FIU History professor selected as 2021 MAAH Stone Book Award finalist

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FIU Assistant Professor of History Dan Royles has been chosen as a 2021 MAAH (Museum of African American History) Stone Book Award finalist, receiving a $10,000 award for his book To Make the Wounded Whole: The African American Struggle against HIV/AIDS.

To Make the Wounded Whole offers the first comprehensive history of African American AIDS activism, introducing a diverse constellation of activists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and to address its impacts. It is because of the book's recognition of vital African American history — and thorough examination of its crucial role in the battle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic — that it has received praise from both MAAH and fellow academics.

Royles is grateful for the support he has received from FIU, with the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs providing a stepping stone to elevate stories of the fight against HIV/AIDS in Black America.

“The support that I received from my colleagues in the Green School made this book so much better than it would have been otherwise,” said Royles. “Other faculty in the African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) program gave me generous critical feedback on two chapters through the AADS Works-in-Progress series , and I'm grateful to them for sharing their knowledge and insight with me.”

The Department of History also provided Royles several course releases, allowing him the time necessary to write and polish the manuscript. Royles was also awarded the Morris and Anita Broad Research Fellowship in 2017, which helped to cover the cost of essential research travel.

“I'm grateful to the Green School for continuing to support my work, with an Interdisciplinary Research Seed Funding that helped me to get started on my next book project, a biography of the writer Claude Brown.”

Royles' next book, to be titled Finding Claude Brown, will continue his exploration and celebration of African American history, detailing the impact of Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land on the greater conversation surrounding poverty, race and inequality, urban disinvestment and the War on Drugs of the 1970s.

For more information on To Make the Wounded Whole, visit the University of North Carolina Press.