The 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Has Been Awarded to Two Black Scholars

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University has announced the recipients of the 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The award is presented annually by Yale University, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, to the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition that was published in the preceding year. Marlene L. Daut, professor of French and African diaspora studies at Yale University, was honored for her book, Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). The book discusses the history and scholarship of famous and lesser-known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Haitian historians, writers, and political figures. Dr. Daut was not originally named a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize in Yale’s initial announcement in August, but was added to the pool of finalists in October at the request of the jury. A Yale faculty member since 2022, Dr. Daut teaches courses on Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. She also serves as co-editor of global Black history and theory at Public Books. Prior to...