The criteria for this award include appropriateness for the target audience; clarity of presentation; excellent quality of both the selections and the commentary; clear, and clearly met, pedagogical aims and effective design; and potential for broad impact.
Members of the prize committee praised many aspects of the book as a “clear and concise beginner’s commentary of an understudied ancient author whose straightforward style is ideal for beginning and intermediate Latin students.” Other laudatory comments note the book’s range of impact observing that “no prior edition of Perpetua’s passion is designed for students like this one has been. It is priced right (under $10), and it has a text similar to Pharr’s Aeneid—approachable and readable by advanced Latin students.” On the clarity of presentation one member wrote: “This commentary includes a clear and accessible introduction, which provides the reader with a solid grounding in the debates about the text without strongly taking a side … and draws the reader in to why the text remains compelling, primarily through its explication of the various identities of Perpetua and the complex history of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century.” The committee agrees that this text, vocabulary, and commentary on the Passio “offers (for students of Latin) a rare, first-person depiction of a woman’s perspective within the ancient Roman world” and “has the potential to engage language classrooms in current conversations in classics and the world about gender, race, and authority.”
Pixelia Publishing 