Martin A. Klein Prize Recipients
First awarded at the 2011 annual meeting, the Martin A. Klein Prize recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on African history published in English during the previous year. Focusing primarily on continental Africa (including those islands usually treated as countries of Africa), books on any period of African history and from any disciplinary field that incorporates a historical perspective are eligible. The prize committee pays particular attention to methodological innovation, conceptual originality, literary excellence, and reinterpretation of old themes or development of new theoretical perspectives.
2016 Klein Prize
Nancy Rose Hunt, Univ. of Florida and Univ. of Michigan
A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo (Duke Univ. Press)
A Nervous State is an innovative, multidimensional history of Equateur during the first half of the 20th century. With an eye for pattern and detail, Hunt leads her reader through the worries that gnawed at people and state in this varied region. The book strolls through therapeutic insurgency, the carceral state, women’s health, medical practices, urban culture, and colonial flânerie—depicting in vivid terms a place troubled, engaged, and very much on the move.