We are pleased to announce that Associate Professor Maureen Mahon has recently won three prestigious awards for her book, Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll. 

Last month, Professor Mahon was awarded the 2021 Alan Merriam Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology at the SEM Annual Meeting. This prize is one of the highest honors awarded by the SEM⁠ and recognizes the most distinguished English-language monograph in the field of ethnomusicology, published as the author’s second or a later monograph.  Also during the annual meeting, Black Diamond Queens was awarded the 2021 Marcia Herndon Prize by the Gender and Sexualities Section of the Society for Ethnomusicology. This prize honors exceptional ethnomusicological work in gender and sexuality.

Professor Mahon also received the 2021 Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society (AMS) at its annual meeting this past week. This award was inaugurated in 1967 to recognize the most distinguished book in musicology published during the previous year. It is named after Otto Kinkeldey, Honorary President of the Society until his death in 1966. He held the first chair in musicology at a university in the United States at Cornell University between 1930 and 1946, was a charter member of the Society, and served as its President in 1935–36 and 1941–42.

Black Diamond Queens is the first book to be awarded prizes in both the disciplines of musicology and ethnomusicology—a testament to the far-reaching impact and interdisciplinary scope of Professor Mahon's work.

Please join us in congratulating Professor Mahon on this unprecedented achievement!