Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize
The Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize is given to the best academic book in American Studies written by a New England scholar or about New England over a two-year period.
Please send an email to neasacouncil@gmail.com and attach a PDF of your book or email with our Awards Committee to arrange postage of hard copies from your publisher. Please also include a one page author bio. Submit by April 15th for full consideration. Your book must have been published no earlier than January 2022 to be eligible. The cash prize is $500 for the winning book.
Mary Kelley Prize
The Mary Kelley Prize is awarded to the best paper presented at the annual conference by a graduate student or non-tenure track scholar.
Please send an email to neasacouncil@gmail.com and attach your essay of no longer than 25 double spaced pages along with a brief bio (250 words) and abstract (250 words) by April 15th for full consideration. You must be presenting the paper at the 2024 conference to be eligible. The cash prize is $250 for the winning essay.
The Lisa MacFarlane Prize (undergraduate)
The Lisa MacFarlane Prize is awarded to the best paper or project written and developed by an undergraduate located in New England on any subject related to American Studies.
Please send an email to neasacouncil@gmail.com and attach your essay of no longer than 25 double spaced pages along with a brief bio (250 words) and abstract (250 words) by April 15th for full consideration. The cash prize is $250 for the winning essay.
The New England American Studies Association is pleased to announce the winner of its 2022 Lois P. Rudnick award, which goes to Jarvis R. Givens for Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching (Harvard UP, 2021).
An honorable mention goes to Aaron Lecklider for Love’s Next Meeting The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture (U of California P, 2021).
The New England American Studies Association is pleased to announce the winner of its 2022 Mary Kelley Prize, which goes to Rachel C. Kirby for “I’ll Admit that Black is White”: Mr. Peanut’s Accessorized Shell as a Racialized Body,” which looks at original sketches of Planters’s Mr. Peanut character and early advertisements to examine the layers of race, class, and region embodied within Mr. Peanut. Contextualizing the images within Jim Crow visual culture, Kirby argues that Mr. Peanut and his accessories – his cane, top hat, spats, and monocle – were used to varying degrees to signify a racial and regional characterization of peanuts to appeal to national consumers. Through dualities of minstrelsy and aristocracy, Black and white, urban and rural, Planters created a fluid character who could navigate a range of positions because of his perceived social ambiguities.