Shortlisted books for the 2022 AATSEEL book prizes

Best First Book Award:

Nominees for the 2022 AATSEEL book prizes

Best First Book Award:

• All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature by José Vergara (Northern Illinois University Press, 2021)
• Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Culture by Edward Tyerman (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Joseph Brodsky and Collaborative Self-Translation by Natasha Rulyova (Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Love for Sale: Representing Prostitution in Imperial Russia by Colleen Lucey (Northern Illinois University Press, 2021)
• Medical Storyworlds: Health, Illness, and Bodies in Russian and European Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Elena Fratto (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity by Yuliya Ilchuk (University of Toronto Press, 2021)
• On Russian Soil: Myth and Materiality by Mieka Erley (Northern Illinois University Press, 2021)
• Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture by Molly Thomasy Blasing (Cornell University Press, 2021)

  Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies:

• All Future Plunges to the Past: James Joyce in Russian Literature by José Vergara (Northern Illinois University Press, 2021)
• Art Work by Katja Praznik (Toronto University Press, 2021)
• Breaking Free from Death: The Art of Being a Successful Russian Writer, by Galina Rylkova (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
• Chekhov’s Children: Context and Text in Late Imperial Russia, by Nadya L. Peterson (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021)
• Contested Russian Tourism: Cosmopolitanism, Nation, and Empire in the Nineteenth Century, by Susan Layton (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Eurasia without Borders: The Dream of a Leftist Literary Commons, 1919–1943, by Katerina Clark (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• Feeling Revolution by Anna Toropova (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• The Ghost of Shakespeare: Collected Essays, by Anna Frajlich and edited by Ronald Meyer (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
• Ideas Against Ideocracy: Non-Marxist Thought of the Late Soviet Period (1953-1991) by Mikhail Epstein (Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Internationalist Aesthetics: China and Early Soviet Cultureby Edward Tyerman (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Joseph Brodsky and Collaborative Self-Translation by Natasha Rulyova (Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Love for Sale: Representing Prostitution in Imperial Russia by Colleen Lucey (Cornell University Press, 2021)
• Mandelstam's Worlds by Andrew Kahn (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• Medical Storyworlds: Health, Illness, and Bodies in Russian and European Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Elena Fratto (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Men Out of Focus by Marko Dumancic (Toronto University Press, 2021)
• Nikolai Gogol: Performing Hybrid Identity by Yuliya Ilchuk (University of Toronto Press, 2021)
• “The Nose”: A Stylistic and Critical Companion to Nikolai Gogol’s Story, by Ksana Blank (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• On Russian Soil: Myth and Materiality by Mieka Erley (Cornell University Press, 2021)
• Prague: Belonging in the Modern City, by Chad Bryant (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• Russomania by Rebecca Beasley (Oxford University Press, 2020)
• She Animates: Soviet Female Subjectivity in Russian Animation, by Michele Leigh and Lora Mjolsness (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
• Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture by Molly Thomasy Blasing (Cornell University Press, 2021)
• Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine, by Amelia M. Glaser (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry: Performance and Recording after World War II, by Aleksandra Kremer (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• Survival as Victory: Ukrainian Women in the Gulag, by Oksana Kis (Harvard University Press, 2021)
• Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History, by Yuri Kostenko (Harvard University Press, 2021)

  Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume:

• The Akunin Project. Ed. by Elena Baraban and Stephen Norris (Toronto University Press, 2021)
• Cinemasaurus: Russian Film in Contemporary Context, edited by Nancy Condee, Alexander Prokhorov, and Elena Prokhorova (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
• Dostoevsky at 200. Ed. by Katherine Bowers and Kate Holland (Toronto University Press, 2021)
• Goncharov in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Ingrid Kleespies and Lyudmila Parts (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Lolita in the Afterlife: On Beauty, Risk, and Reckoning with the Most Indelible and Shocking Novel of the Twentieth Century, Ed. by Jenny Minton Quigley (Vintage, 2021)
• The Palgrave Handbook of Russian Thought. Edited by Marina Bykova, Michael Forster and Lina Steiner (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
• The Rhetorical Rise and Demise of “Democracy” in Russian Political Discourse, Volume 1: The Path from Disaster toward Russian “Democracy”, by David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Russian TV Series in the Era of Transition: Genres, Technologies, Identities, edited by Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, and Rimgaila Salys (Academic Studies Press, 2021)
• Theory in the “Post” Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons. Ed. by Alexandru Matei, Christian Moraru, and Andrei Terian (Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Three Loves for Three Oranges. Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev. Edited by Dassia N. Posner and Kevin Bartig. With Maria De Simone (Indiana University Press, 2021)

  Best Literary / Scholarly Translation into English:

• Abigail by Magda Szabó. Translated by Len Rix (New York Review Books, 2020)
• Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights. Edited and translated by Tatiana Klepikova (Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Countries That Don’t Exist: Selected Nonfiction by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Edited by Jacob Emery and Alexander Spektor (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony by Abraham Sutzkever. Translated by Justin Cammy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021)
• Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories by Tadeusz Borowski. Translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine (Yale University Press, 2021)
• Kin by Miljenko Jergović. Translated from the Croatian by Russell Scott Valentino (Archipelago Books, 2021).
• Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk: Selected Stories of Nikolai Leskov by Nikolai Leskov. Translated from the Russian by Donald Rayfield, Robert Chandler, William Edgerton. (New York Review Books, 2020)
• Other Worlds: Peasants, Pilgrims, Spirits, Saints by N. Teffi. Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, and others (New York Review Books, 2021)
• “Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul”: Mykola (Nik) Bazhan’s Early Experimental Poetry. Edited by Oksana Rosenblum, Lev Fridman, and Anzhelika Khyzhnya (Academic Studies Press, 2020)
• Sketches of the Criminal World by Varlam Shalamov. Translated from Russian by Donald Rayfield (New York Review Books, 2020)
• The Symphonies by Andrei Bely, translated by Jonathan Stone (Columbia University Press, 2021)
• Temptation by János Székely translated from Hungarian by Mark Baczoni (New York Review Books, 2020)
• Unwitting Street by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky. Translated from Russian by Joanne Turnbull (New York Review Books, 2020)
• The Voice over: Poems and Essays by Maria Stepanova, edited by Irina Shevelenko (Columbia University Press, 2021)

  Linguistics And Language Pedagogy:

• Corpus Approaches to Language, Thought and Communication by Wei-lun Lu, Naděžda Kudrnáčová, Laura A. Janda (John Benjamins, 2021)
• Decoding the 1920s: A Reader for Advanced Learners of Russian by Nila Friedberg (Portland State University Library, 2021)
• Etazhi: Second Year Russian Language and Culture by Evgeny Dengub and Susanna Nazarova (Georgetown University Press, 2021)
• Faces of Contemporary Russia: Advanced Russian Language and Culture by Olga M. Mesropova (Georgetown University Press, 2019)
• Kinotalk by Olga Mesropova (Routledge, 2020)
• Language Contact in the Territory of the Former Soviet Union. Editors Diana Forker, Lenore A. Grenoble (John Benjamins, 2021)
• Linguistics: Microvariation in the South Slavic Noun Phrase by Steven Franks (Slavica, 2021)
• Russian: From Novice High to Intermediate by Anna S. Kudyma (Routledge, 2021)
• Russian in Plain English. A Very Basic Russian Starter for Complete Beginners by Natalia V. Parker (Routledge, 2020)
• Russian through Art For Intermediate to Advanced Students by Anna Kudyma and Olga Kagan (Routledge, 2019)
• Teaching Lolita in the Time of #MeToo. Ed. by Elena Rakhimova-Summers (Lexington Books, 2021)
• Transformative Language Learning and Teaching by Betty Lou Leaver, Dan Davidson, and Christine Campbell (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

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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