Summersell Center Announces Winner of Third Biennial Deep South Book Prize

In this photo Dr. Duval, on left, is recieving a reward plaque from former Summersell Center Director and current Department Chair, Joshua Rothman.

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South is pleased to announce that the winner of the third biennial Deep South Book Prize is Kathleen DuVal, for her book Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (Random House). Focusing on the American Revolution as it played out along the Gulf Coast, Independence Lost demonstrates the imperial dimensions of the conflict and the multitude of ways those who are rarely accounted for in familiar renderings of colonial society understood and struggled for their self-determination. Our hearty congratulations to Ms. DuVal, who is professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Receiving honorable mentions from the Summersell Center are five additional books, each of which provided the book prize committee with hard choices and each of which is deserving of praise in its own right. They are, in alphabetical order:

Alison Collis Greene, No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta (Oxford)

Monique Laney, German Rocketeers in the Heart of Dixie: Making Sense of the Nazi Past during the Civil Rights Era (Yale)

Adam Rothman, Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (Harvard)

Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (North Carolina)

Julie M. Weise, Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910 (North Carolina)

Nominations for the fourth biennial Deep South Book Prize are now being accepted.