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The Rachel Carson Prize celebrates an outstanding monograph in the field of STS. It is named after writer, scientist, and ecologist Rachel Carson whose life and work made a profound impact on public awareness of chemical hazards, launching widespread grassroots environmental activism. In honour of Carson, the award acknowledges not only scholarly rigour but an ability to contribute to public debate on significant social and political issues of the moment.
The committee is proud to announce that this year’s prize is awarded to Angela Frederick’s Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster.
The committee received 30 books for consideration and shortlisted 6 works for this year’s prize, assessing them based on their scholarly contribution and alignment with the mission of the Carson Prize. The committee considered Frederick’s book to be outstanding across all evaluation criteria.
Disabled Power is a striking and lucid account of what happens when infrastructures fail. Drawing on the story of an unusual cold wave and winter storm in Texas, Frederick describes the multiple life-threatening challenges faced by people with disabilities, showing how they struggled to survive without electricity to power assistive devices or access lifesaving medications due to the “disablement” of infrastructure caused by the storm.
The book is original where it matters most. It draws on 58 interviews with disabled Texans and parents of disabled children to illustrate how the condition of vulnerability is constituted through policy and infrastructure failure. Her work takes great care to emphasize the forms of resilience and creativity exercised by Texans during this time, discussing their strategies as "disaster hackers" and builders of care webs.
The book fulfills the mission of Rachel Carson’s legacy: it takes a harm that institutions have rendered invisible and makes it publicly undeniable. When the Texas grid failed, disabled people died in numbers no one recorded, while emergency registries "took a body count" without rescuing anyone. It artfully and originally demonstrates the core STS lesson that systems become visible in moments of breakdown. Ultimately, the book holds the wanton neoliberal shifts in infrastructural provisioning and governance in Texas responsible for removing the safety nets that thoughtful systems plan for and provide to tide over emergencies.
The lessons of Disabled Power go far beyond Texas and this single disaster. It has implications for how to recognize and apprehend preventable suffering in global infrastructures, where climate-driven disasters are becoming ever more routine. For these reasons, the committee was unanimous in their decision to award Anne Frederick the 2026 Rachel Carson Prize.
It is an honor of a lifetime to be selected as the 2026 winner of the Rachel Carson Prize. This award bears the name of Rachel Carson, a marine biologist and writer who modeled for us how to put science in service for the public good. In both her professional and personal life, Rachel Carson exemplified the power of care. I hope my own work reflects the lessons I take from Carson’s legacy – that nature, infrastructure, and human lives are inextricably interconnected and that no human being should be regarded as disposable.
In 2021, during a massive winter storm, millions of Texans endured the most significant bulk power failure in U.S. history while trapped for days in their freezing homes. In my book, Disabled Power, I illuminate the experiences of people with disabilities and caregivers who endured this preventable disaster. I highlight how disabled residents shouldered disproportionate harm as infrastructure collapsed around them. Yet those I interviewed were not passive victims in the face of infrastructural failures. They deployed remarkable creativity and resourcefulness to endure. They also contributed to the well-being of those in their social networks, even as they simultaneously received care from others.
Every disaster is a disability disaster. Disabled people are an integral part of the fabric of every community that has been, and that will be, impacted by extreme weather events. All of these political and policy stories will have their own tenor. Yet one thing is certain: disabled people around the world will continue to endure disproportionate burdens as weather events expose and amplify infrastructural weaknesses. Mitigating this harm and actualizing our more just futures requires a deeper understanding of who disabled people really are—their strengths and their contributions alongside their vulnerabilities—in our rapidly changing world. This is the power we all deserve.
I am incredibly grateful to the members of the Rachel Carson Prize committee for this recognition. I also thank the team at NYU Press for believing in this project and for helping me bring this book to fruition. Most importantly, I am grateful to the Texans with disabilities and caregivers who volunteered to share their stories with me. It remains my utmost commitment to continue to share their stories with the care and respect they deserve.
Angela Frederick is Associate Professor of Sociology at The University of Texas at El Paso. Dr. Frederick is a qualitative researcher who is currently working at the nexus of medical and environmental sociology. Frederick earned her doctorate in sociology from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
Honorable Mentions
The Carson prize committee would like to extend an Honorable Mention to Nicholas Shapiro for his book Homesick (Duke University Press, 2026).
Homesick is a beautifully written and profoundly affecting book that makes the slow violence of toxic exposure palpable for readers. The committee were impressed by the expansiveness of the fieldwork, by the heart and grace of both Shapiro’s writing and his relationships as they are developed across the chapters, and by the way the author does in his book what Rachel Carson herself did: making visible how chemical living in the 21st century becomes embodied in our daily and political lives.
Finalists
Anita Say Chan, “Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future” (University of California Press, 2025)
Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer, “Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape our Understanding of Animal Behaviour”
Neta Alexander, “Interface Frictions: How Digital Debility Reshapes our Bodies” (Duke University Press, 2025)
Rebecca Monteleone, “The Double Bind of Disability: How Medical Technology Shapes Bodily Authority” (University of Minnesota Press, 2025)
The committee congratulates these authors and all the finalists for their incredible work and their contributions to STS and beyond.
2026 Carson Prize Committee: Thao Phan and Rohit Negi, Co-Chairs, Emily Yates-Doerr, and Shiv Issar.