2008 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize
The AAASS Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) and the Stanford University Center for Russian and East European Studies, is awarded annually for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences published English in the United States in the previous calendar year.
The 2008 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize was presented to Adeeb Khalid for Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia published by the University of California Press.
The prize committee also decided to recognize two honorable mentions:
- Chad Bryant received an honorable mention for Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism published by Harvard University Press
- John Randolph received an honorable mention for A House in the Garden: The Bakunin Family and the Romance of Russian Idealism, published by Cornell University Press. (A House in the Garden was also the winner of the 2008 W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize.)
(Please click on the name of the winner to see the citation for the award, to connect to the publisher's web page with more information about the book, please click on the title)
Prague in Black: Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism, by Chad Bryant
This excellent book takes a world of Czech lands prior to Nazi occupation, where “apolitical politics” and the liberties of what some called “public nationality” and “amphibious” social identifications once reigned, and explores how the arrival of German forces in World War II augured profoundly for how nationality was assigned, lived, determined, and so deeply transformed. Prague in Black is a beautifully written page-turner that reflects the state of the art in nationalist cultural histories.
