Dana Simmons, an associate professor of society, environment, and health equity at UC Riverside, is the winner of the 2025 Emory Elliott Book Award for her latest work, “On Hunger: Violence and Craving in America, from Starvation to Ozempic,” which is available free online.
The runners-up are Allison Benis White, professor of creative writing, for her poetry collection “A Magnificent Loneliness” and Emily Hue, associate professor of ethnic studies, for her book “Performing Vulnerability: Risking Art and Life in the Burmese Diaspora.”The annual award is conferred on a faculty member at UCR’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences for a book published during the previous academic year. An advisory committee at the Center for Ideas and Society (CIS), which administers the award, selects the finalists and winner.
“I am deeply honored to stand in the company of brilliant scholars Emily Hue and Allison Benis White, and to receive this award,” said Simmons, a historian of science and technology. “The Center for Ideas and Society is where my heart lies at UCR. For decades, CIS has supported transdisciplinary work in health equity, science studies, and the humanities. I would not be the scholar I am today if it were not for CIS.”
The award includes a $1,000 contribution toward the author’s research; the finalists each $250 in research support.
The award is named for Emory Elliott, a UCR professor of English who died in 2009. It was established by his family and friends to honor a book that “best exemplifies the values that characterized Professor Elliott and his contributions to life and letters,” according to the CIS website. “Among these many contributions are the capacity to recognize complexity together with the passion to clarify, the ability to contribute to a conversation rather than to summarize agreements already established, and the intent to further a tradition of creative and scholarly munificence.”
Simmons, who chairs the Department of Society, Environment, and Health Equity, is also the author of “Vital Minimum: Need, Science and Politics in Modern France.”
Presentations, a Q&A, and a reception for the winner and finalists will be held from 5-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 15, at The Stable. The event is free and open to the public.
(Photo: Stan Lim/UCR)