Spires wins MLA award for ‘Practice of Citizenship’ book

Derrick R. Spires, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won the Modern Language Association (MLA) Prize for a First Book for “The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States.” In the book, Spires examines the parallel development of early Black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship between 1787 and 1861.