AATSEEL Annual Awards

Submit a recommendation for:

AATSEEL Prize for Teaching and Service or AATSEEL Book Award

The AATSEEL Publications Committee is responsible for overseeing the appointment of editors for the AATSEEL Newsletter and Slavic and East European Journal, and also for the award of prizes for publications in the various disciplines participating in AATSEEL. For information on our activities, please follow the appropriate link below:

    Nominees for the 2024 AATSEEL book prizes

    Best First Book Award:

  • After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russian’s Far North by Tyler C. Kirk (Indiana UP, 2023)
  • Brodsky in English by Zakhar Ishov (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
  • Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac by Julia Titus (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
  • Formalists against Imperialism by Anna Aydinyan (University of Toronto, 2022)
  • Nabokov Noir by Luke Parker (Cornell UP, 2022)
  • Nijinsky’s Feeling Mind by Nicole Svobodny (Lexington Books, 2023)
  • Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre by Anastasia Gordienko (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
  • The Nonconformists: American and Czech Writers across the Iron Curtain by Brian K. Goodman (Harvard UP, 2023)
  • Writing Fear by Katherine Bowers (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
  • Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and Identity Formation, 1921–1938 by Cassio de Oliveira (McGill-Queens, 2023)

    Best Book in Literary/Cultural Studies:

  • A Woman’s Empire by Katya Hokanson (University of Toronto Press, 2023)
  • After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russian’s Far North by Tyler C. Kirk (Indiana UP, 2023)
  • Aleksandr Rodchenko: Photography in the Time of Stalin by Agalya Glebova (Yale UP, 2022)
  • An Indwelling Voice by Stuart Goldberg (University of Toronto Press, 2023)
  • Avant-Garde Post–: Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union by Marijeta Bozovic (Harvard UP, 2023)
  • Beethoven in Russia: Music and Politics by Frederick W. Skinner (Indiana UP, 2022)
  • Brodsky in English by Zakhar Ishov (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
  • Chekhov’s Sakhalin Journey: Doctor, Humanitarian, Writer by Jonathan Cole (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
  • Cold War Radio: The Russian Broadcasts of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty by Mark G. Pomar (Potomac Books, 2022)
  • Dostoevsky as a Translator of Balzac by Julia Titus (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
  • Dostoevsky's Provocateurs by Lynn Ellen Patyk (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
  • Essays on Anton P. Chekhov: Close Readings by Robert Louis Jackson. Edited by Cathy Popkin (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Formalists against Imperialism by Anna Aydinyan (University of Toronto, 2022)
  • George Orwell and Russia by Masha Karp (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
  • How Russian Literature Became Great by Rolf Hellebust (Cornell UP, 2023)
  • Illiberal Vanguard: Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia by Alexandar Mihailovic (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
  • In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos by Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko (MIT University Press, 2023)
  • Nabokov Noir by Luke Parker (Cornell UP, 2022)
  • Nijinsky’s Feeling Mind by Nicole Svobodny (Lexington Books, 2023)
  • Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre by Anastasia Gordienko (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
  • Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the Nineteenth Century by Gabriella Safran (Cornell UP, 2022)
  • Reinventing Tradition: Russian-Jewish Literature between Soviet Underground and Post-Soviet Deconstruction by Klavdia Smola (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism by Julie A. Cassiday (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
  • Sex Work in Contemporary Russia: A Cultural Perspective by Emily Schuckman Matthews (Lexington Books, 2023)
  • Soviet Samizdat by Ann Komaromi (Cornell UP, 2022)
  • Staging Existence: Chekhov’s Tetralogy by Svetlana Evdokimova (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023)
  • Tamizdat by Yasha Klots (Cornell UP, 2023)
  • The Czech Manuscripts by David L. Cooper (Cornell UP, 2023)
  • The History of Russian Literature on Film by Marina Korneeva and David Gillespie (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023)
  • The Nonconformists: American and Czech Writers across the Iron Curtain by Brian K. Goodman (Harvard UP, 2023)
  • The Russian Kurosawa by Olga V. Solovieva (Oxford UP, 2023)
  • World Cinema by Masha Salazkina (University of California Press, 2023)
  • Writing Fear: Russian Realism and the Gothic by Katherine Bowers (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
  • Writing Rogues: The Soviet Picaresque and Identity Formation, 1921–1938 by Cassio de Oliveira (McGill-Queens, 2023)

    Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume:

  • Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste in Russia and the Soviet Union. Edited by Jillian Porter and Maya Vinokour (Palgrave Macmillan 2022)
  • Film Adaptations of Russian Classics: Dialogism and Authorship. Edited by Alexandra Smith, Olga Sobolev (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
  • New Developments in the Theory of the Historical Process: Polish Contributions to Non-Marxian Historical Materialism. Edited by Krzysztof Brzechczyn (Brill, 2022)
  • Picturing Russian Empire. Edited by Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, and Joan Neuberger (Oxford UP, 2023)
  • Polish Jewish Culture Beyond the Capital: Centering the Periphery. Edited by Halina Goldberg and Natalia Sinkoff (Rutgers UP, 2023)
  • Queer(ing) Russian Art: Realism, Revolution, Performance. Edited by Brian James Baer and Yevgeniy Fiks (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Recalling Masaryk’s The Czech Question: Humanity and Politics on the Threshold of the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Jan Svoboda and Aleš Prázný (Brill, 2023)
  • Remapping Cold War Media: Institutions, Infrastructures, Translations. Edited by Alice Lovejoy and Mari Pajala (Indiana University Press, 2022)
  • Revolutionary Aftereffects. Edited Megan Swift (University of Toronto Press, 2022)
  • Russian Cognitive Neuroscience: Historical and Cultural Context. Edited by Chris Forsythe (Brill, 2022)
  • "Singing a Different Tune": The Slavic Film Musical in a Transnational Context. Edited by Helena Goscilo (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Varieties of Russian Activism: State-Society Contestation in Everyday Life. Edited by Jeremy Morris, Andrei Semenov and Regina Smyth (Indiana University Press, 2023)
  • World Literature in the Soviet Union. Edited by Galin Tihanov, Anne Lounsbery, and Rossen Djagalov. (Academic Studies Press, 2023)

    Best Literary / Scholarly Translation into English:

  • A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails by Halyna Kruk, translated by Amelia M. Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk (Arrowsmith Press, 2023)
  • A Violin from the Other Riverside by Dmytro Kremin, translated by Svetlana Lavochkina (Lost Horse Press, 2023)
  • Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond, translated by John Hennessy, edited and translated by Ostap Kin (Harvard UP, 2023)
  • Details of an Hourglass: Poems from the GULAG by Mykola Horbal, translated by Myrosia Stefaniuk (Lost Horse Press, 2023)
  • Dovlatov and Surroundings: A Philological Novel by Alexander Genis, translated by Alexander Rojavin (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Dream Bridge: Selected Poems by Oleh Lysheha, translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps (Lost Horse Press, 2022)
  • Distant Transit by Maja Haderlap, translated by Tess Lewis (Archipelago Books, 2022)
  • Everything Indicates: Selected Poems by Petr Hruška, by Jonathan Bolton (Blue Diode Press, 2023)
  • Firebird by Zuzanna Ginczanka, translated with an introduction by Alissa Valles (NYRB, 2023)
  • Man and His Surroundings by Fazil Iskander, translated by Alexander Rojavin (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Nabokov in Motion by Yuri Leving, translated by Keith Blasing (Bloomsbury, 2022)
  • Nobody Knows Us Here and We Don’t Know Anyone by Kateryna Kalytko, translated from the Ukrainian by Olena Jennings and Oksana Lutsyshyna (Lost Horse Press, 2022)
  • The Brothers Karamazov: A New Translation by Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Michael R. Katz (Liveright, 2023)
  • The Fawn by Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix (NYRB, 2023)
  • The Crooked Mirror: Plays from a Modernist Russian Cabaret, edited and translated by Laurence Senelick (Northwestern University Press, 2023)
  • The Politics of Hope (After the War): Selected and New Poems by Dubravka Djurić, translated by Biljana D. Obradović (Roof Books, 2023)
  • The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustovsky, translated by Douglas Smith (NYRB, 2022)
  • The Torture Camp on Paradise Street by Stanislav Aseyev, translated by Zenia Tompkins and Nina Murray (Harvard UP, 2023)
  • To the Stars & Other Stories by Fyodor Sologub, translated by Susanne Fusso (Columbia University Press, 2022)
  • Tolstoy as Philosopher. Essential Short Writings: An Anthology by Leo Tolstoy, edited and translated by Inessa Medzhibovskaya (Academic Studies Press, 2022)
  • Winter King by Ostap Slyvynsky, translated by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova (Lost Horse Press, 2023)

    Best Book in Linguistics And Language Pedagogy:

  • Reimagining Nabokov: Pedagogies for the 21st Century. Edited by Sara Karpukhin and Jose Vergara (Amherst Press, 2023)
  • Russian Syntax for Advanced Students by Marina Rojavin (Routledge, 2022)
  • Russian through Film: For Intermediate to Advanced Students by Anna Kudyma, Irina Six, Irina Walsh (Routledge, 2023)
  • Student-Centered Approaches to Russian Language Teaching: Insights, Strategies and Adaptations. Edited by Svetlana V. Nuss and Cynthia L. Martin (Routledge, 2023)
  • Trauma and Truth: Teaching Russian Literature on the Chechen Wars by Elena Pedigo Clark (Academic Studies Press, 2023)
  • Water, Whiskey, and Vodka by Danko Sipka (Georgetown UP, 2023)

    Eligibility requirements and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes:

    AATSEEL awards prizes to outstanding publications in English in the fields of 1) literary and/or cultural scholarship, 2) the best first book, 3) Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume, 4) translations into English, and 5) language pedagogy and linguistics. For more on the specific eligibility requirements of the individual prizes, and for recent recipients of the prizes, see below. General eligibility requirements and nomination procedures pertinent to all the prizes include:
    1. In order to be eligible for consideration for an AATSEEL Book Award, the author (not the nominator) must be a member of AATSEEL. In the case of books written by more than one author, at least one one of the authors must be a member of AATSEEL. Books by individuals who are not members of AATSEEL (or books written by teams of authors none of whom is a member of AATSEEL) cannot be considered for an AATSEEL book award.
    2. Nominated works must be devoted to the languages and the literary/cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
    3. For the prizes in linguistics, literary/cultural scholarship, the best first book and translation, works nominated must have been published in English within the two preceding calendar years. For the prize in language pedagogy, works nominated must have been published within the three preceding calendar years.
    4. The nomination process will normally end on 1 May. Prizes will be announced at the annual meeting of AATSEEL in January or February.
    5. Both members of AATSEEL and non-members may make nominations for the prizes.
    6. In order to make a nomination for one of the prizes, one need only send an e-mail message to the chair of the publications committee (see "contact information" below). The chair will then contact the press. Presses wishing to nominate books should contact the chair, who will (shortly after May 1) supply a list of the relevant jurors and their addresses. Presses are then asked to send a copy of the book directly to each of the jurors.

    Specific eligibility guidelines for each prize:

    Best Contribution to Pedagogy:

    The prize in pedagogy recognizes contributions in either of the two categories: a) pedagogical resources; and b) research contributions to theory and practice of language learning and teaching, as well as scholarship of teaching literature and culture. The former category includes textbooks, computer software, testing materials, and other instructional or learning tools. Nominated works in the second and third categories could be single or multi-author books. At the committee's discretion, the prize may in some years be granted not to a single publication, but to the aggregate works of one individual whose publications as a whole have made an outstanding contribution to the field of language pedagogy.

    Best Contribution to the Study of Slavic Linguistics or Second Language Acquisition:

    Nominated works should be scholarly monographs (including grammars and dictionaries) or edited volumes that treat topics in any field of linguistic inquiry, including second language acquisition. Typically, translated works are not eligible.

    Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarship:

    Nominated works should be scholarly books which treat topics in any field of literary or cultural studies. Normally, this will exclude works of historical scholarship, unless these are devoted to the history of literary or cultural institutions or to interdisciplinary topics uniting history and cultural life.

    The Best First Book Award:

    This prize is established in recognition of the best first scholarly monograph published in the field of literary or cultural scholarship that demonstrates original and ground-breaking work by an emerging scholar.

    Best Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume:

    Nominated works should be edited, multi-author, scholarly volumes treating topics in any field of literary or cultural studies. As with the “Best Book in Literary/Cultural Scholarly” category, this will normally exclude works of historical scholarship, unless these are devoted to the history of literary or cultural institutions or to interdisciplinary topics uniting history and cultural life. The prize will be awarded on the basis of criteria including (but not limited to): originality, coherence as unified project, importance to the discipline, and quality of research and writing.

    ADDITIONAL CRITERIA for COLLECTIONS:

    1.Framing: does the editor(s) provide a cogent conceptual framing for the volume that highlights its original contribution to the field and connects the individual chapters;

    2.Framework: are the contributions arranged in sections that reflect the conceptual framing offered in the introduction and in an order that makes sense (i.e., that connects the individual contributions to one another and to the conceptualization of the volume as a whole);

    3.Individual contributions: are the individual chapters of consistently high quality in terms of (a) the relevance and originality of the argument; (b) the rigor and comprehensiveness of the research; and (c) the clarity and effectiveness of the writing/exposition.

    Best Translation into English:

    Nominees for this prize should be book-length translations of a literary work, an epiliterary genre (letters, memoirs, essays, etc.), or a scholarly work. At the discretion of the jury, two prizes may be awarded, one for a literary or epiliterary work, the other for a translation of a strictly scholarly character.

      Conflict of interest statement:

      The following disqualify a book from consideration: 1. If a juror has written the book. 2. If a juror has written an introduction, afterword, or any other part of the book. (The only exception to this is a blurb: this is not a significant enough contribution to disqualify a book.) 3. If a juror contributed substantially to a book, albeit in an uncredited role. For example, if a juror has worked closely with the author on that book (advised the dissertation on which it is based or edited the final product). 4. If a juror is married to the author of a book or romantically involved with the author.

        Publications Committee membership and contact information

        The AATSEEL Publications Committee consists of fifteen members who serve staggered three-year terms, each of whom is assigned to one of four book-prize juries corresponding to his or her disciplinary affiliation and qualifications.

        All correspondence for the committee should be addressed to the current chair (term ends Dec. 2025):

        Frederick H. White
        Integrated Studies MS 145A
        Utah Valley University
        800 W. University Parkway
        Orem, Utah 84058-6703
        (801) 706-1525
        Email: frederick.white@uvu.edu

        Jury for the 2024 AATSEEL book prizes

        Linguistics and Language Pedagogy jury:

        • Jane F. Hacking, University of Utah (term ends Dec. 2024)
        • Victoria Hasko, University of Georgia (term ends Dec. 2024), Coordinator
        • Alla Nedashkivska, University of Alberta (term ends Dec. 2024)
        • Melissa Miller, Colby College (term ends Dec. 2025)

        Literary/Cultural Studies and First Book jury:

        • Colleen Lucey, University of Arizona (term end Dec. 2025)
        • Eliot Borenstein, New York University (term ends Dec. 2024), Coordinator
        • Sasha Senderovich, University of Washington (term ends Dec. 2026)

        Edited Multi-Author Scholarly Volume jury:

        • Amelia Glaser, University of California, San Diego (term ends Dec. 2025)
        • Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, Florida State University (term ends Dec. 2026)
        • Joseph Peschio, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (term ends Dec. 2025), Coordinator

        Translation jury:

        • Anastasiya Osipova, University of Colorado Boulder (term ends Dec. 2024)
        • Sibelan Forrester, Swarthmore (term ends Dec. 2025)
        • Dominick Lawton, Stanford University (term ends Dec. 2024), Coordinator
        Back to top