Professor Laura Fair was awarded the Ogot Book Prize at the November 2019 African Studies Association Annual Meeting in Boston.
The Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize, named in honor of the eminent Kenyan historian BA Ogot, is awarded annually to the author of the best book on East African Studies.
Reel Pleasures brings the world of African moviehouses and the publics they engendered to life, revealing how local fans creatively reworked global media—from Indian melodrama to Italian westerns, kung fu, and blaxploitation films—to speak to local dreams and desires. In it, Laura Fair zeroes in on Tanzanians’ extraordinarily dynamic media cultures to demonstrate how the public and private worlds of film reception brought communities together and contributed to the construction of genders, generations, and urban citizenship over time.