Josie Saldaña wins American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Prize

Professor Josie Saldaña’s recent book Indian Given: Racial Geographies Across Mexico and the United States received this year’s American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Prize for the most outstanding book published in American Studies.

The prize committee’s citation:

The committee selected Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States from well over 100 books that we reviewed. We were especially impressed by the book’s critical approach to comparison in bringing indigenous and Latin American frameworks, both still too often neglected, to American studies through its intensive focus on Mexican culture and history. The archival research that adds to the book’s historical scope further expands its valuable articulation of the concept of racial geographies. We also appreciated how Indian Given’s origins in the collective work of the Tepoztlán Institute provide a model for scholarship in American Studies that originates outside the continental U.S. The book will be of conceptual and methodological use to scholars across the range of fields that encompass American Studies.