SHGAPE Graduate Student Essay Prize: Call for Entries.
The Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is soliciting entries for its annual Graduate Student Essay Prize. The prize is open to graduate students of history whose research concerns any topic during the Gilded Age and/or Progressive Era. Essays will be evaluated based on their scholarly contributions to the field, originality, research, and prose. The winner will receive $250 and a chance at publication in SHGAPE’s peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The Winner will be announced at the annual SHGAPE Luncheon at OAH.
Submissions should be no longer than 10,000 words and must use standard Chicago Manual of Style formatting. Please follow the submission guidelines of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Essays should not be previously published nor under consideration for publication. Applicants must be SHGAPE members at the time of submission.
Submission Deadline: January 3, 2025, email PDF submissions to the Prize Committee Chair, Dr. Sarah Gardner, gardner_se@mercer.edu. Please remove any identifying information from the essay submission and please indicate “SHGAPE Graduate Student Essay Prize” in the subject line.
Graduate Student Essay Prize Committee (2024-2025)
- Sarah Gardner, Mercer University, Chair
- Tina Irvine, Purdue University
- Allan E. S. Lumba, Concordia University-Canada
PAST AWARDEES
2024 – Yong-Hyeon Kim, “Disinterested Observers, Wholesome Workers, and Democratic Citizens: Masculinized Urban Reform Ideas of Robert A. Woods and South End House.”
2023 – David Dry, “Advocating for Allotment: Civil Rights and Sovereign Ends”
2022 – Zada Ballew, “The Indian Side of the Question”: Settling the Story of Potawatomi Removal in the Twentieth Century Midwest.”
2022 Honorable Mention – Marie Sarnacki, “Save the Child and Honor the State: Moral Reconstruction and the Origin of Progressive Child Welfare Policy.”
2021 – Nathan K. Finney, “The Associational State and Woman’s War Work in North Carolina, 1917-1919.”
2020 – Mark C. Boxell, “Carbon Allotment: Land, Race, and Oil in Indian Territory and Oklahoma.”
2019 – Julia Haager-Devin, “Sex Education’s Many Sides: How Reformers Moved it into Public Schools, 1900-1920.”
2018 – Morgan Shahan, “Making Good: On Parole in Early Twentieth Century Illinois.”
Become a member
Membership in SHGAPE affords you a place in the primary professional network of Gilded Age and Progressive Era scholars. Your membership gains you entry into a vibrant and growing community and helps to advance your understanding of a critical period in American history. As a self-supporting organization, SHGAPE depends on its members to continue its current activities and take on new initiatives
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