Call for Submissions: 2023 Tobin Siebers Prize

By: Danielle Coty-Fattal | Date: May 31, 2023 | Tags: Tobin Siebers Prize
Call for Submissions: 2023 Tobin Siebers Prize

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About the 2023 Tobin Siebers Prize

Submissions are now open for the 2023 Tobin Siebers Prize for Disability Studies in the Humanities. The prize is awarded in memory of disability studies pioneer Tobin Siebers, Professor of English at the University of Michigan and author of many influential books and articles in the field of Disability Studies. The prize is awarded yearly for the best proposed book-length manuscript on a topic of pressing urgency in the field (with the exception of 2020, due to the challenges presented by COVID-19). Reflecting on 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. The deadline is August 1, 2023; the winner will be announced in January 2024. Winners receive a cash prize of $1000, and a book contract from the University of Michigan Press to be published in the Corporealities: Discourses of Disability series.

Previous winners:

2022 Anastasia Todd, Cripping Girlhood

2021 Susan Antebi, Embodied Archive: Disability in Post-Revolutionary Mexican Cultural Production

2019 Kateřina Kolářová, Rehabilitative Post-Socialism: Disability, Race, Gender, and Sexuality and the Limits of National Belonging

2018 Stephen Knadler, Vitality Politics: Health, Debility, and the Limits of Black Emancipation

2017 Elizabeth B. Bearden, Monstrous Kinds: Body, Space, and Narrative in Renaissance Representations of Disability

2016 Shelley L. Tremain, Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability

2015 Anne McGuire, War on Autism: On the Cultural Logic of Normative Violence

Guidelines for Submissions

Eligible submissions include a book proposal and two sample chapters not under consideration by another publisher. Unrevised dissertations, fiction, poetry, and memoirs will not be considered. Manuscripts and supporting documents should be in digital format and must be sent via email to siebers.prize@umich.edu and Senior Acquiring Editor Sara Jo Cohen sjco@umich.edu, no later than August 1, 2023.

In addition to the proposal and sample chapters, please send the following materials:

  • A cover letter that includes:
    • A description of the manuscript
    • A brief statement regarding its relative contribution to the field of Disability Studies
    • The word count and illustration count
  • A current curriculum vitae

For assistance with the submission process, please contact sjco@umich.edu.

About Tobin Siebers

The work of the late University of Michigan faculty member, Tobin Siebers, has influenced Disability Studies in field-shifting ways since the publication of his prize-winning essay “My Withered Limb” in 1998. His subsequent scholarly publications, including the books Disability Theory (2008) and Disability Aesthetics (2010) as well as essays such as “A Sexual Culture for Disabled People” (2012), quickly became pivotal works in the field. Siebers’s work has galvanized new scholarship in relation to questions of representation, subjectivity, and the entry of non-normative bodies into public space, and made the study of disability a central component (alongside gender, race, sexuality, and class) in analyses of the culture wars and identity studies.

To honor this remarkable 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. Reflecting the scholar’s work 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.