KNOXVILLE — Two books published by the University of Tennessee Press have received awards.
“Two Carpenters: Architecture and Building in Early New England, 1799-1859,” by J. Ritchie Garrison, received the 2006 Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize at the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s 27th annual meeting. The prize recognizes outstanding books published about North American vernacular architecture and cultural landscapes.
Also, Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, editors of “Encyclopedia of Appalachia,” have received the Weatherford Award for outstanding writing about Appalachia for 2006. They were honored at the 30th annual meeting of the Appalachian Studies Association hosted by Maryville College.
‘Two Carpenters’
J. Ritchie Garrison drew on his expertise as director of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and as professor of history at the University of Delaware to examine the lives of two New England carpenters, Calvin and George Stearns. By tracing the lives and careers of these two carpenters, Garrison provokes readers to consider why things look the way they do, how they got that way, and what they mean.
Award judge Gretchen Buggeln said the book “is both an excellent point of entry for a student newly discovering the methods and questions of vernacular architecture and a rich study that will ask scholars to rethink their understanding of American rural architecture of the first half of the 19th century.”
“Two Carpenters” is the fourth book published by UT Press to receive the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award.
‘Encyclopedia of Appalachia’
Rudy Abramson spent 25 years as a journalist and Washington correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Jean Haskell was director of the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University.
Together, Abramson and Haskell organized 1,200 volunteer editors and contributors to compile the 1,864-page “Encyclopedia of Appalachia,” UT Press’ largest publishing project to date.
“The press is pleased to have been a part of this collaborative project with the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services,” said Jennifer Siler, UT Press director.
The encyclopedia details subjects traditionally associated with Appalachia — folklore, handcrafts, mountain music, foods and coal mining — but goes far beyond regional stereotypes to treat such wide-ranging topics as the aerospace industry, ethnic diversity in the coalfields, education reform, linguistic variation and the contested notion of what it means to be Appalachian, both inside and outside the region.
Berea College’s Appalachian Center and Hutchins Library co-sponsor the annual Weatherford Awards, established in 1971 by A. H. Perrin to honor the late W.D. Weatherford Sr., author and pioneer in Appalachian development, youth work and race relations.
UT Press is the only university publisher whose authors have won the award six times.
For more about UT press, see www.utpress.org.
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Contacts:
Tom Post, (865) 974-3321, tpost@utk.edu
Amy Blakely, (865) 974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu
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