History volume lands major award
NUS Press was the first Asian press to score an AAS prize with this book
An NUS Press volume on the ongoing Islamisation of the Javanese has received a notable book award from US-based Association for Asian Studies (AAS). It is the first time a book published by an Asian press has received an AAS prize.
Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java: A Political, Social, Cultural and Religious History, c 1930 to Present by former NUS Department of History Professor M C Ricklefs was awarded the AAS' 2015 George McT Kahin Prize at the Association's Annual Conference in the US on 27 March. The Kahin Prize is presented biennially to an outstanding scholar of Southeast Asian studies from any discipline or country specialisation to recognise distinguished scholarly work on the region, beyond the author's first book.
Mr Peter Schoppert, Director of NUS Publishing which oversees NUS Press, said that Prof Ricklefs' book was nominated for the Prize because "we think it's a really important book. "It is a major book award in the field of Southeast Asian Studies, we're proud to win that...It's a milestone for us, and mark of the recognition of the quality of our books, he added.
Prof Ricklefs' book builds upon 40 years of research in Indonesian history and is the final of a three-volume series on the history of Javanese Islamisation since the 14th century. The writing and most of the research for this volume were conducted while Prof Ricklefs was at NUS, with the support of grants from NUS and Singapore's Ministry of Education.
The judges' citation explained why the AAS Prize was awarded to Islamisation and Its Opponents in Java: "Drawing on extensive research experience and networks in the field, Ricklefs skilfully weaves together his historical scholarship over the past 40 years with twentieth-century field research, indigenous surveys, and textual studies bearing on the past millennium. The result, steeped in local sources, is this excellent, multidisciplinary contribution to our understandings of present-day Java, the distant and recent pasts from which it and Javanese Islam have developed, and a good sense of their unfolding futures.
