Announcing the Winner of the Seventh Annual Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award

Columbia University Press, in conjunction with the Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce that I Am the People: Reflections on Popular Sovereignty Today by Partha Chatterjee is the winner of the seventh annual Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award.

Partha Chatterjee is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. He is the author of more than twenty books, including The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (2004) and The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power (2012).

Sarah Cole’s Inventing Tomorrow: H. G. Wells and the Twentieth Century and Bernard E. Harcourt’s Critique and Praxis are co-runner-ups for the Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award.

The Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award is given to the Columbia University faculty member(s) whose book published by the Press in the two years prior brings the highest distinction to Columbia University and Columbia University Press for its outstanding contribution to academic and public discourse. The winner is selected by a jury composed of the current members of the Press’s Faculty Publication Committee.

In presenting the award, Professor Adam Reich, chair of the Distinguished Book Award jury and chair of Columbia University Press’s Faculty Publication Committee, commented, “Chatterjee’s genealogy of populist politics, in India and around the world, is at once a significant intervention into political theory and a trenchant diagnosis of our contemporary condition. Chatterjee brings critical theory to life, using it not only to deconstruct the modern nation-state but also to excavate the more hopeful possibilities embedded in the present. We are thrilled to recognize Chatterjee’s contribution with Columbia University Press’s 2021 Distinguished Book Award.”

The other members of the Distinguished Book Award jury were Jenny Davidson, Rae Silver, and Branka Arsic.

A ceremony to honor the winners of both the 2020 and the 2021 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award will be held on October 27 in the Faculty Room at Low Library at Columbia University. The authors of the winning books each receive a certificate and a cash award of $10,000.