The American History Association recognized a number of scholars and professionals working in the Mid-Atlantic region for their contributions to the field of history, including two awards given for public history. Honorees were announced at the American Historical Association’s 131st annual meeting in Denver, Jan. 5-8, 2017.
Charles Hardy III and Janneken Smucker of West Chester University, and Doug Boyd of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at University of Kentucky Libraries have received the 2016 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History for the digital media project, Goin’ North: Stories from the First Great Migration to Philadelphia. The Roy Rosenzweig Prize is sponsored jointly by the American Historical Association and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University. It is given annually to honor and support work on an innovative and freely available new media project, and in particular for work that reflects thoughtful, critical, and rigorous engagement with technology and the practice of history.
As previously posted on the MARCH Insights Blog, “Goin’ North, a digital oral history project, commemorates the Great Migration and explores its impact on the Black community of Philadelphia. The project is based on oral histories conducted by Charles Hardy, in conjunction with the Philadelphia History Museum, in the 1980s with both Southern migrants and Black Philadelphians.”
The James Harvey Robinson Prize for the teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history in any field for public or educational purposes went to Julie Golia, Director of Public History at the Brooklyn Historical Society, and Robin M. Katz, Outreach + Public Services Librarian in Special Collections & University Archives at UC Riverside, for TeachArchives.org. The website, which helps students learn how to engage with primary source documents, emerged from Students and Faculty in the Archives, a three-year collaborative project between Brooklyn Historical Society and surrounding colleges and universities.
Scholars in the Mid-Atlantic Region also received the following awards from the AHA:
- The George Louis Beer Prize in European international history since 1895 to Vanessa Ogle (Univ. of Pennsylvania) for The Global Transformation of Time: 1870–1950 (Harvard Univ. Press, 2015)
- The Littleton-Griswold Prize in US law and society, broadly defined to Deborah A. Rosen (Lafayette Coll.) for Border Law: The First Seminole War and American Nationhood (Harvard Univ. Press, 2015)
- The Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for teachers of history who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives to Neal Shultz (The Campus School of the New Rochelle School District)
- The Award for Scholarly Distinction to senior historians for lifetime achievement to Alice Kessler-Harris (Columbia Univ.) and Colin A. Palmer (Princeton Univ.)