Celeste Day Moore of Hamilton College Wins Book Prize From the Society for French Historical Studies

Celeste Day Moore, an assistant professor of history at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, was awarded the 2022 Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies. The prize is awarded each year for the best book published for the first time by a North American press in one of the two following fields: the history of French-American relations; or the comparative history of France and North, Central, or South America. The award is named for Gilbert Chinard (1881-1972), a French-born literary historian who taught at Brown University (1908-12), the University of California, Berkeley (1912-1919), Johns Hopkins University (1919-36), and Princeton University (1937-1950).

Dr. Moore was honored for her book Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Duke University Press, 2021). The book traces the history of African-American music across the Francophone world, where it took on new meaning, value, and political power alongside the decolonization of the French empire. By showing how the popularity of African American music was intertwined with contemporary structures of racism and imperialism, Dr. Moore demonstrates this music’s centrality to postwar France and the convergence of decolonization, the expanding globalized economy, the Cold War, and worldwide liberation movements.

Dr. Moore joined the faculty at Hamilton College in 2014. She is a graduate of Haverford College in Pennsylvania and earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.