Susan Slyomovics receives American Anthropological Association book award
Sean Brenner/UCLA Humanities (portrait), Stanford University Press
A reviewer described Susan Slyomovics’ book as a “masterful piece of work — theoretically adept, ethnographically attuned, moving and engagingly written.”
| December 5, 2025
For her 2024 book, “Monuments Decolonized: Algeria’s French Colonial Heritage,” Susan Slyomovics has been honored by the American Anthropological Association.
Slyomovics, a UCLA distinguished professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures, and of anthropology, received the association’s Edward M. Bruner Book Prize.
“Monuments Decolonized,” published by Stanford University Press, examines what became of French-built war memorials in Algeria after Algeria achieved its independence in 1962, including the transfer back to France of numerous sculptures.
“Memorials, statues and monuments often register harms and losses inflicted by colonial conquest and wars in the past,” Slyomovics said. “But because so many colonial-era monuments remain — and I found many were beautiful sculptures — both in France and Algeria, things can be done to them in the present. They can be repurposed, preserved, destroyed, moved elsewhere and so on.”
Slyomovics’ research involved extensive field work in both nations, as well as interviews with French and Algerian heritage actors and artists.
Writing on behalf of the award committee, University of London anthropologist Kathleen Adams called the book a “masterful piece of work — theoretically adept, ethnographically attuned, moving and engagingly written.” The Bruner prize is presented annually by the association’s Council on Heritage and the Anthropology of Tourism.
Slyomovics’ wide-ranging research interests include visual anthropology, folklore and material culture, gender and human rights, with a particular focus on the Middle East and North Africa. “Monuments Decolonized” is her fifth book.