Annual
Book & Article Prizes
Book Prize:
The Berkshire Conference
First Book Prize, which carries
a $1000 award, is a prize for a first book
in any field of history written by a woman who is normally resident
in North America. Books need not focus on women's history.
Only books published in 2007 will be considered. The following categories
are not eligible for consideration: textbooks, juveniles,
documentary collections, or collections of essays. Submissions must
be made before January 15, 2008. Please do not send any submissions
to the Berkshire Conference main address.
Directions
for submitting books for the Berkshire Conference First Book Prize
Article Prize:
The Berkshire Conference
Article Prize, which carries
a $500 award, is awarded for an article in any field of history
published in 2007 by a woman who is normally resident in
North America. Articles need not focus on women's history.
Submissions must be made before January 15, 2008. Please
do not send any submissions to the Berkshire Conference main address.
Directions
for submitting articles for the Berkshire Article Prize.
Prize recipients are generally notified in early
Summer of the next calendar year
Previous
Berkshire Prize Winners:
2006 Adrienne
Edgar, "Bolshevism, Patriarchy and the Nation: The Soviet 'Emancipation'
of Muslim Women in Pan-Islamic Perspective,"Slavic Review
65, no. 2 Summer 2006.
In "Bolshevism, Patriarchy and the Nation,"
Adrienne Edgar shows that Central Asian Muslims under Soviet rule
came to regard their family and religious traditions as central
to their cultural and national identities in the face of the Soviet
onslaught. Because the Soviet state was a multi-ethnic, universalizing
Socialist state, Edgar argues, female emancipation and nationalism
in Central Asia came to be seen as opposed to each other instead
of forming mutually supportive components of modernity. In contrast,
she shows, independent Muslim regimes in Turkey and Iran had national
legitimacy that enabled them to develop policies that emancipated
women in ways that the popularce of these countries could accept
and embrace.
and Srirupa
Roy, 'A Symbol of Freedom: The Indian Flag and the Transformatios
of Nationalism, 1906-2002," The Journal of Asian Studies
65. no. 3 (August 2006).
In "A Symbol of Freedom," Srirupa Roy
talks about the journey of Indian nationalist flags over a century.
By charting the shifting images of the Indian flag and terms of
debate over the flag, Srirupa Roy enables us to understand the formations
and transformations of Indian national ideology and practice. The
committee felt that this article was worthy of the prize also because
it has resonance beyond the subject matter it addresss. Roy provides,
in her analysis of material culture to illuminate political shifts,
a useful methodology and conceptual framework for scholars and students
of state formation and national identities anywhere in the world.
2005 Lisa
Forman Cody, Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception
of the Eighteenth Centruy Britons (Oxford University Press)
Wang Zheng, "'State Feminism'? Gender and Socialist
State Formation in Maoist China," Feminist Studies,
vol 31, no 3 (Fall 2005): 519-551.
2004 Mae
M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making
of Modern America, Princeton University Press; and
Ruth Rogaski, Hygenic Modernity: Meanings of Health and
Disease in Treaty-Port China, University of California Press.
Toby L. Ditz for "The New Men's History and the
Peculiar Absence of Gendered Power: Some Remedies from Early
American Gender History," Gender & History 16:1(2004):
1-35, and Sally McKee,
for "Inherited Status and Slavery in Late Medieval Italy and
Venetian Crete," Past & Present 182 (2004): 31-53.
2003 Nancy
Appelbaum, Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia,
1846-1948 (Duke University Press).
Martha Hodes, "The Mercurial
Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story," American
Historical Review 108:1 (February 2003): 84-118.
2002
Patricia M. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam: New Histories of the
National Past (Duke University Press)
Samantha Power, "A Problem of Hell": America and
the Age of Genocide (Basic Books; (Paperback:HarperCollins Perennial)
Premilla Nadasen, "Expanding the Boundaries of
the Women's Movement: Black Feminism and the Struggle for Welfare
Rights," Feminist Studies 28:2 (2002): 271-301.
2001Clare
Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime
France, 1675-1791 (Duke University Press)
Sharon Marcus, "Haussmannization as Anti-Modernity: The Apartment
House in Parisian Urban Discourse, 1850-1880," Journal of
Urban History 27:6 (2001)
2000 Karin
Alejandra Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures
and the State in Chile, 1920-1950 (University of North Carolina
Press) and Elizabeth Thompson,
Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender
in French Syria and Lebanon (Columbia University Press)
Nancy Caciola, "Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology
of Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe" Comparative Studies
in Society and History and Heidi Tinsman, (Honorable mention) "Reviving
Feminist Materialism: Gender and Neoliberalism in Pinochet's Chile"
Signs
1999
Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation
and Revolution 1868-1898 (University of North Carolina Press)
Lisa A. Lindsay, "Domesticity and Difference: Male
Breadwinners, Working Women, and Colonial Citizenship in the 1945
Nigerian General Strike," American Historical Review 104:3
(1999) and Alexandra Minna
Stern, "Buildings, Boundaries and Blood: Medicalization and Nation
Building on the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1910-1930," Hispanic American
Historical Review 79:1 (1999).
1998 Jill Lepore, Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins
of American Identity (Knopf/Random House).
Julia A. Thomas, "Photography,
National Identity, and the 'Cataract of Times': Wartime Images and
the Case of Japan," The American Historical Review (December
1998).
1997 Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea
of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford University
Press).
Dorothy Ko, "The Body as
Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth Century
China," The Journal of Women's History (Winter 1997).
1996 Isabel V. Hull,
Sexuality, State, and Civil Society in Germany, 1700-1815 (Cornell
University Press). We also awarded a special honorable mention to
Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs:
Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia (University of North
Carolina Press).
Antoinette Burton, "A 'Pilgrim Reformer' in the Heart of the
Empire: Behrami Malabari in Late-Victorian London," Gender
and History (August 1996) and Peggy Pascoe, "Miscegenation
Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of 'Race' in Twentieth-Century America,"
Journal of American History (June 1996).
1995 Kathryn Kish Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work
: The Rise of Women's Political Culture, 1830-1900 (Yale University
Press).
Susan Mosher Stuard, "Ancillary
Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery," Past and Present
(November 1995).
1994 Linda
Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History
of Welfare
Hitomi Tonomura, "Black Hair
and Red Trousers: Gendering the Flesh in Medieval Japan," American
Historical Review (February 1994).
1993 Elizabeth
Lasch-Quinn, Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in
the American Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945 and Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the
State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936
Norma Basch, "Marriage, Morals
and Politics in the Election of 1828," Journal of American
History (December 1993).
1992
Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in 17th Century
England
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African-American
Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs (Winter
1992).
1991
Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 and Nancy Leyes Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics":
Race, Gender and Nation in Latin America
Patricia J. Hilden, "The
Rhetoric and Iconography of Reform: Women Coal Miners in Belgium,
1840-1914," The Historical Journal (March 1990).
1990
Jo Burr Margadent, Madame le Professeur: Women Educators in the
Third Republic and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Midwife's
Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812
Drew Gilpin Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice:
Confederate Women and Narratives of War," Journal of American
History (March 1990) and Nancy Rose Hunt, "Domesticity
and Colonialism in Belgian Africa: Usumbura's Foyer Social,
1946-1960," Signs (Spring 1990).