The Canadian Association of Slavists Taylor & Francis Book Prize

In their final report, the book prize committee offers the following recognition of Picturing the Page: “Megan Swift presents a fascinating story of the relationship between the text, image, and ideology in early Soviet literature for children. She focuses on illustrations that accompanied Soviet editions of fairy tales, Pushkin’s Bronze Horseman, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and Mayakovsky’s and Marshak’s poetry between the 1920s and 1950s and details the ways the pictorial representations of familiar characters and settings responded to cultural policies of these turbulent decades. Tracing the visual representation of such central concepts as worker, peasant, mother, etc., the book contributes in numerous ways to our understanding of how the first Soviet generations envisioned and engaged with their country’s cultural tradition. The book is meticulously researched, engagingly written, and contains a wealth of visual material. In rich detail it recreates the story of early Soviet publishers’ and educators’ efforts to redraw the past and make it serve the legitimization of the present.”

We are pleased also to announce that Dr. Eugene Miakinkov’s War and Enlightenment in Russia: Military Culture in the Age of Catherine II: (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020) earned honourable mention in the book prize adjudication. The committee reports that, “using a wide variety of sources, Eugene Miakinkov provides new insights into Russian military culture in the age of Catherine the Great and enlivens his book with engaging pictures of military leaders and events, such as Field Marshal Suvorov and the storming of the Turkish fortress of Izmail.”

2021 Jury for the Canadian Association of Slavists’ Taylor and Francis Book Prize:

Dr. Kees Boterbloem (University of South Florida)

Dr. Lyudmila Parts (McGill University)

Dr. Paul Robinson (University of Ottawa) 

See the Article Prize

Established in 2014, the Canadian Association of Slavists' Taylor & Francis Book Prize is awarded annually for the best academic book in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies published in the previous calendar year by a Canadian author (citizen or permanent resident). The book prize jury consists of three members chosen by the CAS executive. The winner receives a cash award of $500 CAD and recognition at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Slavists. 

• The copyright date inside the book must list the previous calendar year as the date of publication.
• The book must be in the form of a monograph, preferably by a single author, or by no more than two authors.
• Authors must be citizens or permanent residents of Canada. 
• The work must originally be published in French or English either in or outside Canada.
• Works may deal with any aspect of Slavic, East European, or Eurasian Studies (languages, literatures, cinemas, cultures, visual arts, politics, history, etc.).
• Textbooks in the strict sense of the word do not qualify, but a broad interpretive work of a major period or area qualifies.
• Translations, bibliographies, reference works, edited volumes, and smaller works such as pamphlets are not eligible.

Nomination for the prize can come from an author, a third party, or a publisher. There is no limit on the number of entries a publisher may submit. 

• Send an e-mail to the office of Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes ([email protected]) to notify the Canadian Association of Slavists of your intent to nominate a publication for the CAS’ Taylor & Francis Book Prize. Please copy this e-mail to yourself as well.

• Send one copy of the eligible monograph to each member of the book prize jury. Submissions should be marked “The Canadian Association of Slavists' Taylor & Francis Book Prize Nomination.”

• If you would like to receive an acknowledgment that your nomination was received, please enclose, with the copy mailed to a jury member, a note with your e-mail address or a self-addressed stamped envelope.

Nominations for next year should be postmarked no later than 5 May 2021. It is the responsibility of the author (if they self-nominate), their nominator, or their publisher to send the books to the jury. Please note that books sent to members of the jury will not normally be returned once the competition is over. However, special arrangements to return a book may be made between a jury member and the nominator after the competition ends.

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