstanding work of Slavic dialectology. On the basis of new language data and carefully constructed linguistic arguments, it presents a new interpretation of historical language change in Slovene and the development of its complex and diverse variants. The book is noteworthy for the author's command of the material, meticulous analysis, and quality of argumentation. It is a major advance in our understanding of this important, but often neglected, Slavic linguistic area.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2002:
Note from the Publications Committee: due to a tie between two very strong nominees, the committee decided to award two prizes in this category this year.
Dale E. Peterson. Up from Bondage: The Literatures of Russian and African American Soul. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000.
Dale Peterson's book will surprise and delight readers with its elaboration of the provocative parallel trajectories taken by these two literary and philosophical traditions. Peterson traces the comparable quests of Russian and African American writers -- themselves members of the Westernized elites within their respective native cultures -- to convey the nation's "soul," as embodied by the oral culture of the enslaved and illiterate masses, and thereby to assert cultural significance in opposition to the European West's dismissive assessment. Through dazzling juxtapositions of intellectual figures such as Chaadaev and Crummell, Dostoevsky and DuBois, Turgenev and Chestnutt, Gorky and Wright, Rasputin and Naylor, Peterson illuminates the problematic but productive phenomenon of Bakhtinian "double-voicedness" and self conscious hybridity. As Peterson so astutely points out, this very dividedness enabled writers to bridge the cultural divide separating the Russian and African-American indigenous sensibilitiesfrom established Western traditions of art and thought. Peterson's study represents intellectual history at its finest, offering readers a new perspective on canonical figures in Russian and American literary history, and encouraging us to think in broader interdisciplinary terms about our cultural fields of interest. Peterson has made a generous gift to both Russian and African American literary studies in opening this rich field for sustained study, and fellow scholars will surely be inspired by his example to undertake similarly bold synthesizing projects.

Gabriella Safran. Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Rewriting the Jew: Assimilation Narratives in the Russian Empire is an ambitious contribution to Russian and Jewish cultural and literary studies. Perceived as both intractably alien and potentially open to redefinition--through conversion and/or assimilation,-- the Jewish minority in Russia, Safran persuasively demonstrates, became a focal point for conflicting paradigms of human nature and nationhood in a multi-cultural empire. The "Jewish Question" emerges from Safran's compelling analyses as a challenge to stable notions of identity, which spurred Jewish and gentile writers alike to critical engagement with the aesthetic and ideological assumptions operating at the center of the nineteenth-century tradition. Realism's confidence in the power of literary type and narrative to inspire the composition of real biographies, liberal advocacy of rational self-fashioning and the formation of citizens through the influence of textual models, and an ascendent Romantic belief in a racially immutable self and national allegiance meet and vie over the figure of the Jew. Safran's juxtaposition of Grigory Bogrov, the Russian-speaking Jew whose "Zapiski evreia" introduced the narrative of acculturation to mainstream literature, with the Polish Positivist and nationalist Eliza Orzeszkowa, Leskov, and Chekhov, is a bold gamble which pays off. Rewriting the Jew enriches and reconfigures the map of nineteenth-century culture, shedding new light on both the dominant tradition and Jewish experience.

Best Translation into English 2002:
Robert Bird, trans., Michael Wachtel, Ed. Selected Essays, by Viacheslav Ivanov. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Robert Bird's and Michael Wachtel's Selected Essays by Viacheslav Ivanov represents the state of the art in both scholarship and translation, and is sure to become the definitive collection of Ivanov's essays in English. The volume contains Ivanov's most important prose works, including many essays appearing in English for the first time. The brilliant translation does justice to the intellectual complexity, the poetic spirit, and the erudition of the seminal thinker of the Russian Symbolist movement. The volume is beautifully edited, with a thorough introduction that establishes Ivanov's place in Russian literary and intellectual history, and a wealth of meticulous annotations. The notes-a work of art in themselves-introduce each individual essay, explain intricacies of language and terminology, show the development of Ivanov's writing, and illuminate the author's many references to philosophy, mythology, religion, and poetry. This marvelous book offers that rarest of combinations: intellectual rigor and perfect pitch.

2001 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2001:
Olga Kagan, Benjamin Rifkin and Susan Bauckus, eds. The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures. Bloomington, Ind: Slavica, 2000.
Olga Kagan, Benjamin Rifkin and Susan Bauckus's The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures is truly "a volume of breadth and complexity that required the time, energy, and enthusiasm of many people," but most of all--of the editors themselves. With this volume, they have created a bridge reaching back to a similar effort published by colleagues 15 years ago, and reaching forward to the next generation of teachers, to whom they dedicate their book with the hope that they will compile the next such volume. The book gives a broad overview of what is happening in pedagogy and second language acquisition not only in Slavic but also in the field at large, with each section of refereed papers being introduced by a prominent non-Slavist. In addition to the extensive collection of essays, the volume also includes a comprehensive review of textbooks, references and other resources currently available to students and teachers of Slavic languages and cultures. The Learning and Teaching of Slavic Languages and Cultures offers a snapshot of the field at the beginning of the 21st century and it will remain an invaluable resource and starting point for further discussion and research in the years to come.

Best Book in Linguistics 2001:
Sue Brown. Syntax of Negation in Russian: A Minimalist Approach. Stanford, Cal.: Center for the Study of Language and Information, 1999.
Sue Brown's monograph, The Syntax of Negation in Russian, is a highly focused discussion of negation and related issues in Russian and is one of the first to treat a syntactic phenomenon completely within a single Slavic language. Its clear introduction to Minimalism, its thorough survey of other approaches, and its analytical strength has led to a renewed interest in the genitive of negation in Russian and the other Slavic languages. For general linguists the value of the work lies in its clear explication of negation in Russian and its contribution of reliable data to the theoretical discussion. For Slavists it serves both as an introduction to a new theoretical approach as well as an accessible demonstration of how Minimalist theory can solve old problems in a new and insightful way.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2001:
Eliot Borenstein. Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000.
In elegant and lucid prose, Eliot Borenstein's Men without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929 offers a detailed analysis of the masculinist ethos of Russian revolutionary culture as reflected in the prose fiction of the 1920's. In the wake of the revolution, argues Borenstein, social relations assumed a new vision of comradeliness predicated on male bonding, one that effectively eroded family ties, the worth of heterosexual romance and the exigencies of reproduction. The Soviet "man question" emerged alongside the older "zhenskii vopros" and survived as the phenomenon of "fratriarchal communism" until high Stalinism's discursive return to family values in the 1930's. Since the "man question" was never conceptualized as systematically or consciously by contemporary thinkers as the gender issues raised by Russian feminists, it is to Borenstein's credit that he has been able to tease out the ramifications of what was more a rhetorical and cultural tendency than a fullyfledged theory. This he does not by dissolving literature into culture, but by reading the works of Babel, Olesha, and Platonov as critical engagements in the culture of Boleshvik masculinity, texts that ultimately expose the dystopian consequences of a society from which the feminine has been excluded.

Best Translation into English 2001:
Daniel Weissbort. Selected Poems of Nikolay Zabolotsky. Manchester: Carcanet, 1999.
The Selected Poems of Nikolay Zabolotsky, edited by Daniel Weissbort, is the first representative collection of Zabolotsky's poems in English translation. For this alone, this volume earns accolades, for Zabolotsky is undoubtedly a poet of great significance. The somewhat mystifying absence of any previous systematic attempt to render his poetry into English might be explained by its sheer linguistic complexity in the original, for Zabolotsky was fond of grotesques, intricate and obscure metaphors, and eccentric turns of speech and style. In this light, this volume becomes even more worthy of acclaim. The translations included are primarily the work of Weissbort himself, although there are a few by Robin Milner-Gulland and Peter Levi. The volume incorporates poems from every stage of Zabolotsky's career--over eighty shorter lyrics and all four of his long poems. Taking a variety of approaches to translation, ranging from a high degree of formal faithfulness to more semantically precise renderings, the volume as a whole accomplishes the seemingly impossible, delivering a composite image that accurately conveys the overall tone and tenor of Zabolotsky's works to the English reader.

2000 Awardees:

Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy 2000:
Slava Paperno, for his achievements in computer- and video-assisted language teaching.
Over the years Slava has produced many of the truly innovative and imaginative materials in our field. He is one of the Russian instructors in the forefront of using technology as an integral part of teaching, not simply as an add-on feature. We are recognizing him in particular for his achievements in computer-and video-assisted language teaching, with special recognition for his "12 Chairs Interactive" CD-ROM, and the documentaries "Children from Russia," "Michael and Svetlana," "Interviews from Russia," and "Life on the Atomic River." These materials, especially the films, are truly trail-blazing because they successfully combine the authentic and the pedagogically valid. Students watch the films with interest and genuine pleasure without realizing that they are, to some extent, made specifically for teaching language and culture. In a sense, the films can be called a new genre in language teaching: specially created authentic materials.

Best Book in Linguistics 2000:
Franks, Steven and Tracy Holloway King. A Handbook of Slavic Clitics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000
A Handbook of Slavic Clitics by Steven Franks and Tracy Holloway King is a comprehensive reference book as well as an insightful theoretical study. By showing that the clitic systems of a large variety of Slavic languages present intriguing problems for linguistic theory and that theory in turn reveals much about the structure of Slavic languages, it significantly contributes to a dialogue between Slavists and general linguists.

Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship 2000:
Julie A. Buckler. The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia. Stanford University Press, 2000.
Julie Buckler has produced a brilliant analysis of how opera and opera-going in mid- to late-nineteenth-century Russia were reflected in Russian literature and shaped Russian "high" culture. Surveying theaters, singers, opera-companies, composers, fiction-writers, and memoirists in rich detail, Prof. Buckler time and again keeps a steady hand on her lorgnette, always striking an admirable balance between close reading of cultural minutiae and framing her project in the larger issues of social and literary theory. Delicious passages and insights abound: the vital semiotics of audience-seating in opera theaters; the burning of the Moscow Bolshoi as operatic spectacle; a wide-ranging chapter on Verdi's La Traviata in Russian criticism and fiction; scrutiny of the nineteenth-century divas as cultural texts; Bellini's aria "Casta diva" as Oblomov's aesthetic anthem; prose portraits written by Pauline Viardot herself; Turgenev's enraptured descriptions of Viardot-the-goddess. These passages are accompaniedby myriad references to much less well-known writers and singers who paint a memorable portrait of the operatic enterprise in Russia just as Russian music was rising to cultural preeminence. Dozens of superb illustrations complement the vividness of Prof. Buckler's narrative, and The Literary Lorgnette is a fine example of the rich book production values for which Stanford University Press is well known. This volume is a fine example of what is best in interdisciplinary Slavic studies today, and Julie Buckler deserves our heartiest congratulations.

Best Translation into English 2000:
Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass. Road-Side Dog, by Czeslaw Milosz. New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1998.
The partnership between Robert Hass and Czeslaw Milosz as translators of Milosz's poetry has grown and evolved for many years. In this collection, as in many previous collaborations, the two handle the translation of individual poems superbly, taking the English language to new heights of beauty and wit. Yet beyond this achievement, the two have over time managed to generate a recognizable and unique poetic voice in English. One is tempted to say that they have succeeded not only in translating Milosz's works, but his linguistic presence. With this prize, the Association recognizes this extraordinary achievement, as it is realized in this wonderful new collection of poetry.
Back to top

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. 2008):
Professor Michael S. Gorham
Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
University of Florida
P.O. Box 117430
Gainesville, FL 32611-7430
Tel: 352-392-2101 ext. 206
Fax: 352-392-1067
Email: mgorham@ufl.edu

Language pedagogy jury:

Lynne deBenedette, Brown University (term ends Dec. 2010)
Laura Janda, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (term ends Dec. 2008)
Richard Robin, George Washington University (term ends Dec. 2008)

Linguistics jury:

David Birnbaum, University of Pittsburgh (term ends Dec. 2010)
Lenore Grenoble, Dartmouth College (term ends Dec. 2009)
Jane Hacking, University of Utah(term ends Dec. 2008)

Literary/cultural studies jury:

Jehanne Gheith, Duke University (term ends Dec. 2009)
Mark Lipovetsky (Leiderman), University of Colorado, Boulder (term ends Dec. 2010)
Irina Paperno, University of California, Berkeley (term ends Dec. 2009)
Stephanie Sandler, Harvard University (term ends Dec. 2009)
Thomas Seifrid, University of Southern California (term ends Dec. 2010)

Translation jury:

Susan C. Brownsberger, American Literary Translators Association (term ends Dec. 2008)
Celia Hawkesworth, University College London (term ends Dec. 2008)
Michael Heim, University of California, Los Angeles (term ends Dec. 2010)

Last updated 07/26/2008.

Home > About AATSEEL > AATSEEL Book Awards