NEW YORK,
NY (SEPTEMBER 13, 2006) – Rebecca J. Scott, Charles
Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History
and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan,
has been selected as the winner of the Frederick Douglass
Book Prize, awarded for the best book on slavery or
abolition. Scott won for her book, Degrees of Freedom:
Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Harvard University
Press). The book examines the path to freedom taken
by two slave societies and their construction of post-emancipation
communities. The prize is awarded by Yale University’s
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance
and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute
of American History.
In addition to Scott, the other two finalists for the
prize were Steven Deyle for Carry Me Back: The Domestic
Slave Trade in American Life (Oxford University
Press); Richard Follett for The Sugar Masters: Planters
and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820-1860
(Louisiana State University Press).
The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history
prize in the field. The prize will be presented to Scott
at a dinner in New York City in February 2007.
This year’s three finalists were selected from
a field of nearly 80 entries by a jury of scholars that
included Mia Bay (Rutgers University), Larry E. Hudson,
Jr. (University of Rochester), and Jane Landers (Vanderbilt
University). The winner was selected by a review committee
of representatives from the Gilder Lehrman Center for
the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, the
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Yale
University.
“Rebecca Scott’s Degrees of Freedom:
Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery is a worthy recipient
of the Frederick Douglass Prize,” said Hudson,
Associate Professor of History at the University of
Rochester. “Its examination of the political obstacles
to black freedom in post-emancipation Cuba and Louisiana
provides an innovative and exciting approach to comparative
history that will influence the study of the black experience
for decades to come.”
The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was established in
1999 to stimulate scholarship in the field of slavery
and abolition by honoring outstanding books. Previous
winners were Ira Berlin and Philip D. Morgan in 1999;
David Eltis, 2000; David Blight, 2001; Robert Harms
and John Stauffer, 2002; James F. Brooks and Seymour
Drescher, 2003; Jean Fagan Yellin, 2004; and Laurent
Dubois, 2005.
The award is named for Frederick Douglass (1818–1895),
the slave who escaped bondage to emerge as one of the
great American abolitionists, reformers, writers, and
orators of the 19th century.
The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery,
Resistance and Abolition, a part of the Yale Center
for International and Area Studies, was launched at
Yale in November 1998 through a generous donation by
philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman and
the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Its
mission is to promote the study of all aspects of slavery,
in particular the chattel slave system, including African
and African-American resistance to enslavement, abolitionist
movements and the ways in which chattel slavery finally
became outlawed.
In addition to encouraging the highest standards of
new scholarship, the GLC is dedicated to the dissemination
of knowledge through publications, conferences, educational
outreach and other activities. For further information
on events and programming, contact the center by phone
(203) 432-3339, fax (203) 432-6943, or e-mail gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu.
# # #
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
19 West 44th Street, Suite 500
New York, NY 10036
www.gilderlehrman.org
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