Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Even as this issue of Politics & Gender appears in print, a committee of scholars (Kimberly Morgan, Vanita Seth, and Wendy Gunther-Canada in 2011) is serving the discipline by undertaking the fascinating and painful task of choosing a book (or books) upon which to bestow the American Political Science Association's Victoria Schuck Award for Best Book on Gender Politics. Twenty three committees have given the award to 32 books since the first awards were made in 1988. The Schuck Award is one of only four association-wide book awards (the others, of course, are the Ralph Bunche Award for ethnic and cultural pluralism; the Gladys Kammerer Award for best book in U.S. national policy; and the Woodrow Wilson Award for Best Book as chosen by the Woodrow Wilson Foundation on government, politics, or international relations).1 How did the young field of gender politics reach such heights of scholarly recognition so soon?
A quarter century after the award's establishment in 1986, it seems appropriate to recall the beginnings of the Schuck Award, to pause to appreciate the accomplishments and spirit of its founder, Victoria Schuck, and to reflect on what the award has meant to the field of gender politics research. In this issue of Politics & Gender, we take the opportunity to depart momentarily from publishing the customary reviews of new books. Instead, we are celebrating the scholarly excellence signified by the Schuck Award winners, chosen by almost 70 scholars who have served on the award committees over the years, some of whom have themselves won the award2--while we also think of all the nominees who did not win but whose merit caused Schuck committees a good deal of anguish!
I well remember that particular anguish, when the Schuck Award committee I chaired in 1994 struggled to call one book "the best" among the gratifyingly but dauntingly large group of more than 30 books published in 1993 that had been nominated by their publishers. That year, my committee awarded the Schuck prize to Cynthia Daniels's At Women's Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights. When we learned that Daniels was preparing her tenure and promotion dossier, we realized that we had an opportunity...