Yolanda Covington-Ward, an associate professor in the Dietrich School's Department of Africana Studies, has been selected to receive the highly competitive Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology for her book Gesture and Power.
Established in 2007, the award honors the memory of Elliott P. Skinner, Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Skinner was a prolific scholar, diplomat, and founding member of the AfAA. The award aims to recognize Africanist anthropology scholars whose books exhibit originality, make advances in ethnographic and theoretical scholarship, and have the potential to gain broader visibility. The Association for Africanist Anthropology (AfAA) exists to stimulate, strengthen, and advance anthropology by promoting the study of Africa, as well as Africanist scholarship and the professional interests of Africanist anthropologists in and outside of the African Continent.
Covington-Ward has a secondary appointment in the Department of Anthropology. She is also an affiliated faculty member in the Global Studies Center, the African Studies Program, and the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Programs. Her research places the body at the center of human experience, and focuses on the dynamic multidirectional relationship between physical bodies and group identity. She has been the recipient of a number of prestigious fellowships and honors, including the Ron Brown Scholarship, a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship, an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Rackham Merit Fellowship, an Institute for the Humanities Fellowship, a Fulbright fellowship, a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and most recently she has been selected as a Pitt Faculty Fellow at the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh.