Professor Maureen Warner-Lewis - Peta-Gaye Clachar/Staff Photographer

Professor Maureen Warner-Lewis has once again won the prestigious Caribbean Studies Association (CSA) prize, the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Memorial Award for Caribbean Scholarship.

This time for Archibald Monteath Igbo, Jamaican, Moravian, which was published by the University of the West Indies Press in 2007.

She first won the award in 2004 for Central Africa in the Caribbean: Transcending Time, Transforming Cultures.

Archibald Monteath was selected from among 33 qualified submissions, but had an edge because of its interdisciplinary approach which built on a "lifetime of scholarship".

In announcing the award at the recently held 33rd annual conference of the CSA, held in San Andres Isla, Colombia, the association heralded the work as "a model of scholarship to be followed across the Caribbean".

"For its sheer depth and breadth, this study is impressive, embracing as it does archival and oral history work in Jamaica, Nigeria and Scotland. Even more acting is the interplay between autobiography, biography and the memorial tradition," the citation states.

Outgrowth

Professor Warner-Lewis when asked to explain the approach to the multidisciplinary text said: "The book is an outgrowth of my literary interest in the slave narrative and particularly the Caribbean slave narrative since so few have come to light. It also concerns my interest in Caribbean history, and social and psychological formation. The biography of an individual allowed me to perceive and portray the subject as a person and not simply an anonymous cog in the wheel of a plantation economy.

Mastery of linguistics

It also allowed me to link the histories of the Caribbean and Africa, especially since the formative period of Caribbean scholarship on slavery and the plantation tended not to take into any consideration the prior experiences and earlier socialisation of the enslaved people."

The book is a product of a 15-year investigation which took Professor Warner-Lewis to West Africa, the United States, United Kingdom and around Jamaica. Its successful outcome is due in part to her mastery of linguistics, history and the principles of research. But it is also due to her remarkable curiosity and persistence which led to Archibald's resurrection in a geographical, economic and historical context.

The Caribbean Studies Award is granted annually to books which approach aspects of Caribbean life, conditions and situations from an interdisciplinary perspective. Books are judged on originality, depth of research, advance of methodology or theory, and extent to which a Pan-Caribbean problem or issue is addressed.

This year's selection committee comprised past presidents of the CSA, Pedro Noguera, Jean Stubbs and one past recipient of the award, Humberto García Muñiz.

The award is named after noted Caribbean scholar Professor Gordon K. Lewis and his wife, Sybil. Gordon Lewis, a Welshman, lived and worked in Puerto Rico, and helped write its constitution. He also served as a consultant to the governments of Trinidad and Tobago and the United States Virgin Islands.

Professor Maureen Warner-Lewis is professor emeritus in the Department of Literatures in English at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.