2022 Conover-Porter Award for Africana Bibliography or Reference Work
The winner: A Dictionary of Mozambican History and Society (Revised)
The Conover-Porter Award Committee is pleased to announce on behalf of the Africana Librarians Council and the African Studies Association, that the 2022 award-winning work is A Dictionary of Mozambican History and Society (Revised), by Colin Darch and Amélia Neves de Souto, 2022, HSRC Press.
The award was presented during the 2022 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, held in November 2022 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Award committee members found this reference work fills an important knowledge gap for an important, but lesser-known, African nation. With many clear, concise, and engaging entries, the quality is consistently very good-to-excellent through the book. It is well suited not only to reference users but also for developing one's understanding of this Lusophone country's social, political, and historical context. It clearly elucidates many complex and specialized topics relating to language, geography, economics, and regional conflicts. It is also notably well organized, with a clear introduction, a guide to unfamiliar acronyms found in the text, a chronology of Mozambican history, an appendix, notes on the authors, useful cross-references and some images.
We note that the authors of this work, who are both from the continent (Mozambique & South Africa), have published extensively on Mozambique. This is a great moment and opportunity to highlight, promote, and support such worthy scholarship and scholars from the continent.
The Conover-Porter Award was established in honor of two pioneers in African studies bibliography: Helen F. Conover and Dorothy B. Porter Wesley. Helen F. Conover was senior bibliographer, African Section of the Library of Congress, serving 32 years before her retirement in 1963, and Dorothy B. Porter Wesley was librarian of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, retiring in 1973 after 45 years of service. The Award is presented every two years jointly by the Africana Librarians Council and the African Studies Association (US). The award recognizes outstanding achievement in Africana bibliography and reference tools among works published in the preceding two years and includes a prize of $300.
2022 Award Committee
Florence Nthiira Mugambi, Chair, Northwestern University
Daniel A. Reboussin, University of Florida
Atoma Batoma, University of Illinois
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Heather Martin
Librarian for African and African American Studies
Duke University
She/Her/Hers
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