AAASS Announces New Dissertation Prize

The AAASS Board announces the creation of a new award, the Tucker/Cohen D issertation P rize. The prize will be awarded for the first time at the AAASS convention in Washington, D.C., November 2006, for any dissertation defended in 2005. By April 15, 2006, faculty supervisors should nominate no more than one dissertation, sending to each committee member listed below their letter and a 700-1000-word abstract from the candidate, specifying the location, sources, and general findings of the research. (Candidates may also initiate the nomination, but it must come from their advisors.) The committee will read this material and then request copies of the dissertations that best meet the criteria, as defined in the statement below.

The committee consists of Alex Rabinowitch (2512 Buttonwood Lane , Bloomington, IN 47401), chair; William Taubman (Amherst College, Department of Political Science, Amherst, MA 01002); and Elizabeth Wood, (History Faculty, MIT, E51-180, 77 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139).

The Tucker/Cohen prize is awarded annually (if there is a distinguished submission) for an outstanding doctoral dissertation in the tradition of historical political science and political history of the Soviet Union as practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen. The dissertation may originate in any university department. While it may involve other Soviet republics, preference will be given to those that focus primarily on Russia during one or more periods between October 1917 and December 1991. And while it may include social, cultural, economic, international or other dimensions, its primary subject and analytical purpose should be in the realm of domestic politics, as broadly understood in public or academic life. The dissertation must be defended during the year prior to the award. A nomination will consist of an abstract of 700-1000 words and a detailed letter from the dissertation's main faculty supervisor, explaining the ways in which the work is truly outstanding in both its empirical and its interpretive contributions. Awardees must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, associated with a university in the U.S. The prize carries a $5,000 award intended to help the author turn the dissertation into a publishable manuscript.