Current Prize Contests:

2024 Best Book Prize Announcement

The winner of the 2024 SSA Best Book Prize is Denisa Nešťáková with her submission Be Fruitful and Multiply: Slovakia’s Family Planning Under Three Regimes (1918-1965). Published by Verlag-Herder Institut, Marburg, 2023.

The decision of the prize committee was unanimous. Nešťáková’s well-researched and highly readable social history of family-planning makes an important contribution to the study of how the state and other public actors such as the Church impact and control the privacy of individual family decisions as well as the intimacy of sexual life. It also highlights, once again, how important Slovakia as a society, a culture, a political idea and a national imaginary is to a broader understanding of European history, European and Western society and culture and of course politics. From her rich archival data – supported notably with over 50 illustrative figures – really brings alive the three crucial and unique time periods of post-war Czechoslovakia, the Slovak State of 1939, and the state socialist experiment after 1945. Yet in each one, Nešťáková argues that nepotism, double-standards, and political pragmatism were always present and certain parts of society were able to gain access to birth control even while these same circles were officially fighting against them. Her study will no doubt be essential reading for experts of the area but also for scholars in gender studies, sexuality and rights around reproduction – a question so critical for our present time.

The prize is in the amount of $200. The prize committee consisted of Edward Snajdr (Chair), Susan Mikula, Greg Ference and Mark Stolarik. The committee commends Denisa on this achievement and wishes her all the best in their continuing scholarly endeavors!

Ed Snajdr

Chair, SSA Prize Committee

11-21-2024

Call for Prize Submissions: 2025 Award for Best Article or Book Chapter

At its meeting in November 2025 during the conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), the Slovak Studies Association will award its prize for the best article or chapter about Slovakia in the humanities and social sciences published in 2022 or later.  The works must be in English, but they can be published anywhere in the world.  Submissions must be hard copies, unless the work appears only in electronic form, but authors may provide both versions if they exist.  The review committee will not return any submitted items.  The deadline for postmarking submissions is 1 May 2025.  Send entries to Edward Snajdr, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, John Jay College, CUNY, 524 West 59th Street, Room 9.63-19, New York, NY 10019, USA.  Address any questions to Dr. Snajdr at esnajdr@jjay.cuny.edu.

SSA Lifetime Achievement Award

Beginning in 2024, the Slovak Studies Association annually may present a deceased or living SSA member with the Slovak Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award. Any member may nominate an individual for the award by presenting a brief rationale explaining the nominee’s eligibility at least one month before the annual SSA meeting. The SSA Executive Committee (the president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and newsletter editor) evaluate the nomination.  Approval requires a majority of all members attending the annual meeting. The SSA shall present those receiving an SSA Lifetime Achievement Award with a plaque and shall update our website with the names of the winners.  Please send any nominations or inquiries to slovakstudies@gmail.com.