UA Press Awards Manuscript Prizes

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Each year, The University of Alabama Press awards prizes for the best manuscripts in the fields of Southern history and American literature. This year’s winners, for manuscripts submitted and accepted in 2009, are Drs. Vernon James Knight, professor of anthropology at UA, and Lytle Shaw, assistant professor of English at New York University. 

Knight’s work “Mound Excavations at Moundville: Architecture, Elites, and Social Order” is the recipient of the Anne B. and James B. McMillian Manuscript Prize. Shaw’s manuscript “Fieldworks: From Place to Site in Postwar Poetry” is the recipient of the Elizabeth Agee Manuscript Prize.

The McMillan Prize has been awarded since 1995 to the manuscript chosen as most deserving in Alabama or Southern history or culture. It was established to honor James B. McMillan, founding director of the Press, former chairman of the University’s English department, and a renowned dialectologist.

The University of Alabama Press faculty editorial board, which consists of scholars from all public universities in the state that award a doctoral degree, confers the prize on the basis of scholarly excellence.

“Mound Excavations at Moundville” is a state-of-the-art data-rich study of excavations undertaken at the Moundville site in west central Alabama, one of the largest and most complex of the mound sites of pre-contact North America. Despite the site’s importance and sustained attention by researchers, until now it has lacked a comprehensive analysis of modern excavations.

Richly documented by maps, artifact photographs, profiles of strata and inventories of materials found, the work explores one expression of social complexity, the significance of Moundville’s monumental architecture, including its earthen mounds, the pole-frame architecture that once occupied the summits of these mounds, and the associated middens that reveal the culture of Moundville’s elites

The Agee Prize was established by the Stubbs and Agee families to honor Elizabeth Agee, longtime Birmingham bookseller who described herself as “a reader and lover of books.” It is a celebration of Agee’s interest in American literature and recognition of the Press’ publication of books in the field. The faculty editorial board confers the prize annually on the manuscript that best represents outstanding scholarship in the field of American literary studies.

“Fieldworks: From Place to Site in Postwar Poetry” examines site-specificity as a major category in 20^th and 21^st century art and poetry. This work offers a historical account of the social, rhetorical and material attempts to ground art and poetry in the physicality of a site.

The University of Alabama Press, founded in 1945, is one of the largest and fastest-growing publishers in the South. It publishes more than 100 books a year in archaeology, military history, Judaic studies, literary criticism, communication, sports, Civil Rights, religion, southern history and regional topics.

UA’s department of anthropology is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.