Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award

 

The Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award honors Tony Kaye (1962-2017), an innovative scholar of slavery at Penn State University and the National Humanities Center. Tony was an active member of the Society of Civil War Historians and one of the founding editors of the Journal of the Civil War Era. Tony’s contributions helped to make the journal an immediate success, engaging scholars across a wide variety of fields. The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, the Journal of the Civil War EraUNC Press, and the Society of Civil War Historians created this award to honor Tony’s passion for putting scholars in disparate fields in conversation with each other to enrich our understanding of the past.

 

Congratulations to Lindsey Peterson

The Journal of the Civil War Era is pleased to announce that Dr. Lindsey Peterson has been selected as the recipient of the Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award for 2023. Her winning essay is titled, “‘Homebuilders’: Gender and Union Commemoration in the Trans-Mississippi West.” The prize selection committee, consisting of Dr. Beth Lew-Williams (chair), Dr. Paul Barba, and Dr. Antwain Hunter, wrote: “In this fascinating essay, Peterson explores the history of Civil War commemoration in the trans-Mississippi West, drawing out powerful connections between memorialization of war and the ongoing violence of settler colonialism. In addition to examining white Union veterans and their families, she spotlights the complicated role of Native peoples in this history, interrogating their incorporation into the pageantry (with or without their consent) in highly gendered, racialized, and exploitative ways. The result is an exemplary study of the Civil War’s legacies in the West.”

Congratulations Lindsey and thanks to the awards committee for their service! 

 

 

Previous Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award Winners:

2021: Bryan P. Lapointe, “A Right to Speak: Toward a Political History of Former Slaves Before the American Civil War.”

2019: Robert Colby, “’Negroes Will Bear Fabulous Prices:’ The Economics of Wartime Slave Commerce and Visions of the Confederate Future.”