Carol E. Mayer has won the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for her book Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Oceania. The $3,500 prize, given by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, will be awarded at a reception to be held in April.
Published by Figure 1, the book is a study of the stories and journeys of cultural belongings within Canada’s largest Oceanic collection, housed at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at the University of British Columbia. Totalling some 3,500 objects, the collection is Canada’s largest and most diverse accumulation from the vast region of Oceania, which includes the large land bodies of Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Mayer is a celebrated curator who has spent decades tracing, researching, and documenting MOA’s Oceania holdings. The original collection was donated in 1927 by Frank Burnett, Vancouver-based writer and traveller who sailed the Pacific between 1896 to 1923. Written by Mayer in collaboration with MOA, Sea of Islands shares stories and insights from knowledge holders, scholars, and artists from across the Pacific, as well as members of diasporic Oceanic communities.
“I have been travelling the Pacific since 1997, following the footsteps of Frank Burnett, gathering stories, building community relationships, creating formal partnerships, collecting new works for the museum, organising internships and attending conferences,” says Mayer. “All these activities were triggered by my intention to reframe and decolonize the collections by reconnecting objects to their origins, their stories and their journeys.”
The collection has grown significantly, notes Mayer, thanks to the donations from immigrants who brought their memories and collections to Vancouver. “MOA was the obvious new home for the objects from the Pacific. The donors, the new donations, and their stories are now embedded in the fabric of the culture and history of MOA and Vancouver. I was very encouraged when the jurors for this award recognised the relevance of this collection to Vancouver and British Columbia.”
“This book is a wonderfully collaborative study that explores how this vast collection at MOA has evolved, and draws focus to the many stories contained within,” says Dr. Susan E. Parker, UBC’s University Librarian. “We are honoured to present Carol E. Mayer with this year’s Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize.”
Carol E. Mayer is the Research Fellow—Pacific at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. Internationally known for her work as a museum curator, she has published widely on museum-related topics, curated more than forty exhibitions, and received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution and the Sainsbury Research Unit and numerous awards.
This book is available to purchase through the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) Shop.
Shortlisted titles for the prize are:
Tender Labour: Migrant Care Work, Filipina/o Young People, and Family Life across Borders by Jennifer E. Shaw. (UBC Press).
The Thin Edge of Innovation: Metro Vancouver’s Evolving Economy by Roger Hayter, Jerry Patchell, and Kevin Rees. (UBC Press).
About the Prize
The Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Book on British Columbia, sponsored by UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society, recognizes the best scholarly book published by a Canadian author on a B.C. subject. The book prize was established in memory of Basil Stuart-Stubbs, a bibliophile, scholar and librarian who passed away in 2012. Stuart-Stubbs’s many accomplishments included serving as the University Librarian at UBC Library and as the Director of UBC’s School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. Stuart-Stubbs had a leadership role in many national and regional library and publishing activities. During his exceptional career, he took particular interest in the production and distribution of Canadian books and was associated with several initiatives beneficial to authors and their readers, and to Canadian publishing.
