Louis Pelzer Memorial Award

2023

Joshua A. McGonagle Althoff, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, “Peeyankihšiaki Neighbor Management: Narrating Johnson v. McIntosh within a Longer History of Piankashaw Community Building”

2022

Hannah Srajer, Yale University, “Imperfect Intercourse: Sexual Disability, Sexual Deviance, and the History of Vaginal Pain in the Twentieth Century United States”

2021

Esther Cyna, Columbia University, “Schooling the Kleptocracy: Racism and School Finance in Rural North Carolina, 1900–2018” (JAH,March 2022)

2020

Bench Ansfield, Yale University (dissertation in progress with the direction of advisors Joanne Meyerowitz and Michael Denning), “The Crisis of Insurance and the Insuring of the Crisis: Riot Reinsurance and Redlining in the Aftermath of the 1960s Uprisings” (JAH,March 2021)

2019

Emma Teitelman, University of Cambridge (dissertation completed at the University of Pennsylvania), “The Properties of Capitalism: Industrial Enclosures in the South and West after the American Civil War” (JAH, March 2020)

2018

Anne Gray Fischer, Brown University, “‘Land of the White Hunter’: Legal Liberalism and the Racial Politics of Morals Enforcement in Midcentury Los Angeles” (JAH, March 2019)

2017 

Daniel Platt, Brown University. “Usury Reform and the Natures of Capital in the Progressive Era” (JAH, March 2018 – Title: “The Natures of Capital: Jewish Difference and the Decline of American Usury Law, 1910–1925”)

2016

Robert Lee, University of California, Berkeley, “Accounting for Conquest: The Price of the Louisiana Purchase of Indian Country” (JAH, March 2017)

2015

Christopher M. Florio, Princeton University, “From Poverty to Slavery: Abolitionists, Overseers, and the Global Struggle for Labor in India” (JAH, March 2016)

2014

Alice L. Baumgartner, Yale University, “‘The Line of Positive Safety’: Borders, Boundaries, and Nations in the Rio Grande Valley, 1848–1880” (JAH, March 2015)

2013

Cameron B. Strang, University of Texas at Austin/dissertation fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies (2013) “Violence, Ethnicity, and Human Remains during the Second Seminole War” (JAH, March 2014)

2012

Hidetaka Hirota, Boston College, “The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy” (JAH, March 2013)

2011

Christine M. DeLucia, Yale University, “The Memory Frontier: Uncommon Pursuits of Past and Place in the Northeast after King Philip’s War (1675–78)” (JAH, March 2012)

2010

Nora Doyle, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “‘The Highest Pleasure of Which Woman’s Nature is Capable’: Breastfeeding and the Sentimental Maternal Ideal in America 1750–1860” (JAH, March 2011)

2009

Joseph L. Yannielli, Yale University, “George Thompson among the Africans: Empathy, Authority, and Insanity in the Age of Abolition” (JAH, March 2010)

2008

Sarah Keyes, University of Southern California, “‘Like a Roaring Lion’: The Overland Trail as a Sonic Conquest” (JAH, June 2009)

2007

Andrew W. Kahrl, Indiana University, “‘Why the Police at No. 4 ‘Get Busy’ When They Hear the Whistle of the ‘Razor Beach’ Boat’: Steamboat Excursions, Pleasure Resorts, and the Emergence of Segregation Culture on the Potomac River, 1890–1920” (JAH, March 2008 – Title: “The Slightest Semblance of Unruliness”: Steamboat Excursions, Pleasure Resorts, and the Emergence of Segregation Culture on the Potomac River)

2006

Wendy Anne Warren, Yale University, “‘The Cause of Her Grief’: The Rape of a Slave Woman in Early New England” (JAH, March 2007)

2005

Kevin Dawson, University of South Carolina, “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World” (JAH, March 2006)

2004

Danielle McGuire, Rutgers University, “‘It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped’: Black Womanhood, White Violence, and the Civil Rights Movement” (JAH, December 2004)

2003

Margot Canaday, University of Minnesota, “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship under the 1944 G. I. Bill” (JAH, December 2003)

2002

Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, University of Virginia, “Constructing G. I. Joe Louis: Cultural Solutions to the ‘Negro Problem’ during World War II” (JAH, December 2002)

2001

Christopher Capozzola, Columbia University, “The Only Badge Needed is Your Patriotic Fervor: Vigilance, Coercion, and the Law in World War I America” (JAH, March 2002)

2000

Constance Areson Clark, University of Colorado, “Evolution for John Doe: Pictures, the Public, and the Scopes Trial Debate” (JAH, March 2001)

1999

Elizabeth Anne Fenn, Yale University, “Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst” (JAH, March 2000)

1998

Mae M. Ngai, Columbia University, “The Architecture of Race in Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924” (JAH, June 1999)

1997

Richard C. Rath, Brandeis University, “Echo and Narcissus: The Afrocentric Pragmatism of W. E. B. DuBois” (JAH, September 1997)

1996

Jeffrey P. Moran, Harvard University, “‘Modernism Gone Mad’: Sex Education Comes to Chicago, 1913” (JAH, September 1996)

1995

Steven A. Reich, Northwestern University, “Soldiers of Democracy: Black Texans and the Fight for Citizenship, 1917–1921” (JAH, March 1996)

1994

Pamela Grundy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “‘We Always Tried to Be Good People’: Respectability, Crazy Water Crystals and Hillbilly Music on the Air, 1933–1935” (JAH, March 1995)

1993

Scott A. Sandage, Rutgers University, “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939–1963” (JAH, June 1993)

1992

Margaret T. McFadden, Yale University, “‘America’s Boyfriend Who Can’t Get a Date’: Gender, Race, and the Cultural Work of the Jack Benny Program, 1932–1946” (JAH, June 1993)

1991

Jodi Vandenberg-Daves, University of Minnesota, “Pursuing a Partnership between the Sexes: The Debate over Programs for Women and Girls in the Young Men’s Christian Association, 1914–1933,” (JAH, March 1992)

1990

Leslie J. Reagan, University of Wisconsin, “‘About to Meet Her Maker’: Dying Declarations, Inquests, and the Investigation of Criminal Abortion Deaths, Chicago, 1895–1940,” (JAH, March 1991)

1989

W. Jeffrey Bolster, Johns Hopkins University, “‘To Feel Like a Man’: Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800–1860,” (JAH, March 1990)

1988

Lucy Salyer, University of California, Berkeley, “Captives of Law: Judicial Enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws, 1891–1905” (JAH, June 1989)

1987

Gordon H. Chang, Stanford University, “JFK, China and the Bomb” (JAH, March 1988)

1986

Michael A. Bellesiles, University of California, “The Establishment of Legal Structures on the Frontier: The Case of Revolutionary Vermont” (JAH, March 1987)

1985

Mark Peel, Melbourne University, “On the Margins: Lodgers and Boarders in Boston, 1860–1900” (JAH, March 1986)

1984

Wayne K. Durrill, University of North Carolina, “Producing Poverty: Local Government and Economic Development in a New South County, 1874–1884” (JAH, March, 1985)

1983

Lacy K. Ford, University of South Carolina, “Rednecks and Merchants: Economic Development and Social Tensions in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1965–1900” (JAH, September 1984)

1982

James L. Leloudis II, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “School Reform in the New South” (JAH, March 1983)

1981

David E. Hamilton, University of Iowa, “Herbert Hoover and the Great Drought of 1930” (JAH, March 1982)

1980

Cindy S. Aron, University of Maryland, “‘To Barter Their Souls for Gold’: Female Clerks in Federal Government Offices, 1862–1890” (JAH, March 1981)

1979

Ellen Nore, Stanford University, “Charles A. Beard’s Act of Faith: Context and Content” (JAH, March 1980)

1978

John R. Nelson Jr., University of Oregon, “Alexander Hamilton and American Manufacturing: A Reexamination” (JAH, March 1979)

1977

David A. Corbin, University of Maryland, “Betrayal in the West Virginia Coal Fields: Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party of America, 1912–1914” (JAH, March 1978)

1976

Deborah L. Haines, University of Chicago, “Scientific History as a Teaching Method: The Formative Years” (JAH, March 1977)

1975

Theodore M. Hammett, Brandeis University, “Two Mobs of Jacksonian Boston: Ideology and Interest” (JAH, March 1976)

1974

Charles W. McCurdy, University of California, San Diego, “Justice Field and the Jurisprudence of Government-Business Relations: Some Parameters of Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism 1863–97” (JAH, March 1975)

1973

Kenneth Kusmer, University of Chicago, “The Functions of Organized Charity in the Progressive Era: Chicago as a Case Study” (JAH, December 1973)

1972

Christopher G. Wye, Kent State University, “The New Deal and the Negro Community: Toward a Broader Conceptualization” (JAH, December 1972)

1971

Robert L. Buroker, University of Chicago, “From Voluntary Association to Welfare State: The Illinois Immigrants’ Protective League, 1908–1926” (JAH, December 1971)

1970

Pete Daniel, University of Maryland, “Up From Slavery and Down to Peonage: The Alonzo Bailey Case” (JAH, December 1970)

1969

Rita Werner Gordon, Columbia University, “The Change in the Political Alignment of Chicago’s Negroes During the New Deal” (JAH, December 1969)

1968

William B. Hixson Jr., Columbia University, “Moorfield Storey and the Struggle for Equality” (JAH, December 1968)

1967

Edward A. Purcell Jr., University of Wisconsin, “Ideas and Interests: Businessmen and the Interstate Commerce Act” (JAH, December 1967)

1966

James P. Johnson, University of Chicago, “Drafting the NRA Code of Fair Competition for the Bituminous Coal Industry” (JAH, December 1966)

1965

Stanley K. Schultz, University of Chicago, “The Morality of Politics: The Muckrakers’ Vision of Democracy” (JAH, December 1965)

1964

Jerold S. Auerbach, Columbia University, “The La Follette Committee: Labor and Civil Liberties in the New Deal” (JAH, December 1964)

1963

No award given.

1962

G. Cullom Davis, University of Illinois, “The Transformation of the Federal Trade Commission, 1914–1929” (JAH, December 1962)

1961

No award given..

1960

No award given.

1959

No award given.

1958

No award given.

1957

Clifford S. Griffin, University of Wisconsin, “Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815–1860” (JAH, December 1957)

1956

No award given.

1955

Mary E. Young, Cornell University, “Creek Frauds: A Study in Conscience and Corruption” (JAH, December 1955)

1954

Holman Hamilton, University of Kentucky, “Democratic Senate Leadership and the Compromise Corruption” (JAH, December 1954)

1953

Roy N. Lokken, University of Washington, “Has the Mystery of ‘A Public Man’ Been Solved?” (JAH, December 1953)

1952

Robert Johannsen, University of Washington, “Secession Crisis and the Frontier: Washington Territory, 1869–1861” (JAH, December 1952)

1951

David W. Noble, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “The New Republic and the Idea of Progress, 1914–1920” (JAH, December 1951)

1950

Ted Worley, Universtiy of Texas at Austin, “Control of the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas, 1836–1838” (JAH, December 1950)

1949

Bruce Staiger, Southold High School, Long Island, “Abolitionism and the Presbyterian Schism of 1837–1838” (JAH, December 1949)