Two UH professors receive national book awards

HONOLULU — Separate books written by UH Mānoa Women’s Studies Professor Meda Chesney-Lind and American Studies Associate Professor Robert Perkinson have been awarded 2010 PASS (Prevention For A Safer Society) Awards by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

Chesney-Lind’s book, Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence, features a broad range of perspectives and empirical studies that seek to separate facts about trends in the use of violence among girls from misconceptions perpetuated by the media.  Rather than attributing girls’ violence to personality or to girls becoming “more like boys,” Chesney-Lind examines the contexts that produce violence in girls, demonstrating how addressing the unique problems that confront girls in dating relationships, families, school hallways and classrooms, and in distressed urban neighborhoods can help reduce girls’ use of violence.  Chesney-Lind, a Kaaawa resident, will be the 2011 Commencement speaker for her alma mater, Whitman College.

Perkinson’s book, Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, covers the history of American punishment, focusing on Texas, the country’s most incarcerated and politically influential state.  Examining the dynamics of race, crime, culture and politics from slavery to the present, it argues that Texas has served as the crucible of a uniquely harsh, racialized and profit-driven style of punishment that became a template for the nation in the post-civil rights era.  Perkinson has written for The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Nation and other publications, and lives in Mānoa with his wife and two daughters.

The PASS Awards are the only national recognition of print and broadcast journalists, TV news and feature reporters, producers, writers, and those in film and literature that focus America’s attention on the criminal justice, juvenile justice and child welfare systems in a thoughtful and considerate manner.