Award Nominations
The Missouri Conference on History encourages great new scholarship through its annual awards. Awards with cash prizes are granted to outstanding books, articles, and student papers each year. Award winners are announced at the Missouri Conference on History. Details for nominations for these awards can be found below. All award winners will be announced at the 2025 Missouri Conference on History.
2024 Book Award Recipient
Book Award
The Book Award will be given to the best volume on any historical topic written by a Missouri resident and published in 2024. The winner will receive a $500 prize.
To nominate a book for this award, please send a letter stating the author's name and affiliation with Missouri, the title of the book, the name of the publisher, and a brief explanation of the book's merits. Four review copies of the book are required from the publisher. Nominations for this prize may be submitted to:
John Brenner
Managing Editor
State Historical Society of Missouri
605 Elm Street
Columbia, MO 65201
brennerj@shsmo.org
Nominations for the award will close after December 31, 2024. Advance copies of books published by the end of 2023 will be accepted. Please include complete contact information with your submission.
Dr. Lawrence O. Christensen
Lawrence O. Christensen Article Award
Articles eligible for nomination must relate to a Missouri history topic and be published during the 2024 calendar year (no restriction on residence of the author). The author of the winning article will receive a $250 prize. Please include complete contact information with your submission.
To nominate an article for this award, please send a letter that briefly describes the article's merits, as well as a copy of the article that includes the name and volume/issue number of the journal in which it is published. Electronic submissions such as a PDF are preferred, but print copies will also be accepted. Nominations for this prize may be submitted to:
John Brenner
Managing Editor
State Historical Society of Missouri
605 Elm Street
Columbia, MO 65201
brennerj@shsmo.org
The deadline for receipt of nominations is December 31, 2024.
Student Papers
Cho-Chien Feng, 2020 Student Paper Prize Recipient
Petra DeWitt Student Paper Prize
The Missouri Conference on History presents a $250 prize for the best student paper presented at each year's conference.
Papers nominated for this award may not exceed 3,500 words in length. Students who wish to be considered for the 2025 prize should submit an electronic version of the completed paper to:
John Brenner
Managing Editor
State Historical Society of Missouri
605 Elm Street
Columbia, MO 65201
brennerj@shsmo.org
Nominations for this prize will close after February 21, 2025. Please include complete contact information with your submission.
Shannan C. Mason, 2020 Morrow Prize Recipient
Lynn and Kristen Morrow Missouri History Student Prize
The annual Morrow Missouri History Student Prize is a $175 prize for the best student paper on an aspect of Missouri history presented at the conference.
Papers nominated for this award may not exceed 3,500 words in length. Students who wish to be considered for the 2025 prize should submit an electronic version of the completed paper to:
John Brenner
Managing Editor
State Historical Society of Missouri
605 Elm Street
Columbia, MO 65201
brennerj@shsmo.org
The deadline for receipt of nominations is February 21, 2025.
Award Recipients
The Missouri Conference on History is proud to offer awards with cash prizes to outstanding efforts in the study of history. The past recipients of these awards and prizes are listed below.
Book Award
The Book Award is given to the best volume on any historical topic written by a Missouri resident and published within the preceding year.
| Year | Recipient | Affiliation | Book Title | Book Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Greg Olson | Independent Scholar | Indigenous Missourians: Ancient Societies to the Present | University of Missouri Press |
| 2023 | Michael A. Verney | Drury University | A Great and Rising Nation: Naval Exploration and Global Empire in the Early US Republic | University of Chicago Press |
| 2022 | Brooks Blevins | Missouri State University | A History of the Ozarks: Volume 3, The Ozarkers | University of Illinois Press |
| 2021 | Daniel Mandell | Truman State University | The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870 | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| 2020 | Brooks Blevins | Missouri State University | A History of the Ozarks, Volume 2: The Conflicted Ozarks | University of Illinois Press |
| 2019 | Diane Mutti Burke, Jason Roe, and John Herron | University of Missouri-Kansas City (Burke, Herron), Kansas City Public Library (Roe) | Wide-Open Town: Kansas City in the Pendergast Era | University Press of Kansas |
| 2018 | Howard Wight Marshall | University of Missouri-Columbia | Fiddler's Dream: Old-Time, Swing, and Bluegrass Fiddling in Twentieth-Century Missouri | University of Missouri Press |
| 2017 | James W. Endersby and William T. Horner | University of Missouri-Columbia | Lloyd Gaines and the Fight to End Segregation | University of Missouri Press |
| 2016 | Benjamin Looker | Saint Louis University | A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America | University of Chicago Press |
| 2015 | Lorri Glover | Saint Louis University | Founders As Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries | Yale University Press |
| 2014 | Jeffrey L. Pasley | University of Missouri-Columbia | The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy | University Press of Kansas |
| 2013 | Thomas C. Danisi | Independent Scholar | Uncovering the Truth about Meriwether Lewis | Prometheus Books |
| 2012 | Michael Jan Rozbicki | Saint Louis University | Culture and Liberty in the Age of the American Revolution | University of Virginia Press |
| 2011 | Diane Mutti Burke | University of Missouri-Kansas City | On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 | University of Georgia Press |
| 2010 | Brooks Blevins | Missouri State University | Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol Boys Defined a State | University of Arkansas Press |
| 2009 | Shannon L. Fogg | Missouri University of Science & Technology | The Politics of Everyday Life in Vichy France: Foreigners, Undesirables, and Strangers | Cambridge University Press |
Lawrence O. Christensen Article Award
The Lawrence O. Christensen Article Award is given to the best article on any Missouri-related historical topic published within the preceding year. There are no restrictions on the residence of the author.
| Year | Recipient | Affiliation | Article Title | Article Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Jason McDonald | Truman State University | "'Watch Adair Kounty Klan Grow': The Second Ku Klux Klan in Kirksville, Missouri, 1923-1925" | Missouri Historical Review, October 2023 |
| 2023 | Kelly L. Schmidt | Washington University | "Slavery and the Shaping of Catholic Missouri, 1810-1850" | Missouri Historical Review, January 2022 |
| 2022 | Patrick Huber | Missouri University of Science and Technology | "Remembering the Ste. Genevieve Race Riot of 1930: Historical Memory and the Expulsion of African Americans from a Small Missouri Town" | Missouri Historical Review, January 2021 |
| 2021 | Zachary Dowdle | William Woods University | "Preventing a 'School of Nullification': Politics, Slavery, and the Presidency of the University of Missouri, 1839-1856" | Missouri Historical Review, January 2020 |
| 2020 | Gregg Andrews | Texas State University | “The Destruction of the Big Mound: Possessing and Defining Native American Places in Early St. Louis” | Missouri Historical Review, April 2019 |
| 2019 | Patricia Cleary | California State University, Long Beach | “The Destruction of the Big Mound: Possessing and Defining Native American Places in Early St. Louis” | Missouri Historical Review, October 2018 |
| 2018 | Taylor Desloge | Washington University, St. Louis | "Creating the Lung Block: Racial Transition and the 'New Public Health' in a St. Louis Neighborhood, 1907–1940" | Missouri Historical Review, January 2017 |
| 2017 | Sharon Romeo | University of Alberta | "'The First Morning of Their Freedom': African American Women, Black Testimony, and Military Justice in Civil War Missouri" | Missouri Historical Review, April 2016 |
| 2016 | Jeremy Neely | Missouri State University | "'A Pure Son of Missouri': Freeman Barrows at the Crossroads of the Slaveholding Frontier" | Missouri Historical Review, July 2015 |
| 2015 | Carl J. Ekberg and Sharon K. Person | Illinois State University (Ekberg) and St. Louis Community College (Pearson) | "Tracking Pierre Laclède, 1763-66: A Trading Career Gone Wrong" | Missouri Historical Review, April 2014 |
| 2014 | Todd Barnett | University of Missouri-Columbia | "The 'Great Controversy': The Press, Religion, and Society in Gilded Age St. Louis" | Missouri Historical Review, January 2013 |
| 2013 | Holly A. Baggett | Missouri State University | "The Creation of a Community: A History of Gay and Lesbian Springfield, 1945-2010" | Springfield's Urban Histories: Essays on the Queen City of the Missouri Ozarks, ed. Stephen L. McIntyre, Moon City Press, 2012 |
| 2012 | Michael J. McVicar | The Ohio State University | "Aggressive Philanthropy: Progressivism, Conservatism, and the William Volker Charities Fund" | Missouri Historical Review, July 2011 |
| 2011 | Rebecca S. Montgomery | Texas State University | "'With the Brain of a Man and the Heart of a Woman': Missouri Women and Rural Change, 1890-1945 | Missouri Historical Review, April 2010 |
| 2010 | Carolyn Gilman | Independent Scholar | "LAnne du Coup: The Battle of St. Louis, 1780" | Missouri Historical Review, April and July 2009 |
| 2009 | James N. Giglio | Missouri State University | "'Tom, You're Not Going to Get [It] On a Silver Platter': The Inaugural Senate Campaign of Thomas F. Eagleton" | Missouri Historical Review, April 2008 |
Student Papers
Petra DeWitt Student Paper Prize
The Missouri Conference on History is presented for the best student paper presented at each year's conference.
| Year | Recipient | Affiliation | Paper Title | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Catherine Hutinett | University of Missouri-Columbia | “(Little) Dixie’s Daughters: A History of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Missouri” | |
| 2023 | Kay Ellis | Missouri Southern State University | "How Silence and Subterfuge Ambushed a Senator" | |
| 2022 | Jordan Pellerito | University of Missouri-Columbia | "The Purpose of Place: The University of Missouri Campus, Identity, and Community" | |
| 2021 | Candace Borders | Yale University | "Towards a Method of Refusal: Black Women’s Public Housing Activism in St. Louis" | |
| 2020 | Cho-Chien Feng | Saint Louis University | “Order and Liberty: The Conservative Liberty in New York Loyalist Political Persuasion” | |
| 2019 | Lawrence Celani | University of Missouri-Columbia | “‘Their Blood Has Flown and Mingled with Ours’: The Politics of Slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the Early Republic” | |
| 2018 | Stuart MacKay | Carleton University | "'Let Us Agitate the Rights of White Men': B. Gratz Brown, Frank Blair, and the Ideological Foundations of the Missouri Republican Party, 1856–1860" | |
| 2017 | Colby S. Turberville | University of Missouri-Columbia | "Lothar I: Co-Emperor, Rebel, and King (817–855)" | |
| 2016 | Sean Rost | University of Missouri-Columbia | "'The Department of Balderdash and Near Socialism': Herbert Blumer and the Burrall Bible Class Controversy" | |
| 2015 | Paula Hunt | University of Missouri-Columbia | "'When You Think of Them, Be Thankful That You Were Not Born a Little Slave': The Politics of Family in The Slave's Friend" | |
| 2014 | Danielle Nicole Griego | University of Missouri, Columbia | "Suicide and Misadventure in Coroners' Rolls for the City of Oxford in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries" | |
| 2013 | Paula Hunt | University of Missouri-Columbia | "Elijah Lovejoy: Publishing, Faith, and Abolition in 1830s St. Louis" | |
| 2012 | Sarah Lirley McCune | University of Missouri-Columbia | "Prostitution, Suicide, and Respectability: St. Louis, Missouri, Coroner's Inquests, 1875-1900" | |
| 2011 | Michael A. Ridge Jr. | University of Iowa | The Future Great City of the World Seeks to Fulfill Its Destiny with Mexico, St. Louis and Mexico, 1878-1907" | |
| 2010 | Joshua M. Nygren | University of Kansas | "Making the Most Use of the Best Land: The Evolution of the Rural Zoning Idea in Northern Wisconsin, 1925-1945" | |
| 2009 | Jeffrey D. Howison | Binghamton University | 'This Is Not a Cotton-Picker's Dream': The National Commission on Constitutional Government and the Formation of the 'New Right'" | |
Lynn and Kristen Morrow Missouri History Student Prize
The annual Morrow Missouri History Student Prize is awarded for the best student paper on an aspect of Missouri history presented at the conference.
| Year | Recipient | Affiliation | Paper Title | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Elizabeth Nahach | Truman State University | “The Foot in Jefferson City: An Ethnic Slum or Economically Robust Neighborhood?” | |
| 2023 | Jisung Lee | University of Missouri-Kansas City | "The Abandoned West: The First Year of the Western Sanitary Commission, 1861 to 1862" | |
| 2022 | Conner Katsev | Webster Groves High School | "16 in Webster Groves: A Day in the Life of a High School Student in Webster Groves, 1919-1939" | |
| 2021 | Elizabeth Eikmann | Saint Louis University | "Un-Fair Images: The Gerhard Sisters Portrait Photography at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis" | |
| 2020 | Shannan C. Mason | Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville | “Nature Much Improved: The Curation of a Nineteenth-Century Neighborhood and Green Space” | |
| 2019 | Lawrence Celani | University of Missouri-Columbia | “‘Their Blood Has Flown and Mingled with Ours’: The Politics of Slavery in Illinois and Missouri in the Early Republic” | |
| 2018 | Donna M. Monnig | University of Central Missouri | "Minor Proves Major: The Tax Revolts of Virginia Minor, Missouri Suffragist" | |
| 2017 | Tanya L. Jones | Lindenwood University | "The Impact of Jewish American Identity and Assimilation in the Reform Movement" | |
| 2016 | Zachary Dowdle | University of Missouri-Columbia | "'Not in the Habit of Sleeping with Men': Politics and Masculinity in Antebellum Missouri" | |
| 2015 | None | |||
| 2014 | Amy L. Fluker | University of Mississippi | "'We Cannot Live on Memories': Missouri's Homes for Civil War Veterans, 1890-1950" | |
| 2013 | Sarah Lirley McCune | University of Missouri-Columbia | "Dishonor, Desertion, and Suicide: Respectability and Death Investigations in Late Nineteenth-Century St. Louis" | |
| 2012 | Luke Ritter | Saint Louis University | "Racial Discrimination in the Open Housing Movement, St. Louis County, 1968-1977" | |
| 2011 | Clinton McDuffie | University of Missouri-Kansas City | "Sports and Nationalism: The 1904 St. Louis Olympics and National Identity" | |
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