Dr Claire Shaw wins the 2017 BASEES Women's Forum Book Prize for 'Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917-1991' (Cornell University Press, 2017)

Dr Claire Shaw (University of Warwick) is the recipient of the 2018 BASEES Women’s Forum Book Prize for her book Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, Community, and Soviet Identity, 1917-1991 (Cornell University Press, 2017). The judges, Barbara Heldt and Dan Healey, issued the following citation:

‘From the beginning of the Soviet era, the social power of the deaf, their agency and autonomy, was tied to sovietness. This statement, however, oversimplifies a complex history, which Claire Shaw explicates in remarkable detail, drawing on both published and archival sources. Her book expands the scope of our understanding of behaviours and identity in Soviet history, while also providing glimpses into the pre-revolutionary and post-Soviet eras. How deaf identity has been marked by separateness v. inclusion, the status of sign language, the dignity of work, criminality, gender and many other issues will make this landmark study a classic read.’

Barbara Havelková (University of Oxford) also received an honourable mention from the judges for Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism (Bloomsbury, 2017).