Carina Ray's Book Crossing the Color Line Wins AHA 2016 Wesley-Logan Prize
December 19, 2016
Carina E. Ray, associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies and History Department affiliate, has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Wesley-Logan Prize for her book Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana (Ohio Univ. Press, 2015). The Wesley-Logan Prize is awarded annually by the American Historical Association (AHA) to honor the best book in African diaspora history. The prize will be awarded during a ceremony at the Association's 131st Annual Meeting in Denver, CO, January 5-8, 2017.
"Crossing the Color Line is an innovative study of interracial sex in British West Africa and Europe from the period of colonial expansion to the era of decolonization," commented the prize committee. "It skillfully interweaves readings of individual cases of interracial unions with analyses of broader imperial policies to show how the British sought to contain relations between African and European men and women across racial boundaries. This book is a welcome contribution to the historiographies of West Africa, Europe, and the African diaspora."
The AHA Committee on Minority Historians established the prize in 1992 in memory of two early pioneers in the field, Charles H. Wesley and Rayford W. Logan. The American Historical Association is a nonprofit membership organization founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies.