Ohio University Press series editor named MacArthur Fellow

Derek R. Peterson, a historian of east Africa, has been named a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.

As a winner of the “genius grant,” he will receive $625,000 over five years, no strings attached, in recognition of what the foundation calls grantees’ “extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”

Peterson, who teaches at the University of Michigan, is a longtime collaborator of Ohio University Press, known for its leadership in African studies publishing. Together with Jean Allman and Allen Isaacman, he is series editor for the press’s vanguard New African Histories series. With Harri Englund and Christopher Warnes, Peterson also is the series editor for the press’s Cambridge Centre of African Studies Series.

Finally, Peterson has edited two volumes for the press: "Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa" (with Giacomo Macola) and "Abolition and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic."

Ohio University Press book wins Adele E. Clarke Book Award

Joanna Mishtal has won the 2017 Adele E. Clarke Book Award from ReproNetwork, an interdisciplinary coalition of scholars who study reproduction, for “The Politics of Morality: The Church, the State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland,” published in 2015 by Ohio University Press.

From the ReproNetwork announcement: “The Politics of Morality” contains insights that reverberate far beyond Poland, with its examination of the role and influence of the Catholic church, the rise of conservative moral politics, the shifting legal and practical roles of the medical profession in reproductive care, the impact of neoliberal economic policies on childbearing, and challenges to reproductive activism.”