Adele E. Clarke Book Award / ReproNetwork

Nomination Process

Our interdisciplinary group of researchers now invites submissions for the 2025 Adele E. Clarke Book Award. This award is for an outstanding book from SHS-STS (Social and Human Sciences/Science and Technology Studies) on reproductive processes, experiences, technologies, politics, and/or practices. The proposed books must have been published in 2023 or 2024. Consistent with the ReproNetwork community, the selection committee thus now welcomes book nominations by SHS and STS scholars: historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, economists, practitioners, public intellectuals and activists.

Initiated by the ReproNetwork community in 2014, the Adele E. Clarke Book Award is presented every other fall to honor a groundbreaking work judged to be the most potentially influential contribution to scholarship on reproduction.

CRITERIA

• The book should make a contribution to understanding of reproduction, i.e. must reflect the quality, timeliness, innovation, and/or overall impact on the field of reproductive studies.
• The book must be sole-authored or co-authored; edited collections and anthologies will not be considered.
•  The book must be an entirely new release; paperback editions of previously-released hardcover books will not be considered.
• The book must have a copyright date of 2023 or 2024.

Please send all questions to the chair of the committee, Jennifer Merchant, jennifer.merchant@u-paris2.fr

NOMINATION PROCEDURE

The deadline for receipt of all materials is May 1, 2025.

Authors, publishers, or other scholars and advocates may nominate a book. Please send a brief letter of nomination to the chair of the prize committee naming the author and book title that has been nominated. The nomination letter may be sent to Jennifer Merchant (jennifer.merchant@u-paris2.fr) or postal service (see address below).

In addition to the letter, please arrange to have the publisher send a paper or electronic copy of the book directly to each member of the Selection Committee – reach out to Jennifer Merchant (jennifer.merchant@u-paris2.fr) for the names and addresses of the 2025 Committee.

Past winners, honorable mentions, and committees*:

2023 Winner: The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects by Sara S. Richardson

Honorable mention: Weighing the Future: Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era by Natali Valdez

2021 Winner: GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health by Rene Almeling

Honorable mentions: Documenting Death: Maternal Mortality and the Ethics of Care in Tanzania by Adrienne Strong and Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America by David Cohen and Carole Joffe

2021 Committee: Chair: Heather Jacobson, Trude Ann Bennett, Lauren A Diamond-Brown, Jennifer Merchant, Kathleen S. Slauson-Blevins

2019 Winner: The Zero Trimester: Pre-Pregnancy Care and the Politics of Reproductive Risk, by Miranda Waggoner

Honorable mentions: Sexual Liberation, Socialist Style: Communist Czechoslovakia and the Science of Desire, 1945–1989, by Kateřina Lišková, and Health Care in Crisis: Hospitals, Nurses, and the Consequences of Policy Change, by Theresa Morris

2019 Committee: Chair: Katrina Kimport, Ugo Edu, Heather Jacobson, Julia McReynolds-Pérez, Lauren MacIvor Thompson

2017 Winner: The Politics of Morality: The Church, The State, and Reproductive Rights in Postsocialist Poland, by Joanna Mishtal

2017 Committee: Chair: Lara Freidenfelds, Ph.D., Katrina Kimport, Tara Gaston, Larry Greil, Mounia El Kotni

2015 Winner: Conceiving Cuba: Reproduction, Women, and the State in the Post-Soviet Era by Elise Andaya

Honorable Mention:  Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India by Amrita Pande

2015 Committee: Chair: Monica J. Casper, Rene Almeling, Lara Freidenfelds, Vanessa Hildebrand, Jennifer Lahl, Center for Bioethics & Culture Network

*All links go to the ReproNetwork Associates program on Amazon to help defray costs of maintaining the website. Thanks for your support.