Event Details

Maurie D. McInnis was awarded the Charles Eldredge Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in American Art for her book   Slaves Waiting for Sale:  Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade.  In this book, McInnis brilliantlyreconstructs the world of slave traders, auctioneers, jails andholding cells, indicating how slavery was both woven into and hidden in the architectural and cultural fabric of southern cities.  The book is a model of visual analysis of specific images and their meanings within a historical context, of research into primary and secondary sources and clarity in thought and argument. McInnis is professor of American art and material culture and associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia.  She received her doctorate from Yale University in 1996.  Her primary research interests are in the cultural and social history of the American South in the 18th and 19th centuries.  Her book The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston  (Univ. North Carolina, 2005), was awarded the Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.