"A historiographic tour de force... a classic."

A few weeks ago, I received the wonderful news that Racial Innocence co-won the Award for Outstanding Book from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE). I'll receive the award in a ceremony at the 2012 ATHE conference, which is the first week of August. The conference program just went online, and here's what the prize committee said about why my book received the award:

"Robin Bernstein’s Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights is a historiographic tour de force that traces a genealogy of the invention of the innocent (white) child and its racialized roots in 19th and 20th century U.S. popular culture. With special attention to objects that perform as “scriptive” things in themselves and in relation to dramatic works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Bernstein argues for the importance of everyday objects and print items as formative of racial ideologies that haunt us to the present day. Especially crucial is Bernstein’s focus on objects and texts especially designed for girls and women--i.e. dolls--that are often not taken seriously as cultural artifacts of great import. Her rich archive and nuanced analysis will make this a classic book for theater historians and performance theorists."

Many thanks to the awards committee--Harvey Young, Suk-Young Kim, and Patricia Ybarra--for this award and for the wonderful response to Racial Innocence. I'm deeply honored.

Winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education

I am thrilled to announce that Racial Innocence has won the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) “on the basis of the study's potential to interrupt, change and/or challenge” the field of theatre studies. This recognition means so much to me--not only because it's a major honor, but also because it comes from an academic organization that has been central to my intellectual life since 1998. That year at the ATHE conference, I gave my first two papers on the respective debut panels of the American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) and the Theatre History Focus Group. ATHE and the ATDS supported me in so many ways as I wrote this book: both provided opportunities for me to sound out my ideas with other scholars, and both recognized my article, "Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race" (Social Text n. 101 [December 2009]), parts of which later folded into Racial Innocence. And finally, I'm honored that winning this award puts me in such good company: previous winners include scholars I deeply admire such as David Román, Shannon Jackson, and Diana Taylor, and I co-won the prize with Susan Leigh Foster, whose work on dance regularly blows my mind. Many thanks to the awards committee and to everyone else who helped make this happen!