Colleagues,
Please, join the Nigerian Studies Association (NSA) Book Prize Committee and Executive members in congratulating the underlisted colleagues for their outstanding scholarship.
The 2011 Nigeria Studies Association Book Prize Winner and Two Runners-Up
Presented at the NSA Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 19, 2011
The Winner:
Glassie, Henry. Prince Twins Seven-Seven: His Art, His Life in Nigeria, His Exile in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. pp. 474.
In a 474-page lucid and vivid biographical study, Henry Glassie provides the complexities surrounding the life and creativity of Taiwo Olaniyi Bamidele Osuntoki, a global artist, more popularly known as Prince Twins Seven-Seven. Twins Seven-Seven was not only an artist of international repute, but also a man of many talents and rich creative imagination. Glassie meticulously and sensitively weaves together the experiences, passions, and fears that helped to shape the life and creative imagination of Twins Seven-Seven as a Yoruba, a seventh-time reincarnated twin, a husband, a father, an exile in the United States, a royal prince, a singer, an actor, and a renowned world artist. The book is an embodiment of remarkable dialogues between author and artist, keen observations of the artist at work, different arrays of carefully selected photographs, drawings and designs, complemented by a wealth of sources and references. The narrative overall is compelling and insightful.
Twins Seven-Seven creative originality won him many awards and recognitions, including the conferment in Paris in 2005, the title of the UNESCO Artist for Peace. Glassie's intricate weaving together of the Yoruba cultural heritage with the West African and the global connection in a rich comparative analysis is outstanding. The book is undoubtedly a product of painstaking and thoughtful scholarship that will be of interest to those engaging in artistic and cultural studies, ethnographic, historical, and biographical studies, as well as in Nigerian and African studies. In this masterpiece of artistic, ethnographic and cultural study, Professor Glassie sets a standard against which studies of contemporary African artists will be measured for the foreseeable future.
First Runner-up:
Renne, Elisha P. The Politics of Polio in Northern Nigeria. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. pp. x, 169.
Applying multidisciplinary approach and relying on ethnographic observation, interviews, archival evidence and other sources, Elisha Renner examines the complex and difficult issue of polio eradication in Northern Nigeria. Placing Northern Nigeria at the top of the world confirmed cases of polio between 2006 and 2008 and within the politics of Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Renee explores the extreme skepticism and even outright objection on the part of Northern parents to immunize their children. She meticulously situates the politics and the obvious failure of polio eradication among the Muslim population of Northern Nigeria within cultural and historical contexts, pointing to the reasonable concerns and fears of the people and other problems associated with polio vaccination. It is a valuable study, and will remain an essential work on polio treatment in Nigeria and West Africa, and therefore will be of vital interest for health workers, especially those concerned with the promotion of global health.
Second Runner-up:
Nwokeji, G. Ugo. The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra: An African Society in the Atlantic World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. pp. xxiv, 279.
In this 279-page book, Ugo Nwokeji painstakingly examines the structure and sociocultural institutions responsible for the expansion of the transatlantic slave trade within the Bight of Biafra. Using a vast array of sources, Nwokeji offers chronological accounts of the internal dynamics and external forces that affected the early history of the region. Focusing on the Aro merchant class, Nwokeji argues that the rise and activities of this group were central to understanding the dramatic expansion of the trade in a region that lacked any centralized political structure. The study is innovative in perspective and interpretation, as well as in the application of gender analysis on the demography of the locally enslaved and those exported across the Atlantic. The book is a major contribution to the study of slavery and culture in West Africa and the entire Atlantic world.
Gloria Chuku, NSA Book Prize Committee chair
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