Wesley-Logan Prize
The 2019 submission deadline has passed. Awardees will be announced this fall.
The Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history is jointly sponsored by the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Life & History. The prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book in African diaspora history. The AHA Committee on Minority Historians established the prize in 1992 in memory of two early pioneers in the field, Charles H. Wesley and Rayford W. Logan. See the list of past recipients.
The general rules for submission are:
- The prize is offered for a book on some aspect of the history of the dispersion, settlement and adjustment, and/or return of peoples originally from Africa. Eligible for consideration are books in any chronological period and any geographical location. Only books of high scholarly and literary merit will be considered.
- Books with a copyright of 2019 are eligible for the 2020 award.
- Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Publishers may submit as many entries as they wish. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Wesley-Logan Prize Entry.” Print copies preferred unless otherwise indicated. If only e-copy is available, please contact review committee members beforehand to arrange submission format.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2020, to be eligible for the 2020 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2020 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2021 AHA annual meeting in Seattle.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
The review committee contact information and prize submission form will be posted by March 1 for submissions due May 15.
2019 Wesley-Logan Prize
Yuko Miki, Fordham Univ.
Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil (Cambridge Univ. Press)
This brilliant, original, and deeply archival book shows how “the exclusion and inequality of indigenous and African-descended people became embedded in the very construction of an inclusive nationhood and citizenship” in postcolonial Brazil. A work of African diaspora, comparative indigenous, and borderland studies, it illuminates the origins of “racial democracy” and proffers a cutting-edge, transnational framework for appreciating race, citizenship, national identity, slavery, abolition, popular culture, and the meaning of freedom in postcolonial Latin America.