IN THIS COLUMN
- Reséndez is the 3rd member of the history faculty to receive the prestigious book award
- Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America honors a professor, graduate student and 2016 Ph.D.
- Texas A&M’s entomology department honors our own Frank Zalom, integrated pest management specialist
Professor Andrés Reséndez is the winner of a 2017 Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy for his book The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (Mariner Books, April 2016).
The book is among three Bancroft winners this year, as announced March 13 by Columbia University, which administers the prestigious prizes.
The Other Slavery was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction last fall.
The book is a landmark history of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Native Americans, from the time of the conquistadors through the early 20th century. Reséndez builds a case that enslavement was more responsible than epidemics for the decimation of native populations across North America.
“Receiving the Bancroft Prize is an incredible honor,” Reséndez said. “I am humbled by the notable historians who have gotten it over the years going back to 1948; and I am especially fond of the fact that our former colleague Alan S. Taylor and our current colleague Ari Kelman have gotten it.”
Kelman won in 2014 for A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling Over the Memory of Sand Creek, about the Colorado site of an 1864 massacre of Cheyennes and Arapahos.
Taylor won in 1996 for William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic. The book also won Taylor the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes. He taught at ϲϿ Davis from 1994 to 2014.
Bancroft Prize winners are judged in terms of the scope, significance, depth of research, and richness of interpretation they present in the areas of American history and diplomacy. There were 239 books submitted for consideration for the 2017 prize.
Reséndez’s fellow prize winners are Heather Ann Thompson for Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, and Nancy Tomes’ Remaking the American Patient: How Madison Avenue and Modern Medicine Turned Patients into Consumers.
Columbia Provost John H. Coatsworth will present the awards at the Bancroft Prize dinner next month. The Bancroft Prize includes an award of $10,000 to each author.
The prize was established in 1948 by the trustees of Columbia University with a bequest from the historian Frederic Bancroft.
— Kathleen Holder
The Pacific Branch of the Entomological Society of America recently announced its 2017 award recipients, one of whom is a ϲϿ Davis professor, one who is a graduate student here and a third who received his doctorate here last year:
- Shirley Luckhart, Medical, Urban and Veterinary Entomology Award — Professor Luckhart is a molecular biologist with a joint appointment in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, and the Department of Entomology and Nematology (and who is leaving ϲϿ Davis for the University of Idaho, effective May 15).
- Ralph Washington Jr., Student Leadership Award — He earned his bachelor of science degree in entomology at ϲϿ Davis in 2010 and is now a third-year graduate student working with Steve Nadler, professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, and Brian Johnson, assistant professor. Washington is president of the ϲϿ Student Association and has held leadership posts in other student organizations as well. He’s also active in the Entomological Society of America.
- Marek Borowiec, Systematics, Evolution and Biodiversity Award — An ant specialist, he earned his doctorate in entomology in June 2016, studying with Professor Phil Ward, and is now a postdoc at Arizona State University.
Integrated pest management specialist Frank Zalom has been named the recipient of the 2017 Perry Adkisson Distinguished Speaker Award, given by the Department of Entomology at Texas A&M University. Zalom will give a talk and receive his award on March 30. He’s a distinguished professor of entomology at ϲϿ Davis and a former director of the ϲϿ Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program.
Dateline ϲϿ Davis welcomes news of faculty and staff awards, for publication in Laurels. Send information to dateline@ucdavis.edu.