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Over the past decade, the University of Michigan Press has published nearly 300 award-winning titles. These books cover the full spectrum of what we publish. From African American Studies, to Political Science, to Theater and Performance, to Gender Studies, and more, these books exemplify the academic innovation that comes from exceptional scholarship and reflect the diversity of voices and ideas published at Michigan. As we close out 2021, we are excited to share a selection or our recent award winners with you.

Recognition for the Press

Due to outstanding leadership or achievements in improving the accessibility of e-books or other digital publications, the University of Michigan Press was shortlisted for the Accessible Books Consortium’s 2021 International Excellence Award for Accessible Publishing . UMP was the only university press to be recognized among such finalists as the Taylor & Francis Group and House of Anansi Press.

i used to love to dream by A. D. Carson embodies the press's innovative approach to publishing and received the award for Best eProduct of the year from the Association of American Publishers 2021 PROSE Awards. i used to love to dream is the first peer-reviewed hip-hop mixtap/e/ssay published by a university press and makes use of Michigan Publishing's open source publishing platform, Fulcrum, in order to present a mixtape, essays, liner notes, and a short documentary as a singular scholarly product. The publication of works like this is integral to challenging traditional ideas of what scholarship could and might be and to amplifying underrepresented voices in academia.

Awards from the Local Community

The books published by the University of Michigan Press have a local as well as global impact, and several recent award winners reflect the press’s commitment to nurturing those connections.

Every year the Historical Society of Michigan acknowledges those who have made extraordinary contributions to state and local history. This fall Justice and Faith: The Frank Murphy Story by Greg Zipes received the 2021 Historical Society of Michigan State History Award.

T hrough the annual University of Michigan Press Book Award, we recognize an exceptional work produced by a member of the University of Michigan Faculty. The 2021 award honors For Dear Life: Women's Decriminalization and Human Rights in Focus by Carol Jacobsen, which was also a Silver Medalist for the Midwest Book Award, Design (Interior) in 2020 and a Silver Winner of the Nautilus Book Award for Social Change and Social Justice in 2019.

In tribute to the late Tobin Siebers whose work altered the field of Disability Studies, the University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature annually present The Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities to a book-length manuscript that offers an exceptional contribution to the field of Disability Studies. In 2021, this prize was awarded to Susan Antebi for Embodied Archive: Disability in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Cultural Production.

Award-Winning Open Access Titles

The University of Michigan Press has an increasing number of titles that are freely available for the public to read. Over the past few months, several books have joined our growing list of award winning open access titles .

To ensure that this vital scholarship was made accessible to the public at a time when it was truly needed, the International Institute of the University of Michigan helped make Coronavirus Politics: The Comparative Politics and Policy of COVID-19, edited by Scott L. Greer et al., freely available to the world. This open access book brings together authors who explore the health and social policy decisions and public health interventions that key countries have taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, Altmetric named Coronavirus Politics the number one most discussed monograph of the year.

In recognition of its value as a pedagogical resource and how it centers the learner, Music on the Move by Danielle Fosler-Lussier won of the American Musicological Society's Teaching Award. As an open access title, teachers everywhere can add it to their globally-oriented music history reading lists.

Race, Politics, and Law

University of Michigan Press is known for the strength of its title lists in political science, race, and law. We are thrilled that a number of our titles in these areas have been recognized for the strength of their research and the depth of their impact.

• Ron Scapp’s A Question of Voice: Philosophy and the Search for Legitimacy won the 2021 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Ethnic Studies.
• Gender, Separatist Politics, And Embodied Nationalism In Cameroon by Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué was awarded the 2021 African Studies Association Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize.
• Keeping Hold of Justice: Encounters Between Law and Colonialism by Jennifer Balint, Julie Evans, Mark McMillan, and Nesam McMillan received an honorable mention for the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia’ 2021 Penny Pether Prize.
• The Truth Machines: Policing, Violence, and Scientific Interrogations in India by Jinee Lokaneeta has been announced as the co-winner of the American Political Science Association's C. Hermann Pritchett Book Award.
• Climate Change Solutions: Beyond the Capital-Climate Contradiction by Diana Stuart, Ryan Gunderson, and Brian Peterson is a Silver Winner of the Nautilus Book Awards in the Ecology & Environment category.

Theater, Music, and Performance

Many of our theater, music, and performance titles have been recognized for their groundbreaking scholarship. These works explore their fields from a global perspective and include research on the US, Mexico, South Africa, India, and more.

• Ishtyle: Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife by Kareem Khubchandani earned several awards, including the Dance Studies Association’s 2021 de la Torre Bueno Book Prize and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Outstanding Book Award.
• Kyle Barnett’s Record Cultures: The Transformation of the U. S. Recording Industry won the award for Best History in the category of Best Historical Research on Record Labels and General Recording Topics in the 2021 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence.
• Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice by Catherine Cole received an Honorable Mention for the Dance Studies Association’s 2021 de la Torre Bueno Book Prize.
• Jazz From Detroit by Mark Stryker won the 2020 Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Award for Book of the Year About Jazz and was also awarded a Certificate of Merit in the category of Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz in the 2020 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence.
• Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-Sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora by Panayotis League has been awarded the Society of American Music's H. Earle Johnson Book Subvention.
• Embodied Reckonings: "Comfort Women," Performance, and Transpacific Redress by Elizabeth W. Son has won the National Communication Association (Feminist and Gender Studies Division) 2020 Bonnie Ritter Outstanding Feminist Book Award and the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award in Humanities & Cultural Studies (Media, Performance, and Visual Studies).
• Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy by Debra Caplan is the co-winner of the MLA 10th Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies.
• The Bodies of Others: Drag Dances and Their Afterlives by Selby Wynn Schwartz won the Sally Banes Publication Prize from the American Society for Theater Research and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction, 2020.
• Performance in the Zócalo: Constructing History, Race, and Identity in Mexico's Central Square from the Colonial Era to the Present by Ana Martínez was named a finalist for the 2020 George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association.
• Patricia Herrera’s Nuyorican Feminist Performance: From the Café to Hip Hop Theater received an honorable mention for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education ’s Outstanding Book Award.

We are grateful to have the opportunity to share these works of scholarship with the world and hope you join us in celebrating them. You can find the full list of honored titles on our Award Winners page, including our 17 winners of the Michigan Notable Books award, presented by the Library of Michigan, and our 37 winners of the Choice Outstanding Academic Title award, presented by the American Library Association.