{"id":625,"date":"2014-11-13T17:54:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?p=625"},"modified":"2014-11-13T17:54:52","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:54:52","slug":"christopher-hager-wins-16th-annual-frederick-douglass-book-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/2014\/11\/13\/christopher-hager-wins-16th-annual-frederick-douglass-book-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Hager Wins 16th Annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of more than 90 books about slavery and abolition, Yale University\u2019s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has chosen a \u201cprofoundly original\u201d work upon which to bestow the 16th annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize: Word by Word<\/a><\/em>, by Trinity\u2019s Christopher Hager<\/a>, associate professor of English.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Christopher Hager (right) with filmmaker Steven Spielberg. Christopher Hager was a finalist for the 2014 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.<\/p><\/div>\n

In Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing<\/em>, Hager studies the various writings of everyday slaves, including letters, diaries, and petitions by freedmen. Through them, he examines the relationship between literacy and freedom. For this research, he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe emancipation of American slaves was not only a social and political revolution but also a singular moment in the history of written expression,\u201d Hager said. \u201cUntold thousands of African Americans who had been deprived of literacy gained unprecedented access to education at the same time they achieved their freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

This summer, the book was named a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, along with Camillia Cowling\u2019s Conceiving Freedom: Women of Color, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro<\/em> and Alan Taylor\u2019s The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772\u20131832. Word by Word<\/em> was also a finalist for the 2014 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristopher Hager\u2019s Word by Word presents a profoundly original, illuminating approach to reading texts by and about enslaved African Americans,\u201d the jury said of their choice for the prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a great honor to win the Frederick Douglass Prize,\u201d said Hager. \u201cI began working on Word by Word<\/em> around the time I arrived at Trinity in 2007, and my research generated not only the book but also a class I teach, \u2018Literacy & Literature.\u2019 I owe a debt to the Trinity students who have taken that class with me, and to our discussions of some of the material that went into Word by Word<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Frederick Douglass Book Prize was jointly established by Yale University\u2019s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The $25,000 prize will be presented to Hager at a ceremony in New York in January 2015. For more information, visit the Gilder Lehrman Center\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of more than 90 books about slavery and abolition, Yale University\u2019s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition has chosen a \u201cprofoundly original\u201d work upon which to bestow the 16th annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize: Word by Word, by Trinity\u2019s Christopher Hager, associate professor of English. In Word by Word: Emancipation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}