Entries must be postmarked by or on March 31, 2024

The L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize
in North African Studies for 2024

Established in 2013, the L. Carl Brown AIMS Book Prize is awarded annually to the outstanding book in the area of North African studies. The winning work reflects the innovative intellectual achievements in North African studies exemplified by Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, L. Carl Brown. The prize carries an honorarium of $500.00. No cash prize offered for honorable mention. The winner will be invited to give a brief presentation at the annual AIMS business meeting of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

  1. To be eligible for consideration, submissions will be books in any chronological period and any field of the humanities or social sciences published in the English language. Books will demonstrate originality of research, new theoretical insights, and advance knowledge about North Africa. Since its founding in 1984, AIMS has promoted the study of North Africa broadly defined. Through its research centers in Tunis, Oran, and Tangier, AIMS has worked to facilitate scholarship in Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia by both US citizens and scholars from those countries. It has also supported research on the Sahara-Sahel region. While the L. Carl Brown Book Prize seeks to promote the study of the wider Maghrib in different historical and geographical contexts, strong preference will be given to books that specifically help to advance the interests, mission, and work of AIMS. The committee reserves the right not to award the prize, if no book is found deserving.
  2. Books published in 2022 or 2023 are eligible for consideration for the 2024 award (copyright year must be 2022 or 2023).
  3. At the time of submission, the author(s) of the submitted work must be current members of AIMS.
  4. Three copies of the book must be sent to the AIMS office at the University of Arizona:
    American Institute for Maghrib Studies
    University of Arizona, CMES

    845 N. Park Ave., Room 470
    Tucson, AZ 85721-0158 USA
  5. Each submission must include an information sheet from the publisher with the following information, which can be included with the books or emailed to aims@aimsnorthafrica.org, with “2024 AIMS Book Prize” in the subject line:
    Author Name
    Book Title
    Publisher Name
    Year of Publication
    ISBN #
    Contact name, phone, email

To be considered for the prize, entries must be postmarked by or on March 31, 2024. Late entries cannot be considered.

BOOK PRIZE WINNERS AND HONORABLE MENTIONS:

2023
WINNER: Christopher Silver, Recording History: Jews, Muslims, and Music across Twentieth Century North Africa
Honorable Mention: Muriam Haleh Davis, Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria
Honorable Mention: Richard Jankowsky, Ambient Sufism: Ritual Niches in the Social Work of Musical Form

2022
WINNER: Ali Ahmida, Genocide in Libya: Shar, A Hidden Colonial History
Honorable Mention: Becky L. Schulthies, Channeling Moroccanness: Language and the Media of Sociality 

2021
WINNER: Peter Limbrick, Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi

WINNER: Aili Tripp, Seeking Legitimacy: Why Arab Autocracies Adopt Women’s Rights
Honorable Mention: Cynthia Becker, Blackness in Morocco: Gnawa Identity through Music and Visual Culture

2019
WINNER: Eric Calderwood, Colonial al-Andalus: Spain and the Making of Modern Moroccan Culture

2018
WINNER: Hussein Fancy,
The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon
Honorable Mention: Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization & the Third World Order

2017
WINNER: Jonathan Glasser,
The Lost Paradise: Andalusi Music in Urban North Africa

2016
WINNER: Ronald Messier and James A. Miller, The Last Civilized Place: Sijilmasa and Its Saharan Destiny
Honorable Mention: Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam

2015
WINNER: Adria Lawrence, Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism: Anti-Colonial Protest in the French Empire
Honorable Mention: Edmund Burke, The Ethnographic State: France and the Invention of Moroccan Islam
Honorable Mention: Emilio Spadola, The Calls of Islam: Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Mediation in Urban Morocco

2014
WINNER: Jonathan Smolin, Moroccan Noir: Police, Crime, and Politics in Popular Culture
Honorable Mention: Susan Miller, A History of Modern Morocco

2013
WINNER: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, The Berber Identity Movement and the Challenge to North African States
Honorable Mention: Julia Clancy Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800-1900
Honorable Mention: Richard Jankowski, Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia