Three Women Scholars to Receive Lillian Smith Book Awards

The Southern Regional Council in conjunction with the University of Georgia, Piedmont College, and the Georgia Center for the Book have announced three winners of the 2019 Lillian Smith Book Awards. The three winners will be honored on September 1 at the DeKalb County Public Library.

Lillian Smith was the author of Strange Fruit, a 1944 novel about interracial romance. She was a White southern feminist and advocate for civil rights during the Jim Crow era.

The three winners of this year Lillian Smith Book Awards are all women with current academic affiliations.

Rachel Devlin is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University in New Jersey. She is the author of A Girls Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women Who Desegregated America’s Schools (Basic Books, 2018). Dr. Devlin joined the faculty at Rutgers University in 2011. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University. Dr. Devlin is also the author of Relative Intimacy:  Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

Virginia Eubanks is an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany of the State University of New York System. She was honored for her book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor (St. Martin’s Press, 2018). Dr. Devlin joined the faculty at the University at Albany in 2004. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in American literary culture. Dr. Eubanks holds a master’s degree in rhetoric and communication and a Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy New York.

Vanessa Siddle Walker is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Educational Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. Her latest book is entitled The Lost Education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the Hidden Heroes Who Fought for Justice in Schools (The New Press, 2018). Dr. Walker joined the faculty at Emory University in 1990. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she majored in education. She holds a master’s degree in English education and an educational doctorate from Harvard University.