Director of Peace Studies and chair of Black Studies Daive (D.A.) Dunkley’s recent book, “Women and Resistance in the Early Rastafari Movement,” won the Barbara T. Christian Literary Award 2022 from the Caribbean Studies Association. The award is given to “the best book published within the most recent three-year period which explicitly and innovatively examines topics of race, gender, sexuality, class, and intersectionality.”

 Dunkley’s book examines the experiences of Rastafari women in colonial Jamaica, where government oppression and silencing were the norm for those engaged in the struggle for Black liberation. Among other topics, the book discusses the significance of petitions by Black women who refused to accept the dominant white supremacist narrative of British colonialism.