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SoRaT Staff Achieve Book Prizes

2009/10/08 11:11:20 AM


From left: Professor Michael Chapman, Doctor Sarojini Nadar, Professor Isabel Phiri and Professor Dharmanand Baboolal (receiving an award on behalf of Professor Jacek Banasiak)

Four prominent UKZN academics received the University’s prestigious book prize awards for 2006 and 2007 at a special awards function held at the Westville Campus earlier this week.
In the academic books category for 2006, A-rated researcher and senior academic in the school of Literary studies, Media and Creative Arts, Professor Michael Chapman, won the award for his well acclaimed book – Art Talk, Politics Talk -- a collection of interrelated essays -- offering perspectives on how we talk about art in a politically demanding society.

Professor Chapman said he was honoured to have won the book prize - instituted as an encouragement to researchers to pursue what, in some areas, is still the internationally recognised benchmark: “not the article, but the monograph.”

“The National Department of Education research system doesn't give much encouragement to the book-length study. It is heartening, therefore, that UKZN has acknowledged this book,” said Chapman.
Subtitled ‘A Consideration of Categories’, Chapman says that in the years of struggle -- the 1970s and 80s -- the society and its art were mostly constructed, interpreted and evaluated within strongly opposing categories: oppression versus liberation; white versus black, etc.
“This collection looks at key points in our literary culture from a 'post-apartheid' perspective. It interprets literature through a more flexible, I think more complex set of categories. Is South Africa, Africa or the West? How do we turn the ancient Zulu praise poem to contemporary significance? Is Mandela an African? Of course he is, but his intellectual understandings encompass several categories from Western liberalism to African ubuntu,” said Chapman.
Chapman says he tried to respond to a situation not only 'after apartheid', but also after the fall of the Berlin wall.
“To use current globalspeak, the book asks how the South and North may enter into challenging conversation. To turn the challenge to the role of the university, how does UKZN attend simultaneously to national developments in Africa and the universal ideals of enquiry as encapsulated in the Bologna Agreement?”

Art Talk, Politics Talk is the second Book Prize Chapman has won following the 1999 University of Natal Book Prize for, ‘Southern African Literatures’ (1996).

In the Edited Books category for 2006 Professor Isabel Phiri and Dr Sarojini Nadar of the University’s School of Religion and Theology, won the award for their contributions as co-editors of the book – African Women, Religion and Health : Essays in Honour of Mercy Oduyoye – a collection of essays. The authors of the book were mainly members of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians.

Inspired by legendary icon, Ghanaian feminist theologian, Mercy Oduyoye, co-editors Phiri and Nadar said the book was compiled in honour of her contribution to gender activism. Oduyoye started the movement known as the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, in 1989. The mission statement of the group is to undertake research and publish theological literature written by African women with a special focus on religion and culture. The circle has since its establishment published more than 100 books. Phiri and Nadar thought it fitting to profile Oduyoye’s achievement with this book and bring attention to women’s voices, voices that Nadar says, are often neglected in theological discourse.

Both Phiri and Nadar said they were inspired by Oduyoye’s drive to make the African woman’s voice heard, “The person Mercy is, inspired me. With her you get motivated to stand and be counted as a women,” said Phiri.

The book was well received by many, with some Universities, like the divinity school at Yale University, having adopted it as course material.
“It is not often that literature produced by African Women is recognised in this manner, feminist scholarship is generally not taken seriously and it is therefore an extreme honour that UKZN has given such acknowledgement, “said Nadar.

Professor Jacek Banasiak, a senior academic in the School of Mathematical Sciences, won the award in the 2007 Academic Books category, for his book titled - Perturbations of Positive Semigroups with Applications-. The book is said to be, “an essential one-stop reference for graduate and postgraduate students and researchers in applied analysis and mathematical physics who are interested in the application of functional analytic techniques to concrete problems arising in physics, biology and engineering” – www.springer.com

Banasiak says the book teaches the reader how to apply sophisticated mathematics to concrete mathematical problems and how proper mathematics can explain paradoxical phenomena observed in the applied sciences.
“This theory, as well as the applications, has never appeared in a self-contained form. There are books dealing exclusively with theoretical aspects, books treating particular applications (such as fragmentation-coagulation processes) but, in my opinion, this is the first unified presentation of both theory and applications in this field,” said Banasiak.

On receiving the award Banasiak said, “It is my second time winning an award, but still it is nice to be recognised, not only by for quantity but also for quality.”

http://www.ukzn.ac.za/News.aspx?id=544

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