"Slow Violence" by Rob Nixon receives two prestigious awards

April 4, 2012

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon, UW-Madison professor of English and environmental studies, has recently received two prominent book awards.

This week, the International Studies Association chose Slow Violence as the winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for 2012. The prize goes to the best book in international environmental studies — a book that makes an "original contribution to theory and interdisciplinarity, shows rigor and coherence in research and writing, and offers accessibility and practical relevance." Nominations were solicited from 170 publishers.

Nixon reports this is the first time in the award's 40-year history that it has gone to a scholar from the humanities.

Slow Violence has also just won the Transdisciplinary Humanities Book Award for 2011. The award goes to a book, published anywhere in the world, that "best exemplifies transdisciplinary, socially engaged humanities-based scholarship on a topic of social or cultural importance — past, present, or future." The prize is an initiative of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University.

Related:

• "Slow violence:" Rob Nixon probes media coverage of incremental environmental threats
• "Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor," Harvard University Press