The Coalition for Western Women's History awards two prizes, the Irene Ledesma Prize and the Armitage-Jameson prize, and sponsors a third prize, the Jensen-Miller Award, a prize given by the Western History Association. To apply for any of the awards in a given year, consult the Prize Call.
IRENE LEDESMA PRIZE
CWWH sponsors the Irene Ledesma Prize, a cash award of $1,000 for graduate student research in gender and western women's history. This prize honors Irene Ledesma, whose untimely death deprived us of an important voice in Chicana history.
Past Winners
2010: The 2010 Ledesma Prize winner is Annie Hanshew, a University of Utah doctoral student, for her research on women fire-jumpers.
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, 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 for “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 for “Forgotten Youth: Adolescence and the Mexican American Woman in WWII Los Angeles.”
1999: Dedra McDonald, Ph.D. Candidate, University of New Mexico for “Negotiated Conquests: Domestic Servants and Gender in the Spanish and Mexican Borderlands, 1598-1860.”
The Jensen-Miller Award in Women’s and Gender History
The Western History Association offers the Jensen-Miller Award for the best article in the field of women and gender in the North American West. No time period restrictions apply, and essays will be judged on their significance to the field, their contributions to knowledge, and their literary quality. Any WHA member, as well as the publisher or author of the essay, may nominate an essay. A copy of the journal, an offprint, or a photocopy must be submitted to each member of the Award Committee. 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 of the winning essay will receive a certificate.
Past Winners (awarded by the Western History Association)
2010: Lori A. Flores, “An Unladylike Strike Fashionably Clothed: Mexicana and Anglo Women Garment Workers Against Tex-Son, 1959–1963," Pacific Historical Review, 78, no. 3 (August 2009).
2009: Kathleen DuVal, “Indian Intermarriage and Metissage in Colonial Louisiana," William and Mary Quarterly, 65, no. 2 (April 2008).
Past Winners (awarded by the Coalition for Western Women's History, 1990-2008)
2008: Elizabeth R. Escobedo, “The Pachuca Panic: Sexual and Cultural Battlegrounds in World War II Los Angeles,” Western History Quarterly 38, no. 2 (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 13, no. 1 (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 16, no. 2 (August 2004).
2004: Ann R. Gabbert, “Prostitution and Moral Reform in the Borderlands: El Paso, 1890-1920,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 12, no. 4 (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 23, no. 3 (2002) .
2002: Laura Jane Moore, “Elle Meets the President: Weaving Navajo Culture and Commerce in the Southwestern Tourist Industry." Frontiers 22, no. 1 (2001): 21-44.
2001: Lynn M. Hudson, “‘Strong Animal Passion’ in the Gilded Age: Race, Sex, and a Senator on Trial,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 9, no. 1-2 (January/April 2000) 62-84.
2000: Mary Ann Irwin, “‘Going About and Doing Good’: The Politics of Benevolence, Welfare, and Gender in San Francisco, 1850-1880,” Pacific Historical Review 68 (August 1999).
1999: Jean Barman, “Taming Aboriginal Sexuality: Gender, Power, and Race in British Columbia, 1850-1900,” BC Studies no. 115/116 (Autumn/Winter 1997/1998): 237-266.
1998: Catherine A. Cavanaugh, “‘No Place for a Woman’: Engendering Western Canadian Settlement,” Western Historical Quarterly 28 (Winter 1997): 493-518.
1997: James F. Brooks, “‘This Evil Extends Especially…to the Feminine Sex’: Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands,” Feminist Studies 22, no. 2 (Summer 1996).
1996: Irene Ledesma, “Texas Newspapers and Chicana Workers' Activism, 1919-1974,” Western Historical Quarterly 15, no. 3 (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 14, no. 3 (November 1993): 495-517.
1993: Antonia I. Castañeda, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History,” Pacific Historical Review (1992): 501-533.
1992: Peggy Pascoe, “Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations: the Case of Interracial Marriage,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12, no. 1 (1991).
1991: Carol Cornwall Madsen, “‘At Their Peril’: Utah Law and the Case of Plural Wives, 1850-1900,” Western Historical Quarterly (November 1990).
A collection of the first twelve Jensen-Miller Prize winning essays is now available in paperback: Women and Gender in the American West: Jensen-Miller Essays from the Coalition for Western Women's History, Mary Ann Irwin and James F. Brooks, eds. (University of New Mexico Press, 2004). The essays from 1991 to 2003 are included in this volume.
The Armitage-Jameson Award
The CWWH Steering Committee announced its new prize, the Armitage-Jameson Award for the best book about western women and gender history, in October 2009. The first prize was awarded in October 2010 at the CWWH Breakfast, held in conjunction with the annual Western History Association conference at Incline Village, Nevada.
Past Winners
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, 2010).