The International Association for Critical Realism (IACR) invites nominations for the Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize. The prize is awarded annually for a book or article that constitutes, motivates or exemplifies the best and/or most innovative new writing in or about the tradition of critical realism. Nominations for books or articles published in 2019 should be made to The Prize Panel Chair, Jamie Morgan:
The closing date for nominations is April 4th. The winner is declared on May 30th.
The
winner is invited to give the annual Cheryl Frank Memorial Lecture at
the IACR Annual Conference or some other suitable venue. If the author
wishes, the lecture will be considered for publication in Journal of Critical Realism.
The Cheryl Frank Committee currently consists of Jamie Morgan (Chair), Monica Kjørstad and Dave Elder-Vass.
Past recipients include Graham Schambler, Christian Smith, Alan Norrie, Ruth Groff, Nick Hostettler, Margaret Archer and Pierpaolo Donati, Chris Sara, Matthew L. N. Wilkinson, Lena Gunnarsson, Leigh Price & Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Doug Porpora, and the late Roy Bhaskar (ed. Merwyn Hartwig).
Cheryl Lynn Frank (1946-2010) was
an American scholar and activist. Born on August 1, 1946 in Illinois,
she married and had two children; was active in the civil rights
movement, participating in Martin Luther King’s march
in Selma, Alabama and later established the first domestic violence
shelter in the USA (in Champaign, Illinois); she worked as a policy
analyst at the state level, as a journalist, editor and freelance
writer. She took masters’ degrees in politics and journalism,
did extensive research on the position of women and native Americans in
the twentieth century and completed extensive doctoral work in cultural
studies and mass communication. She became however increasingly
dissatisfied with the dominant positivist and poststructuralist
methodologies, and at the same time increasingly interested in
spiritual issues.
In November 2002 she met Roy Bhaskar at a
meeting of the Foundation of Light (of which she was President) in
Ithaca, New York. They corresponded and she joined him in London in
February 2003. From then on she was his lover, partner
and inseparable companion, and became utterly devoted to his well-being
and to the cause of critical realism and the philosophy of metaReality,
throwing herself into this work. She died after a short illness on
January 22, 2010, leaving, besides Roy, her two
children and three grandchildren. Her only published work in critical
realism is an essay in Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change (which she
co-edited with Roy and others); but she made a huge contribution,
assisting Roy in his work, and to the movement
and to her many friends within it. The collection of essays, Critical Realism and Spirituality, edited by Mervyn Hartwig and Jamie Morgan, is dedicated to her memory.
Douglas Porpora, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Department of Communication
Drexel University
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia PA 19104
porporad@drexel.edu