We are pleased to announce that the 2020 S-USIH Annual Book Prize has been awarded to Katrina Forrester (Harvard University) for In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2019). Award winners receive a $250.00 prize and their work is recognized at the upcoming S-USIH annual conference. The 2020 S-USIH Book Award is given for the best academic book in U.S. intellectual history published in English in the period between Jan. 1, 2019 and Dec. 31, 2019. The annual prize was first presented in 2013. You can read about past prize winners and their scholarship in our Spotlight/Insight interview series. And! Please stay tuned for our #USIH2020 conference program lineup, coming soon, featuring a special roundtable on this work.
We thank the members of the 2020 S-USIH Annual Book Award committee: Heather Cox Richardson (chair, Boston College), Robert B. Genter (Nassau Community College), and Benjamin E. Park (Sam Houston State University). Here is the committee’s statement:
“In the Shadow of Justice traces the interplay of philosophy and politics in the development and legacy of John Rawls’s liberal political philosophy. Forrester shows how the ideas about justice, equality, obligation, and the state that Rawls set out in A Theory of Justice came to dominate American liberalism, and how those ideas then constrained ideas about policies in the late twentieth century. It is an admirable exploration of the intersection of ideas and politics.”
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I would be interested to hear any reactions to Forrester’s book from people who have read it (other than the awards committee members). I have not read it myself. I know it’s been reviewed in various places but it’s often interesting to read more informal reactions of the kind to which a blog comment space is well suited. Unfortunately in my view, some of this has now migrated to (for example) Twitter, which is less well-suited to it because (1) it forces people to split up their thoughts and, more important (2) requires people who want to participate fully in it to open an account. By contrast a blog comment space like this one does not require people to have an account with anything (not even Blogger or WordPress), just an internet connection.
I would like to underline Louis’ objections to splitting of responses between blog comments and Twitter for the reasons he mentions. It amounts to a situation in which some members compete with others for readership. Does that make any sense? Is it really necessary to have multiple outlets for the same or similar material? Besides that, the Forrester session sounds like a real treat.
Can we get the Conference schedules/programs brought up to date on-line?
Richard and Lewis, none of us here at the blog have any control over where people choose to have conversations. I always encourage people to comment here. However, not everyone is comfortable leaving a blog comment. Conversations among colleagues happen in multiple overlapping virtual spaces. We have a Facebook page, which is where Andrew Hartman announced that our upcoming conference would include a roundtable on this prizewinning book. I don’t know if he should have waited for an official program to come out — I think his teaser/preview was probably fine. But we can’t compel everyone who is a member of the society to only discuss our posts or our topics of interest here at our site. What are we supposed to do, tell people not to tweet about this post? We cannot force people to dialog here if they prefer another platform.
As to getting the conference schedules/programs brought up to date, why are you asking for that here, as opposed to a routine request to the exec comm member who interfaces with our web hosting company? The conference page, the book reviews page, the podcast page — none of these fall under the responsibility of the blog or its editors. Those are separate verticals of our website, and for better or worse (don’t ask me what I think) they fall under different spheres of responsibility. I am sure the people in our organization who are tasked with interfacing with the web design company have made the request for the change, and I’m sure the change will be happening when that company gets around to it. If I’m not mistaken, per the terms of the Society’s contract with that company, we are allowed to request updates/changes once a month.
Twitter brings readers here; Facebook brings readers here; Reddit brings readers here; and posts here bring readers into conversation on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and lord knows where else. I’m not on Reddit, so I’m not part of any of those conversations and don’t know when they’re happening and no doubt miss a lot of interesting comments. But I’m not entitled to demand that everyone discuss topics here and here only. No one is entitled to demand that, or even to expect it.
It’s okay to lament that The Discourse is multiplicitous and flows through many different streams at once if you feel that this is lamentable. But our comments here are open; if people prefer to discuss things elsewhere, they are free to do so.
Well, other than confusing Richard King with Richard Cándida Smith — my apologies to both Richards, and yes I am stone cold sober, but mentally exhausted — I will stick by the rest of my comment, minus the paragraph about proper procedures for handling issues on the USIH backchannel. These are not things Richard King would know. I am sorry Richard — and Richard.
If you need me, I will be in my own private slough of despond, a new feature I’m adding to my backyard landscaping immediately.
Here at the blog, we are always open to dialogue about dialogue! A good reminder that our USIH members are often multi-platform thinkers. We scholars are trained to survey and interpret multiple genres, tho I grant that social media can make aggregating that discourse less than easy. We do run a sidebar of our Twitter feed here at the blog, and that can point to other channels of USIH conversation.
As for the Conferences page/tab update: You’re right, our #USIH2020 program page is in progress. We’ve asked colleagues to join us in a new approach this year, and we thank you for thinking through it with us. Once we’ve collected feedback and choice of platform from our participants, we will proudly host a #USIH2020 hub (one click for content) on our USIH homepage. Meanwhile, please feel free to contact our Program Committee with questions and suggestions at [email protected].
Speaking up about–and questioning–how we talk to each other in a Society that we all appreciate is important. We are excited to welcome you to the #USIH2020 program. And, yes! The roundtable featuring Katrina Forrester’s thoughtful, prize-winning scholarship is a fine preview of the events we have in store. Thank you to Richard, LD, and all USIH colleagues for supporting this year’s innovation.
I just want to clarify that my initial comment was not intended to be a criticism of anyone in particular or their choices (I myself occasionally look at Twitter threads even though I’m not “on” Twitter, and I’m aware of the Twitter sidebar at this blog.) Nor was I suggesting or saying that any *particular* discussion of any *particular* topic had migrated from this blog to Twitter (or elsewhere). Nor was I “demanding” that anyone discuss anything in one place or another. Rather, I was trying to make a general observation about the blogosphere vs. Twitter as sites of conversation. I realize my comment was perhaps not clear or not framed in sufficiently general terms and that was my fault. (Lastly, am only a fellow traveler, so to speak, of the Society so my opinions can be viewed with that in mind, I suppose.)