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Paul Hair Prize

The Paul Hair Prize is presented in odd-numbered years to recognize the best critical edition or translation into English of primary source materials on Africa published during the preceding two years. The next prize will be awarded in 2025. The award is administered by the Association for the Preservation and Publication of African Historical Sources (APPAHS). It is announced at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting.

Eligibility

Eligible for consideration are editions of primary source materials dealing with the history, literature, and other aspects of the cultures of Africa, whether in African or European languages, whether from oral or written traditions, and whether the text is published for the first time or in a new edition. Books, digital resources and databases that meet these criteria are all eligible for consideration. Evaluation for the Paul Hair Text Prize is based on the importance of the text, the presentation of the text and the critical apparatus, and the utility of the work as a whole for scholars and teachers of Africa. Works edited by a single individual or jointly edited by more than one author are eligible for consideration. Anthologies with separate contributions by different authors, children’s books, and straightforward texts are not eligible. The minimum length is 10,000 words, excluding the apparatus.

In 2005, David Henige provided an initial investment to permit a modest cash award to accompany the prize. The cash prize amount is $300. In the event that there are co-winners for an award/prize that carries a cash payment, the payment will be equally divided amongst the co-winners. The ASA Board expressed support for creating a prize for editing primary texts relating to Africa at its meeting of November 1990. The Board approved the award following presentation of a report on processes for selecting potential winners, and it was presented for the first time in 1993.

The Paul Hair Prize Committee consists of three scholars identified by the Board.

Deadline: The next award cycle will open in 2025 and close April 30, 2025

Committee

Two ASR Editorial Team + Two additional members TBD

Past Winners

  • 2019

    Dedan Kimathi on Trial. Colonial Justice and Popular Memory in Kenya’s Mau Mau Rebellion (Ohio University Press), edited by Julie MacArthur.

  • 2017

    Galawdewos, The Life Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman, edited and translated by Wendy Laura Bulcher and Michael Kleiner (Princeton University Press, 2015)

  • 2015

    Paul Hair Prize Committee decided none of the nominated texts were of sufficient quality for an award

  • 2013

    Karin Barber, Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel: I.B. Thomas’s ‘Life Story of Me, Segilola’ and Other Texts (Brill Publishers, 2012)

  • 2011

    Malyn Newitt, Treatise on the Rivers of Cuama (Tratado dos Rios de Cuama) by Antonio da Conceicao (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

  • 2009

    Prize not awarded

  • 2007

    Mohamed Kassim and Alessandra Vianello, Servants of the Sharia: The Civil Register of the Qadi’s Court of Brava 1893-1900 2 Vols.: African Sources for African History 6.1-2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006)

  • 2005

    P.F. de Moraes Farias, Arabic Medieval Inscriptions from the Republic of Mali: Epigraphy, Chronicales and Songhay-Tuareg History, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

  • 2003

    C. de B. Webb (the late) and J.B. Wright, The James Stuart Archive, Volume 5 (University Of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2001)

  • 2001

    John Hunwick (ed. & trans), Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: Al-Sa’di’s Ta’rikh al-sudan down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents, (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999)

  • 1999

    Jean Boyd and Beverly B. Mack (eds.), Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, Daughter of Usman Dan Fodio, (Michigan State University Press, 1997)

  • 1997

    ames H. Vaughan and Anthony H.M. Kirk-Greene (edited & introduced by), The Diary of Hamman Yaji: Chronicle of a West African Muslim Ruler, (Bloomington and Indianapolis Indiana University Press, 1995)

  • 1995

    Percy Coriat, Governing the Nuer: Documents in Nuer History and Ethnography, 1922-1931, Douglas H. Johnson (ed.), (Oxford: JASO, 1993)

  • 1993

    Paul Hair, Adam Jones, Robin Law (eds. & annotators), Jean Barbot, Guinea: The Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa, 1678-1712, ( Hakluyt Society)