Association

Ассоциация

Book Prize

The Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor & Francis
Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

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 2024 Book Prize competition are to be postmarked by or on 15 June 2024. The prize winner will be announced by e-mail to CAS members and on the CAS/CSP website in autumn 2024. The winner receives a cash award of $500 CAD and recognition at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Slavists, and a roundtable on the winning book will be published in Canadian Slavonic Papers.

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 2023 to be eligible for the 2024 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, and at the time of nomination they must be members of the Canadian Association of Slavists.
  • 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 may submit. 
  • Send an e-mail message to Dr. Natalie Cornett at csp-books.rcs-livres@mcgill.ca to notify the Canadian Association of Slavists of your intent to nominate a publication for the CAS/Taylor & Francis Book Prize. Include publication information about the book. Please copy this e-mail to yourself, too. 
  • After verifying eligibility, Dr. Cornett will arrange with the press’s representative or the author to send one copy of the eligible book to each member of the book prize jury. 
  • Book nominations should be clearly marked “CAS/T&F Book Prize Nomination” and must be postmarked by 15 June 2024 to be eligible for the 2024 competition. 
  • 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.

Winner of the 2024 Prize

We are pleased to announce that the 2024 Canadian Association of Slavists / Taylor and Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies will be awarded to Dr. Natalie Kononenko’s Ukrainian Ritual on the Prairies. Growing a Ukrainian Canadian Identity (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023). 
 
In its final report, the book prize committee offers the following commendation: “The book has a uniquely Canadian context. It reflects community-engaged research on Ukrainian Canadian ritual life in Alberta and Saskatchewan. While there have been multiple earlier studies of the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada, this volume covers the research environment, researcher’s position, and method, and various aspects of ritual life of the Ukrainian Canadian community. The author spent many hours interviewing people of Ukrainian heritage throughout rural communities in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The book incorporates 250 interviews. Kononenko’s work represents the most thorough investigation of rural Ukrainian Canadians ever undertaken. The book identifies what remains of old-country customs and what has been transformed by Canadianization. Kononenko signals early on that her book is meant to be an antidote to a “normative” Ukrainian (Canadian) experience – the people in her book have a different way of being Ukrainian than the model promoted by the nationalist-dominated Ukrainian diaspora in Canada. The book is also valuable from the perspective of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) and Truth and Reconciliation, as it brings forth the controversy of settlers being placed on indigenous lands. It is written in clear language, is engaging, focused on people, and has abundant illustrations.  It is of interest to multiple audiences including the community itself.”
 
We are also pleased to announce that two books have been granted honourable mentions:
  • Serhiy Bilenky’s Laboratory of Modernity. Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914
  • Eduard Baidaus’ Unsettled Nation. Moldova in the Geopolitics of Russia, Romania, and Ukraine.
The committee writes: “Serhiy Bilenky’s Laboratory of Modernity. Ukraine between Empire and Nation, 1772–1914 (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2023) is well, often wittily written. It is a work of synthesis rather than an archive-driven monograph. The committee was impressed by the breadth of the author’s reading, and no important study appears to have been neglected. One member remarked that they gained new insights from the book’s deep engagement with the make-up of Ukrainian society and of the society of Ukraine as a whole. The section on readership was particularly outstanding. The work’s objectivity was appreciated. Too many works in Ukrainian studies have their nationalist blinders on; this one doesn’t. It keeps a critical distance from concepts and events. The book is easy to follow: it is organized in chronological order, includes a timeline, and provides an extensive bibliography. The guiding concepts are very clearly outlined: Ukraine between “national-imperial complex” and modernity.
 
Eduard Baidaus’ Unsettled Nation. Moldova in the Geopolitics of Russia, Romania, and Ukraine (Ibidem Press, 2023) is a thorough analysis of identity issues in Moldova. Moldova has appeared in the news more often since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. If one wants to learn about the situation in that country this book is the best place to start. The book addresses many topics as part of the author’s deep analysis of post-Soviet Moldova. The work is unprecedented, as there has been no earlier research output on Moldova comparable in breadth and detail. It is an encyclopedia of the early and modern history of Moldova, which chronicles the awakening and growing nationhood. It allows the reader to reconsider colonialism and anti-colonialism under different circumstances. The book has an international and national significance as the bilingualism issues are compared with those in Canada. The book does not shy away from the issue of Transnistrian republic, a resonant contemporary problem. On the contrary, breakaway Transnistria’s origins and related issues are thoroughly explained. The volume is impressive in its size and scope, drawing on multiple sources, such as archives, earlier literature, and interviews. It shows how Moldova, stuck between Russia and Ukraine’s power struggles on the one hand and historic and linguistic connections with Romania on the other, has been trying to find its own way. The book is of high interest to scholars and students of Moldova, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Russia, as well as colonialism, postcolonialism, and a rise of nation-states and national identities.”
 
Special thanks to the book prize committee members (Drs. Ann Komaromi, John-Paul Himka, and Veronika Makarova) for their hard work and, of course, congratulations to Drs. Natalie Kononenko, Serhiy Bilenky, and Eduard Baidaus!

List of Past Book Prize Winners

2023: Ann Komaromi, Soviet Samizdat: Imagining a New Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022).

2022: John-Paul Himka, Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust: OUN and UPA’s Participation in the Destruction of Ukrainian Jewry, 1941-1944 (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2021)

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).N