Announcing Winner of 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize and 2017 Call for Entries
The University of Michigan Press is pleased to announce that the 2016 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities has been awarded to Shelley L. Tremain for her book manuscript Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability.
Dr. Shelley L. Tremain lives in Hamilton, Ontario, holds a Ph. D. from York University (Canada), has taught in Canada, the U. S., and Australia, and publishes widely on philosophy of disability, Foucault, feminist philosophy, and bioethics. Dr. Tremain is also a coordinator of the blog Discrimination and Disadvantage.
In her manuscript, Tremain critiques mainstream philosophers for their assumption that disability is a prediscursive, transcultural, and transhistorical disadvantage, an objective human defect or characteristic to be prevented, corrected, eliminated, or cured. Using Michel Foucault’s insights, she argues that this conception of disability is intertwined with the underrepresentation of disabled philosophers in professional philosophy, and offers an alternative conception of disability as an apparatus of power.
Dr. Tremain’s winning manuscript will be published in the Corporealities: Discourses of Disability series. The author will also receive a cash prize. Last year’s winner was Anne McGuire of the University of Toronto for her manuscript The War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence.
About the Tobin Siebers Prize
The late Tobin Siebers was a University of Michigan professor of English, co-chair of the university’s Initiative on Disability Studies, and author of many influential books and articles. His colleague Petra Kuppers, remarking on his influence, commented “His legacy lives on in his nourishing critical perspective, his passion and presence, and it will continue to thrive and grow in the thoughts his writings allow us to spin out.”
To honor this legacy, the University of Michigan Press and the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature established The Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities for best book-length manuscript on a topic of pressing urgency in this field. Reflecting the work of the scholar the prize commemorates, the competition invites submissions on a wide range of topics, from literary and cultural studies, to trans-historical research, to contributions to disability theory such as work in crip/queer studies.
Winners will receive a cash prize of $1,500. The winner will be announced in January, 2018 at the Modern Language Association and will receive a contract from the University of Michigan Press to be published in the Corporealities: Discourses of Disability series.
Submissions are now being invited for the 2017 Tobin Siebers Prize.
Guidelines for Submissions
Eligible submissions include complete book-length monographic manuscripts not under consideration by another publisher. Unrevised dissertations and memoir will not be considered. Manuscripts should be submitted by September 15, 2017 in digital format using the web form at http://umlib.us/tsiebers, along with:
1. A description of the manuscript
2. A statement regarding its relative contribution to the field of Disability Studies
3. The word count and illustration count
4. A current curriculum vitae
