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:

Eligibility requirements and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes
Conflict of interest statement
2024 Publications Committee membership and contact information
2024 Jury Members

Eligibility requirements and selection procedures for the AATSEEL book prizes:

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.
Nominated works must be devoted to the languages and the literary/cultural traditions of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
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.
The nomination process will normally end on 1 May. Prizes will be announced at the annual meeting of AATSEEL in January or February.
Both members of AATSEEL and non-members may make nominations for the prizes.
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