Shadow Plays shortlisted for new book prize that recognizes innovative, equitable, and inclusive access to humanities scholarship
Providence, R.I. [Brown University] The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has announced the finalists for the 2024 ACLS Open Access Book Prizes and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Awards. Open access publishing offers exciting new opportunities for scholars to share their research with wider audiences. At the same time, it provides readers around the world with access to reliable and thoughtful studies of the human experience.
The finalists, five history titles and five multimodal works, were selected by a distinguished panel of scholars, librarians, digital humanities experts, and accessibility specialists from among 112 submissions from 46 publishers. One open access monograph in each category will receive dual awards: authors receive the $20,000 ACLS Open Access Book Prize, and publishers of the winning titles receive the $30,000 Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award to support forthcoming books that would not otherwise be published open access. The prizes, among the largest for scholarly books, will be presented in May 2024 at the ACLS Annual Meeting.
Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World (Stanford University Press, 2022), by Professor of Italian Studies Massimo Riva, is among the five finalists in the multimodal, born-digital category. Developed by Brown University Digital Publications (BUDP), Shadow Plays explores popular forms of entertainment used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to transport viewers to a new world, foreshadowing present-day virtual, augmented, and extended reality experiences. At a time when the gap between simulation and reality is getting ever smaller, a cultural-historical exploration of the pre-history of virtual reality can help us better understand the present in light of the past while exploring the past using the tools forged in the present.
“My topic was perfectly suited for a born-digital publication,” explained the author in an interview with ACLS. “I was thrilled at the opportunity to reach a broader audience, thanks to the open access format. Through Brown University Digital Publications, I was able to design and implement a digital format combining scholarly accuracy and interactive features (models and simulations) aimed at the general reader.”
Shadow Plays was also the category winner for Best E-Product for the 47th Annual PROSE Awards juried by the Association of American Publishers. Other award-winning publications developed by Brown University Digital Publications include Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary (University of Virginia Press, 2020), awarded the 2022 Roy Rosenzweig Prize in Creativity in Digital History by the American Historical Association; and A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures (MIT Press, 2022), which was shortlisted for the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan International Book Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy. Fourteen other publication projects are in development.Questions about BUDP or Shadow Plays can be addressed to Allison Levy, Director of Brown University Digital Publications (allison_levy@brown.edu).
About ACLS and Arcadia
Formed a century ago, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a nonprofit federation of 80 scholarly organizations. As the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS upholds the core principle that knowledge is a public good. In supporting its member organizations, ACLS utilizes its endowment and $37 million annual operating budget to expand the forms, content, and flow of scholarly knowledge, reflecting our commitment to diversity of identity and experience. ACLS collaborates with institutions, associations, and individuals to strengthen the evolving infrastructure for scholarship. In all aspects of our work, ACLS is committed to principles and practices in support of racial and social justice.
Arcadia is a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage and promote open access to knowledge. Since 2002 Arcadia has awarded more than $1 billion to organizations around the world.
About Brown University Digital Publications
Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Brown partners with leading scholarly publishers to ensure that these groundbreaking works are validated via rigorous academic review and reach the broadest possible audience for the greatest possible impact. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.
