The Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor & Francis Book Prize was established in 2014 and is sponsored by Taylor & Francis Publishers.  It is awarded annually for the best academic book in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies published in the previous calendar year by a Canadian author (citizen or permanent resident).

The book prize jury consists of three members chosen by the CAS executive.  Nominations for the 2023 Book Prize competition are to be postmarked by 15 May 2023.  The prize winner will be announced by e-mail to CAS members and on the CAS/CSP website in autumn 2023. The winner will receive a cash award of $500 CAD and recognition at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Slavists.

Rules of eligibility

Rules of eligibility for the Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor & Francis Book Prize competition are as follows:

• • The copyright date inside the book must list the previous calendar year as the date of publication (the book must have been published in 2022 to be eligible for the 2023 competition).
  • The book must be in the form of a monograph, preferably by a single author, but by no more than two authors.
  • Authors must be citizens or permanent residents of Canada.
  • The work must originally be published in French or English (either in or outside Canada).
  • Works may deal with any aspect of Slavic, East European, or Eurasian Studies (languages, literatures, cinemas, cultures, visual arts, politics, history, etc.).
  • Textbooks in the strict sense of the word do not qualify, but a broad interpretive work of a major period or area qualifies.
  • Translations, bibliographies, reference works, edited volumes, and smaller works such as pamphlets are not eligible.

Nominating Instructions

Nomination for the prize can come from an author, a publisher, or a third party.  There is no limit on the number of entries a publisher or third party may submit.

To notify the Canadian Association of Slavists of your intent to nominate a publication for the book prize, please e-mail Dr. Natalie Cornett at csp-books.rcs-livres@mcgill.ca.  Please copy the message to yourself as well.

Upon verification of the nominated title’s eligibility, Dr. Cornett will provide the nominator with addresses for the book prize jury members.  Nominators must then ensure that one copy of the nominated monograph is then sent to each member of the jury.  Submissions should be clearly labelled “CAS/T&F Book Prize Nomination.”  Nominations must be postmarked by 15 May 2023 to be eligible for the 2023 competition.

It is the responsibility of the author (if self-nominating), the book publisher, or the third-party nominator to send the books to the jury.  Please note that books sent to members of the jury will not normally be returned once the competition is over.  However, special arrangements to return a book may be made between a jury member and nominator after the competition ends.

2023 Jury

Dr. Megan Swift, University of Victoria

Winner of the 2022 Prize

We are pleased to announce that the the 2022 Canadian Association of Slavists / Taylor & Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies has been awarded to Prof. John-Paul Himka for Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944 (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2021).

In its final report, the book prize committee offers the following commendation:  “With Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust John-Paul Himka has written a work of exemplary historical scholarship that provides a critical and determinedly objective view of its highly complex subject.  He provides an exhaustive analysis of primary sources in several languages – among them Soviet archival materials available only since the 1990s, German records, OUN documents (including directives, field reports, and confessions), and testimonies from Jewish survivors, Poles, and Ukrainians – and he takes great care in examining different versions of the same documents to illuminate fabrications and in analyzing quantitative data.  Ever attuned to the complex ethnic and ideological terrain of wartime Ukraine, he compares varying accounts to discern the motivations behind testimonies and what they reveal about a given course of events.  When outlining the actions of Ukrainian nationalists – whether as participants in spontaneous pogroms, as members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or as police in the employ of the occupiers – he distinguishes between actions based on nationalists’ own initiative and actions carried out in service to the Nazis.  He meticulously traces how OUN formations were created, how their operations were determined, what drove them, and how these changed over time, seeking to understand why they did what they did.  In detailing the harrowing experiences of Jews, Himka provides case studies of crimes committed against them, illuminating a topography of violence that leaves no doubt about the part that the OUN played in the Holocaust; these microstudies also humanize the victims.  Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust is impeccably researched and written in clear, measured prose that eschews judgement.”

We are pleased also to announce that Kristy Ironside’s A Full-Value Ruble: The Promise of Prosperity in the Postwar Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021) earned honourable mention.  The committee reports that, “based on archival and published primary sources, A Full-Value Ruble is a smart and intelligible socioeconomic history of the postwar era through the Khrushchev years. Ironside clarifies factors that would have a bearing on the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union.  Moreover, she demonstrates how the state doggedly strove to solve its money problems and explains why it was unable to overcome obstacles of its own making: a preoccupation with egalitarianism, favouritism for (proletarian) urban over the rural (peasant) productivity, and disengagement from the global economy, to name a few.”

List of Past Book Prize Winners

2021: Megan Swift, Picturing the Page: Illustrated Children’s Literature and Reading under Lenin and Stalin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020)

2020: Jeff Sahadeo, Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019)

2019: Zina Gimpelevich, The Portrayal of Jews in Modern Bielarusian Literature (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018)

2018: Lynne Viola, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).

2017: Max Bergholz, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016).

2016: Myroslav Shkandrij, Ukrainian Nationalism: Politics, Ideology, and Literature, 1929-1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).

2015: Alan Barenberg, Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and its Legacy in Vorkuta (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014).