Academician Barbara Cassin presenting the Inaugural Barbara Cassin Prize.
Photo courtesy of C. Schröder/ Unistra
The inaugural Barbara Cassin Prize for Excellence in Research and Translation has been awarded to Anthony Mangeon (University of Strasbourg) and Dominic Thomas (University of California, Los Angeles). The Alsace Inter-University House for the Social Sciences and Humanities (MISHA) and the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study (USIAS) joined forces in 2025 to establish a new prize for the translation into English of research published in the humanities and social sciences. The 10,000€ prize aims to increase the visibility and international impact of outstanding monographs published in French by researchers based at the University of Strasbourg. The prize also serves to highlight the work of translators in the humanities and social sciences, and in particular the work of human translators. The prize was named in honour of, and presented by, the renowned philosopher and member of the Académie Française, Barbara Cassin, whose influential work, most notably the Dictionary of Untranslatables (Princeton University Press, 2014), originally published as Dictionnaire des intraduisibles (Le Seuil and Le Robert), and Éloge de la traduction (Fayard, 2016), illustrates the complexity of translation and its importance in navigating cultural difference.
Professor Monica Manolescu, Director of USIAS, made the introductory remarks.
Professor Monica Manolescu making introductory remarks.
Photo courtesy of C. Schröder/ Unistra
The Awards Citations were delivered by Professor Victoire Feuillebois, Director of MISHA:
In Anthony Mangeon, author of L’Afrique au futur, we found an exemplary awardee, and to whom we reiterate our warmest congratulations. Anthony, please allow me to introduce you to the few people present tonight who do not already know you. You are Professor of francophone literature in the Faculty of Letters, of which you are also the Dean, and you also direct the Literary Configurations Laboratory. You are a specialist in contemporary literature and your research has explored how works of fiction address major contemporary issues, ethical questions, and questions related to climate change and the development of artificial intelligence. Indeed, these are precisely the kinds of questions – the relationship between fiction and major contemporary challenges – that you address in L’Afrique au futur, a book in which the focus is provided by Afrofuturism, namely the way in which science fiction invents possible futures on or for the African continent.
I take this opportunity to remind you that this award, given to your book, also recognizes your work as an internationally acclaimed scholar, but it also honours your translator, Dominic Thomas, Professor at UCLA, and for whom Strasbourg is something of a second home, since, dear Dominic, you are the recipient of a Gutenberg Chair, most notably for your work on climate change. So, through this translation project, it is both an intellectual friendship and a transatlantic collaboration that is being rewarded, and we are truly very grateful for that. Indeed, this is an example of one of those wonderful partnerships between scholars that helps the University of Strasbourg shine internationally, and we are very happy about that.
Professor Victoire Feuillebois delivering the Awards Citations.
Photo courtesy of C. Schröder/ Unistra
Professor Dominic Thomas thanking the Jury of the Barbara Cassin Prize.
Photo courtesy of Dr. R. Weehuizen / USIAS
Professor Anthony Mangeon presenting his book.
Photo courtesy of C. Schröder/ Unistra
The video link to the award ceremony is available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UYp_w0dRWU&t=1575s
Photographs courtesy of C. Schröder/ Unistra and Dr. Rifka Weehuizen / USIAS.