Jim Sykes Awarded Inaugural Monsoon Book Prize in Anthropology and Koskoff Prize Honorable Mention for Sounding the Indian Ocean

January 16, 2025
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Jim Sykes, Undergraduate Chair and Professor of Music, was recently awarded the inaugural Monsoon Prize in Indian Ocean Studies (Archaeology and Anthropology) and received honorable mention for the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Koskoff Prize for his book Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape, co-edited with Julia Byl, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta.

"Sounding the Indian Ocean is the first volume to integrate the fields of ethnomusicology and Indian Ocean studies. Drawing on historical and ethnographic approaches, the book explores what music reveals about mobility, diaspora, colonialism, religious networks, media, and performance. Collectively, the chapters examine different ways the Indian Ocean might be “heard” outside of a reliance on colonial archives and elite textual traditions, integrating methods from music and sound studies into the history and anthropology of the region. Challenging the area studies paradigm—which has long cast Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as separate musical cultures—the book shows how music both forms and crosses boundaries in the Indian Ocean world" (University of California Press).

ABOUT THE MONSOON BOOK PRIZES

Sponsored by the German University of Technology in Oman – Gutech, and hosted by Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia, the purpose of the Monsoon Book Prizes is to support advanced scholarship on the Indian Ocean world by awarding three awards a year to outstanding, peer-reviewed texts (Georgia State University).

ABOUT THE KOSKOFF PRIZE

The Ellen Koskoff Edited Volume Prize honors each year a book collection of ethnomusicological essays of exceptional merit edited by a scholar or scholars, one of whom must be a member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (Society for Ethnomusicology).

Read More Information About or Purchase the Book Here