Awards & Prizes

• The Armitage-Jameson Prize for the most outstanding monograph or edited volume published in women’s, gender, and/or sexuality history in the North American West.
• The award recipient will receive $1000 and the publishing press will receive a certificate.
• The award will be presented at the CWWH Breakfast at the annual Western History Association conference.

• We define the North American West as relevant geographic regions of Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States territories, past and present.
• The nominated book must have been published in the year prior to the award nomination.

• The deadline for award submission is June 1, annually.
• Presses are limited to the nomination of five titles and should send a copy of the nominated book to each member of the committee by June 1, annually.
• In the event that June 1 falls on a weekend, the deadline is the following Monday.
• Late submissions will not be considered.

• Jennifer Holland (Chair) | 610 NW 17th Street | Oklahoma City, OK 73103
• Patti Loughlin | 6101 N. Golden Eagle Drive | Tucson, AZ 85750
• Rebecca Hunt | 2502 W. 32nd Avenue | Denver, CO 80211

2022: Nicole Perry, Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2021).

2021: Jennifer L. Holland, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2020).

2020: Brianna Theobald, Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

2019: Erika Pérez, Colonial Intimacies: Interethnic Kinship, Sexuality, and Marriage in Southern California, 1769-1885 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018).

2018: Lynne Marie Getz, Abolitionists, Doctors, Ranchers, and Writers: A Family Journey through American History (University Press of Kansas, 2017).

2017: Katrina Jagodinsky, Legal Codes and Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946 (Yale University Press, 2016).

2016: Honor Sachs, Home Rule: Households, Manhood and National Expansion on the Eighteenth- Century Kentucky Frontier (Yale University Press, 2015).

2015: Elsie Paul (edited by Paige Raibmon and Harmony Johnson), Written as I Remember It: Teachings (??ms ta?aw) from the LIfe of a Sliammon Elder (University of British Columbia Press, 2014).

2014: Elizabeth R. Escobedo, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front (University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

2013: Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920 (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).

• (Honorable Mention for 2013): Mary S. Melcher, Pregnancy, Motherhood, and Choice in Twentieth Century Arizona(University of Arizona Press, 2012).

2012: Sarah Carter and Patricia McCormick, eds., Recollecting: Lives of Aboriginal Women of the Canadian Northwest and Borderlands (Athabascan University Press, 2011).

2011: Marilyn S. Blackwell & Kristen Oertel, Frontier Feminist: Clarina Howard Nichols and the Politics of Motherhood (University Press of Kansas, 2010).

2010: Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

• The $1,000 prize supports travel to collections or other research expenses related to histories of women and gender in the North American West.
• The recipient will also receive a one-year complimentary membership to the CWWH.

The award will be presented at the CWWH Breakfast at the annual Western History Association conference.

• Applicants must be enrolled in a PhD program at the time off application.

• The deadline for award submission is August 15, annually.
• In the event that August 15 falls on a weekend, the deadline is the following Monday.

The Committee evaluates proposals according to the following criteria:

• How well the applicant stated her/his research question and the significance of the overall project.
• How well the applicant demonstrated her/his knowledge of the primary source materials related to the proposal.
• How well the applicant framed her/his project in terms for the broader theoretical/historiographical issues significant to the topic.
• How well the proposal addressed the issues of gender and/or women’s history in the North American West.

How well the proposed budget details the applicant’s stated research agenda.

To apply, submit one copy of each of the following (as a single PDF file) to each member of the committee:

1. Cover sheet with your name, contact information, project tile, name of reference
2. Curriculum Vitae (5-page maximum)
3. A brief description of the research project and an explanation of how the prize funds would support the research (not exceeding three double-spaced pages, addressing the above criteria)
4. A line-item budget

Letter of support from the student’s dissertation advisor

• Danae Jacobson (Chair) | Colby College | danae.jacobson@colby.edu
• Philis Barragán Goetz | Texas A&M University, San Antonio | pbarragan@tamusa.edu
• Sasha Suarez | University of Wisconsin, Madison | smsuarez@wisc.edu

2022: Amy Reid (University of California at Santa Cruz)
Grandmother’s Garden (documentary)

2021: Michelle Martin (Historian, Museum Consultant)
“Gathering Around A New Fire: The Bemo Family, Interracial Marriage, Race and Power in the Mvskoke Nation, 1870-1897”

2020: Caitlin Sackrinson (Ph.D. Candidate, Brandis University)
“Land in Practice, Partnership and Ownership Norwegian-American Women in the Southern Minnesota Plains in the Mid-Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century”

2019: Claire Thomson (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Alberta)
“To hell with this, I’m going back to Wood Mountain”: Lakota People and Lakota Thamakhoche (Lakota Country) in the US-Canada Borderlands”

2018: Jill Falcon Mackin (Ph.D. Candidate, Montana State University)
“Miinigoowiziwin (That which is given to us): Changing Anishinaabe Food Systems, 1780-1920”

2017: Tiffany Jasmin Gonzalez (Ph.D. Candidate, Texas A&M University)
“Representation for a Change: The Impact of Chicanas in Government and the Civil Rights Movement in Texas”

2016: Margaret Neubauer (Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University)
“American Indian Child Welfare, Activism, and Sovereignty in the Twentieth Century”

2015: Meggan L. Bilotte (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
“Migrant Madres and Sugar Babies: Public Health and Family in the Sugar Beet Fields of Northern Colorado”

2014: Jennifer McPherson (Ph.D. Candidate, University of New Mexico)
“Not Your Mother’s PTA: Parents, Public Authority, and the Professionalization of Politics”

2013: Brianna Theobald (Ph.D. Candidate, Arizona State University)
“‘The Simplest Rules of Motherhood’: Settler Colonialism and the Regulation of American Indian Reproduction, 1910-1976”

2012: Katherine Massoth (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Iowa)
“‘As in the Custom of the Country’: Cultural Practices and Ethnic Identity in Arizona and New Mexico, 1846-1941”

2011: Larisa Veloz (Ph.D. Candidate, Georgetown University)
“Forgotten Migrants: Mexican Women and Migrant Families, 1930-1965.”

2010: Annie Hanshew (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Utah)
”‘Mothering A Good Forest Fire Isn’t Easy:’ Smokejumpers, Masculinity, and Forest Fires in the American West”

2009: Margie Brown-Coronel (Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Irvine)
“Beyond the Rancho: Four Generations of del Valle Women in Southern California, 1830-1930”

2008: Lilia Raquel D. Rosas (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin)
“(De)sexing Prostitution: Race, Politics, and the Reform of Sex Work in Progressive San Antonio, 1889-1920)”

2007: Christine Christensen (Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Irvine)
“‘Mujeres Publicas’: Euro-American Prostitutes and Reformers at the California-Mexico Border (1914-1929)”

2006: Robin Conner (Ph.D. Candidate, Emory University)
“Civilizing Soldiers: Gender and Domesticity in the Western Army”

2005: Helen McLure (Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University)
“‘I Suppose You Think Strange the Murder of Women and Children’: Whitecapping and Lynching in the U.S. West, Midwest, and Southwest, 1850-1930”

2004: Maritza De La Trinidad (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Arizona)
“Collective Outrage: Mexican American Activism and the Fight for Educational Equality”

2003: Laurie Arnold (Ph.D. Candidate, Arizona State University)
“The Colville Tribes and Termination, Divisions and Gender”

2002: Katherine Benton (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
“What About Women in the ‘White Man’s Camp?’: Gender, Nation, and the Redefinition of Race in Cochise County, Arizona, 1853-1941”

2001: Adriana Ayala (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas, Austin)
“The Significance of Race and Gender in Women’s Organizations in San Antonio, Texas, 1920s-1940”

2000: Elizabeth Escobedo (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington)
“Forgotten Youth: Adolescence and the Mexican American Woman in WWII Los Angeles”

1999: Dedra McDonald (Ph.D. Candidate, University of New Mexico)
“Negotiated Conquests: Domestic Servants and Gender in the Spanish and Mexican Borderlands, 1598-1860”

• No time period restrictions apply, and essays will be judged on their significance to the field, their contributions to knowledge, and their literary quality.
• The Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University funds this $500 cash prize and provides a plaque to the author of the winning essay. The publisher will receive a certificate.
• The WHA office sends notifications to selected award recipients at the end of August, annually.

• Any WHA member, as well as the publisher or author of the essay, may nominate an essay.
• The nominated article must have been published in a scholarly journal or edited volume in the year prior to the award nomination.

• The 2024 Awards Cycle opens January 15, 2024
• Award submissions must be emailed or postmarked by April 15, 2024

• Unless a journal editor notifies you about nominating your work, authors must submit a copy of the journal, an offprint, or a photocopy to each member of the prize committee.
• Journals, editors, and authors may submit nominations electronically through the email addresses provided below.
• Submissions must be one pdf file and include the cover page, copyright page, and table of contents of journals and anthologies in addition to the article/essay.

• Celeste Menchaca (Chair) | University of Southern California | cmenchac@usc.edu
• Julia Ornelas-Higdon | California State University, Channel Islands | julia.ornelas-higdon@csuci.edu
• Jonna Perrillo | University of Texas at El Paso | jperrillo@utep.edu

2023: Holly Miowak Guise, “‘Who is Doctor Bauer?’: Rematriating a Censored Story on Internment, Wardship, and Sexual Violence in Wartime Alaska, 1941-1944,” Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2022)

2022: Lina-Maria Murillo, “Birth Control, Border Control: The Movement for Contraception in El Paso, Texas, 1936-1940,” Pacific Historical Review (Summer 2021)

2021: Celeste Menchaca, “Staging Crossings: Policing Intimacy and Performing Respectability at the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1907-1917,” Pacific Historical Review (Spring 2020)

2020: Jordan Biro Walters, “‘So Let Me Paint’: Navajo Artist R.C. Gorman and the Artistic, Native, and Queer Subcultures of San Francisco, California,” Pacific Historical Review (Summer 2019)

2019: Natalia Molina, “Deportable Citizens: The Decoupling of Race and Citizenship In the Construction of the ‘Anchor Baby,’” in Deportation in the Americas: Histories of Exclusion and Resistance, Kenyon Zimmer and Cristina Salinas, eds. (Texas A&M Press, 2018)

2018: Beth Lew-Williams for “‘Chinamen’ and ‘Delinquent Girls’: Intimacy, Exclusion and a Search for California’s Color Line,” Journal of American History (December 2017)

2017: Katrina Jagodinsky for “A Tale of Two Sisters: Family Histories from the Strait Salish Borderlands,” Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2016)

2016: Katherine Ellinghaus, “‘A Little Home for Myself and Child’: The Women of the Quapaw Agency and the Policy of Competency,” Pacific Historical Review (August 2015)

2015: Verity McInnis, “Indirect Agents of Empire: Army Officers’ Wives in British India and the American West, 1830-1875,” Pacific Historical Review (August 2014)

2014: Sarah M.S. Pearsall, “Having Many Wives in Two American Rebellions,” American Historical Review (October 2013).

2013: Grace Peña Delgado, “Border Control and Sexual Policing: White Slavery and Prostitution along the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1903-1910,” Western Historical Quarterly (Summer 2012).

2012: Hilary A. Hallet, “Based on a True Story: New Western Women and the Birth of Hollywood,” Pacific Historical Quarterly (May 2011).

2011: Jennifer Thigpen, “’You Have Been Very Thoughtful Today‘: The Significance of Gratitude and Reciprocity in Missionary-Hawaiian Gift Exchange,” Pacific Historical Review (November 2010).

2010: Lori A. Flores, “An Unladylike Strike Fashionably Clothed: Mexicana and Anglo Women Garment Workers Against Tex-Son, 1959–1963,” Pacific Historical Review (August 2009).

2009: Kathleen DuVal, “Indian Intermarriage and Metissage in Colonial Louisiana,” William and Mary Quarterly (April 2008).

2008: Elizabeth R. Escobedo, “The Pachuca Panic: Sexual and Cultural Battlegrounds in World War II Los Angeles,” Western History Quarterly (Summer 2007).

2007: Sarah Carter, “Britishness, Foreignness, Women, and Land in Western Canada, 1880s-1920s,” Humanities Research: The Journal of the Humanities Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University (2006).

2006: Dee Garceau-Hagen, “Finding Mary Fields: Race, Gender and the Construction of Memory,” in Portraits of Women in the American West (Routledge, 2005).

2005: Adele Perry, “The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy, Power, and Scandal in Nineteenth-Century Metlakahtlah,” Gender and History (August 2004).

2004: Ann R. Gabbert, “Prostitution and Moral Reform in the Borderlands: El Paso, 1890-1920,” Journal of the History of Sexuality (October 2003).

2003: Margaret D. Jacobs, “The Eastmans and the Luhans: Interracial Marriage between White Women and Native American Men, 1875-1935,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (2002).

2002: Laura Jane Moore, “Elle Meets the President: Weaving Navajo Culture and Commerce in the Southwestern Tourist Industry.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (2001).

2001: Lynn M. Hudson, “‘Strong Animal Passion’ in the Gilded Age: Race, Sex, and a Senator on Trial,” Journal of the History of Sexuality (January/April 2000).

2000: Mary Ann Irwin, “‘Going About and Doing Good’: The Politics of Benevolence, Welfare, and Gender in San Francisco, 1850-1880,” Pacific Historical Review (August 1999).

1999: Jean Barman, “Taming Aboriginal Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850-1900,” British Columbia Studies (Autumn/Winter 1997/1998).

1998: Catherine A. Cavanaugh, “‘No Place for a Woman’: Engendering Western Canadian Settlement,” Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 1997).

1997: James F. Brooks, “‘This Evil Extends Especially…to the Feminine Sex’: Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands,” Feminist Studies (Summer 1996).

1996: Irene Ledesma, “Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers’ Activism, 1919-1974,” Western Historical Quarterly (November 1995).

1995: Amy Kaminsky, “Gender, Race, Raza,” Feminist Studies (1994).

1994: Susan Lee Johnson, “‘A Memory Sweet to Soldiers’: The Significance of Gender in the History of the ‘American West,’” Western Historical Quarterly (November 1993).

1993: Antonia I. Castañeda, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History,” Pacific Historical Review (1992).

1992: Peggy Pascoe, “Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: the Case of Interracial Marriage,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies (1991).

1991: Carol Cornwall Madsen, “‘At Their Peril’: Utah Law and the Case of Plural Wives, 1850-1900,” Western Historical Quarterly (November 1990).

• The grant of $500 may be used for travel, registration, and lodging at the WHA. The recipient will also receive a ticket to the CWWH Breakfast, where they will receive the award.

• The Coalition is open to persons of all genders, sexualities, and races/ethnicities who seek to support and advance the scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality in the North American West.
• Presence on the program is not required.

• The deadline for the application and letter of reference is September 30, annually.
• In the event that September 30 falls on a weekend, the deadline is the following Monday.

• Applications should include:
  • Your full name
  • Affiliation and year in your program
  • Address, phone number, and email address
  • Registration status for annual WHA conference
  • Brief description of how your research engages analyses of gender and/or reflects your commitment to advancing the scholarship on women, gender, and sexuality in the North American West (250 words maximum)
• Send your application as a PDF directly to Cathleen Cahill, Coalition Chair, via email with “CWWH Grant Competition” in the subject line.
• Letter of reference from a faculty mentor that addresses that ways in which your research engages analyses of gender and/or reflects your commitment to the history of women and gender in the American West, sent directly to Cathleen Cahill via email.

2023: Janice Joy Dishner | University of Colorado, Boulder

2022: Kim Kohn McLain | Montana State University