Science & Society was founded in 1936 amidst the social struggles of that era. There was at the time a growing interest in Marxism among scholars and intellectuals that accompanied us in the US, and internationally due to the growing danger of fascism. S&S has been publishing regularly since then -86 years- and is the longest continuously published Marxist scholarly journal published in any language in the world.
Just as the 1930s led to the founding of the journal, the struggles and social crises of today have sparked a renewed interest in Marxism, especially among young people. To contribute to these developments among students, both undergraduate and graduate, S&S has sponsored:
The Leith Mullings Graduate Prize
Leith Mullings (1945 –2020) was an urban anthropologist, a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, President of the Anthropology Association, a former Editorial Board member and long-time supporter of Science & Society. She was author of numerous books and her research ranged from health in Africa, the position of African American Women, and the impact of gentrification on Harlem. Among her books are New Social Movements in the African Diaspora: Challenging Global Apartheid, editor (2009), Let Nobody Turn Us Around: An Anthology of African American Social and Political Thought from Slavery to the Present, (co-editor with Manning Marable, 2009) and Gender, Race, Class and Health: Intersectional Approaches (co-edited with Amy Schulz, 2006.) She was a founding member of the Black Radical Congress and an activist in her profession and her community.
The Gerald Meyer Undergraduate Prize
Gerald Meyer (1942-2022) was a professor at Hostos Community College from its founding in 1968 until his death. He was a long-time member of the Science and Society Editorial Board. Hostos was founded to serve the largely Puerto Rican community in the South Bronx in New York City. From the beginning Meyer’s activism and scholarship were connected. He fought to preserve Hostos from efforts to close it down and was an active supporter of the struggles in the Puerto Rican community. His book Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician (1989) highlighted the coalition between Italians, Puerto Ricans and African American in East Harlem and the role that Vito Marcantonio played as a congressman in leading and cementing that coalition. He continued with an edited volume, The Lost History of Italian American Radicalism (2003). Meyer was a committed undergraduate teacher, a Marxist, an openly gay man, and a true New York City radical intellectual.
For the 2022-2023 cycle, we are pleased to announce the following award decisions.
The Gerald Meyer Undergraduate Award:
- Tianle Zhang (Notre Dame): Reification as Ecological Critique
- Reuben Kadushen (Swarthmore): Black Folk, Then and Now and the Late Du Bois’s Marxist Dialectic
The Leith Mullings Graduate Award:
- Ioannis Bougiatiotis (New School): Means of capitalist development: a radical political economy critique of the trade regime debate
- Isobel Plowright (Columbia): The Universal Republic: On the Origins of the International Workingmen’s Association in the United States (1853-1859)
The Leith Mullings Graduate Award Honorable Mention:
- Arielle Concilio Parra (Complutense University of Madrid): Disability, Pauperism, and the Relative Surplus Population: Capitalist Accumulation and Crisis
- Mario Cancel-Bigay (Columbia): Puerto Rican Nueva Canción: Challenging and Consenting to Neoliberalism in a Colonial Context
