Shortlisted books for the 2023 AATSEEL book prizes

Best First Book Award:

Nominees for the 2023 AATSEEL book prizes

Best First Book Award:

• Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences by Alla Vronskaya (University of Minnesota Press, 2022)
• Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds by Tatyana Gershkovich (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
• Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac by Julia Titus (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
• Formalists against Imperialism: The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar and Russian Orientalism by Anna Aydinyan (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
• How the Soviet Jew Was Made by Sasha Senderovich (Harvard University Press, 2022)
• Mimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel by Chloë Kitzinger (Northwestern University Press, 2021)
• Nabokov Noir: Cinematic Culture and the Art of Exile by Luke Parker (Cornell University Press, 2022
• The Origins of Russian Literary Theory: Folklore, Philology, Form by Jessica Merrill (Northwestern University Press, 2022)
• Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes: An Intellectual Biography of Dmytro Dontsov by Trevor Erlacher (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic by Katherine Bowers (University of Toronto Press, 2022)

  Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies:

• A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia by Katya Hokanson (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
• Architecture of Life: Soviet Modernism and the Human Sciences by Alla Vronskaya (University of Minnesota Press, 2022)
• Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds by Tatyana Gershkovich (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
• Authoritarian Laughter: Political Humor and Soviet Dystopia in Lithuania by Neriga Klumbyte (Cornell University Press, 2022)
• Beethoven in Russia: Music and Politics by Frederick W. Skinner (Indiana University Press, 2022)
• Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity by Rory Finnin (University of Toronto, 2022)
• Comics and Nation: Power, Pop Culture, and Political Transformation in Poland by Ewa Stanczyk (The Ohio State University Press, 2022)
• Contested Russian Tourism: Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century by Susan Layton (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Creolizing the Modern: Transylvania across Empires by Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă (Cornell University Press, 2022)
• Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac by Julia Titus (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
• Engaging Cultural Ideologies: Classical Composers and Musical Life in Poland 1918-1956 by Cindy Bylander (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
• Flowers Through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland by Juliane Fürst (Oxford University Press, 2021)
• Formalists against Imperialism: The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar and Russian Orientalism by Anna Aydinyan (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
• Haunted Dreams: Fantasies of Adolescence in Post-Soviet Culture by Jenny Kaminer (Cornell University Press, 2022)
• How the Soviet Jew Was Made by Sasha Senderovich (Harvard University Press, 2022)
• Literature and Film from East Europe’s Forgotten "Second World." Essays of Invitation by Gordana P. Crnkovic (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021)
• Mimetic Lives: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Character in the Novel by Chloë Kitzinger (Northwestern University Press, 2021)
• Nabokov in Motion: Modernity and Movement by Yuri Leving (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
• Nabokov Noir: Cinematic Culture and the Art of Exile by Luke Parker (Cornell University Press, 2022)
• Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia by Jose Alaniz (The Ohio State University Press, 2022)
• Russia's Theatrical Past: Court Entertainment in the Seventeenth Century by Claudia R. Jensen, Ingrid Maier, Stepan Shamin and Daniel C. Waugh (Indiana University Press, 2021)
• The Family Novel in Russia and England, 1800-1880 by Anna A. Berman (Oxford University Press, 2022)
• The Letters and the Law: Legal and Literary Culture in Late Imperial Russia by Anna Schur (Northwestern University Press, 2022)
• “The Nose”: A Stylistic and Critical Companion to Nikolai Gogol’s Story by Ksana Blank (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• The Origins of Nostalgia Memories and Reflections by Svetlana Boym. Edited by Ron Roberts (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
• The Origins of Russian Literary Theory: Folklore, Philology, Form by Jessica Merrill (Northwestern University Press, 2022)
• The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes (Henry Holt and Company, 2022)
• Ukrainian Nationalism in the Age of Extremes: An Intellectual Biography of Dmytro Dontsov by Trevor Erlacher (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• World Literature and Cinema by Delia Ungureanu (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
• Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic by Katherine Bowers (University of Toronto Press, 2022)

  Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume:

• Companion to Victor Pelevin. Edited by Sofya Khagi (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
• Cultures of Mobility and Alterity: Crossing the Balkans and Beyond. Edited by Yana Hashamova, Oana Popescu-Sandu, and Sunnie Rucker-Chang (Liverpool University Press, 2022)
• Dostoevsky at 200: The Novel in Modernity. Edited by Katherine Bowers and Kate Holland (University of Toronto Press, 2021)
• Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste in Russia and the Soviet Union. Edited by Jillian Porter, Maya Vinokour (Palgrave Macmillan 2022)
• Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Literary Biographies in The Lives of Remarkable People Series in Russia: Biography for the Masses. Edited by Ludmilla A. Trigos and Carol Ueland (Lexington Books, 2022)
• Remapping Cold War Media: Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations. Edited by Alice Lovejoy and Mari Pajala (Indiana University Press, 2022)
• Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies. Edited by Alan Barenberg and Emily D. Johnson (Indiana University Press, 2022)
• Revolutionary Aftereffects: Material, Social, and Cultural Legacies of 1917 in Russia Today. Edited by Megan Swift (University of Toronto, 2022)
• Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition: Genres, Technologies, Identities. Edited by Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, and Rimgaila Salys (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Socrates in Russia. Edited by Alyssa DeBlasio and Victoria Juharyan (Brill, 2022)
• The Akunin Project: The Mysteries and Histories of Russia's Bestselling Author. Edited by Elena V. Baraban and Stephen M. Norris (University of Toronto Press, 2021)
• The Art of Translation in Light of Bakhtin’s Re-accentuation. Edited by Slav Gratchev and Margarita Marinova (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
• The Pedagogy of Images: Depicting Communism for Children. Edited by Marina Balina and Serguei A. Oushakine (University of Toronto Press, 2021)

  Best Literary / Scholarly Translation into English:

• Countries That Don’t Exist: Selected Nonfiction by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor (Columbia University Press, 2022)
• Fathers and Children by Ivan Turgenev. Translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater and Maya Slater (New York Review Books, 2022)
• For the Shrew by Anna Glazova. Translated by Alex Niemi (Zephyr Press, 2022)
• In a Bucolic Land by Szilárd Borbély. Translated by Ottilie Mulzet (New York Review Books, 2021)
• In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas by Stanislav Aseyev. Translated by Lidia Wolanskyj (Harvard University Press, 2022)
• Kilometer 101 by Maxim Osipov. Edited by Boris Dralyuk. Translated by Boris Dralyuk, Nicolas Pasternak Slater, and Alex Fleming (New York Review Books, 2022)
• Kin by Miljenko Jergović. Translated by Russell Scott Valentino (Archipelago books, 2021)
• Living Pictures by Polina Barskova. Translated by Catherine Ciepiela. Introduction by Eugene Ostashevsky (New York Review Books, 2022)
• Memories of Starobielsk by Józef Czapski. Translated by Alissa Valles. Introduction by Irena Grudzińska Gross (New York Review Books, 2022)
• Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love by Volodymyr Rafeyenko. Translated by Mark Andryczyk (Harvard University Press, 2022)
• Other Worlds by Teffi. Edited by Robert Chandler. Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and others (New York Review Books, 2021)
• Peter the Great's African by Alexander Pushkin. Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and Boris Dralyuk. Edited and with an afterword by Robert Chandler (New York Review Books, 2022)
• Russian Modernism in the Memories of the Survivors: The Duvakin Interviews, 1967–1974 edited by Slav N. Gratchev, Margarita Marinova, and Irina Evdokimova, and translated by Slav N. Gratchev and Margarita Marinova (University of Toronto Press, 2021)
• Telluria by Vladimir Sorokin. Translated by Max Lawton (New York Review Books, 2022)
• The Voices of Babyn Yar by Marianna Kiyanovska. Introduction by Polina Barskova. Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky (Harvard University Press, 2022)
• Tideline by Krystyna Dąbrowska. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Mira Rosenthal, Karen Kovacik (Zephyr Press, 2022)
• Tolstoy as Philosopher. Essential Short Writings: An Anthology. Edited and translated by Inessa Medzhibovskaya (Academic Studies Press, 2022)

  Linguistics And Language Pedagogy:

• Approaches to Teaching Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Edited by Michael R. Katz and Alexander Burry (MLA, 2022)
• Pro-dvizhenie: Advanced Russian through Film and Media by Alyssa DeBlasio and Izolda Savenkova (Georgetown University Press, 2022)
• Russian: From Novice High to Intermediate by Anna Kudyma (Routledge, 2022)
• Task-Based Instruction for Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language. Edited By Svetlana V. Nuss, Wendy Whitehead Martelle (Routledge, 2022)
• The Art of Teaching Russian. Edited by Evgeny Dengub, Irina Dubinina and Jason Merrill (Georgetown University Press, 2020)

Eligibility requirements and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes:

AATSEEL awards prizes to outstanding publications in English in the fields of 1) literary and/or cultural scholarship, 2) the best first book, 3) Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume, 4) translations into English, and 5) language pedagogy and linguistics. 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, the best first book and translation, works nominated must have been published in English 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 January or February.
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 contact 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.

The Best First Book Award:

This prize is established in recognition of the best first scholarly monograph published in the field of literary or cultural scholarship that demonstrates original and ground-breaking work by an emerging scholar.

Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume:

Nominated works should be edited, multi-author, scholarly volumes treating topics in any field of literary or cultural studies. As with the “Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarly” category, this will normally 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. The prize will be awarded on the basis of criteria including (but not limited to): originality, coherence as unified project, importance to the discipline, and quality of research and writing.

ADDITIONAL CRITERIA for COLLECTIONS:

1.Framing: does the editor(s) provide a cogent conceptual framing for the volume that highlights its original contribution to the field and connects the individual chapters;

2.Framework: are the contributions arranged in sections that reflect the conceptual framing offered in the introduction and in an order that makes sense (i.e., that connects the individual contributions to one another and to the conceptualization of the volume as a whole);

3.Individual contributions: are the individual chapters of consistently high quality in terms of (a) the relevance and originality of the argument; (b) the rigor and comprehensiveness of the research; and (c) the clarity and effectiveness of the writing/exposition.

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.

Conflict of interest statement:

The following disqualify a book from consideration: 1. If a juror has written the book. 2. If a juror has written an introduction, afterword, or any other part of the book. (The only exception to this is a blurb: this is not a significant enough contribution to disqualify a book.) 3. If a juror contributed substantially to a book, albeit in an uncredited role. For example, if a juror has worked closely with the author on that book (advised the dissertation on which it is based or edited the final product). 4. If a juror is married to the author of a book or romantically involved with the author.

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. 2025):

Frederick H. White
Integrated Studies MS 145A
Utah Valley University
800 W. University Parkway
Orem, Utah 84058-6703
(801) 706-1525
Email: frederick.white@uvu.edu

Jury for the 2022 AATSEEL book prizes

Linguistics and Language pedagogy jury:

• Jane F. Hacking, University of Utah (term ends Dec. 2024)
• Victoria Hasko, University of Georgia (term ends Dec. 2024), Coordinator
• Alla Nedashkivska, University of Alberta (term ends Dec. 2024)
• Melissa Miller, Colby College (term ends Dec. 2025)

Literary/cultural studies jury:

• Colleen Lucey, University of Arizona (term end Dec. 2025)
• Eliot Borenstein, New York University (term ends Dec. 2024)
• Maria Khotimsky, MIT (term ends Dec. 2023), Coordinator

Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume jury:

• Amelia Glaser, University of California, San Diego (term ends Dec. 2025)
• Brian Baer, Kent State University (term ends Dec. 2023), Coordinator
• Joseph Peschio, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (term ends Dec. 2025)

Translation jury:

• Anastasiya Osipova, University of Colorado Boulder (term ends Dec. 2024)
• Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore (term ends Dec. 2025)
• Dominick Lawton, Stanford University (term ends Dec. 2024), Coordinator
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