The 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Has Been Awarded to Two Black Scholars

The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University has announced the recipients of the 2024 Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The award is presented annually by Yale University, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City, to the best book written in English on the topics of slavery, resistance, or abolition that was published in the preceding year.

Marlene L. Daut, professor of French and African diaspora studies at Yale University, was honored for her book, Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2023). The book discusses the history and scholarship of famous and lesser-known eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Haitian historians, writers, and political figures. Dr. Daut was not originally named a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize in Yale’s initial announcement in August, but was added to the pool of finalists in October at the request of the jury.

A Yale faculty member since 2022, Dr. Daut teaches courses on Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. She also serves as co-editor of global Black history and theory at Public Books. Prior to joining the Yale community, she taught at the University of Virginia, Claremont Graduate College in California, and the University of Miami.

In addition to her expertise on the Haitian Revolution, Dr. Daut is a scholar of the literary cultures of the greater Caribbean and racial politics in global media, particularly film and television. She has authored several other books, including the forthcoming The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe (Knopf, 2025).

Dr. Daut is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in California, where she double-majored in English and French. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

Sara E. Johnson, professor of literature and the Americas at the University of California, San Diego, was honored for her book, Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro and University of North Carolina Press, 2023). The biography examines Moreau de Saint-Méry’s writings on colonial Saint Domingue and the historiography of the French Caribbean.

In her current appointment at the University of California, San Diego, Dr. Johnson serves as co-director of the Black Studies Project. She holds affiliations in the Black diaspora and African American studies program, the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, the department of ethnic studies, and the critical gender studies program.

As a scholar, Dr. Johnson’s work centers on the literature, theory, and history of the Hispanophone, Francophone, and Anglophone Caribbean and its diasporas; hemispheric American literature and cultural studies; the Age of Revolution in the extended Americas; and music and dance of the African diaspora. She has conducted extensive research abroad, including projects in Senegal, Cuba, Haiti, and Martinique. She has authored one other book, The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (University of California Press, 2022).

Dr. Johnson is a graduate of Yale University, where she double-majored in comparative literature and African American studies. She holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Stanford University.