Recent AJAS Award & Prize Winners

James Holt Award for the best article published in AJAS in the two years between conferences.

2020-2021: Jordan Mylet, “How to Treat an Addict: Institutional Confinement, Mutual Aid, and Self Realization in Postwar Los Angeles.” (December 2021).

2018-2019: Timothy Minchin, “‘They Didn’t Want to Be Union’: Southern Transplants and the Growth of America’s ‘Other’ Automakers” (December 2017), and Paula Rabinowitz, “Scenes of Reading Women: Feminism and Paperbacks: A Possible Origin Story” (July 2018).

Peter Coleman Prize for the best article by a postgraduate student published in AJAS in the journal in the two years between conferences.

2024-2025: Wing Hei Wang, “The Killing Machine that is All Too Human Violence, Vulnerability, and Realness in John Wick.“

2022-2023: McGrath, Angus, “Cruising The Closet: Sex, Subculture, and Systems of Policing“ (December 2024).

2020-2021: Carrie Streeter, “Breathing Power and Poise: Black Women’s Movements for Self-Expression and Health, 1880s–1990s” (December 2020).

2018-2019: Kate Rivington, “In its Midst: An Analysis of One Hundred Southern-Born Anti-Slavery Activists” (July 2019).

Norman Harper Prize for an essay by an undergraduate student, which is then published in AJAS.

2024: Hearne, Rosemary, “The Defiance of Wilderness: Competing Perspectives on the Great Dismal Swamp in the Southern Imagination” and Arulthasan, Stephanie. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The American Nightmare in Contemporary Black Horror Cinema” (July 2025).

2023: Lam, Olivia, “‘This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land’: Strategizing Asian American Settler-Immigrant Solidarity through Sameness in Indigenous Politics” (July 2024).

2022: Rohan Lovell, “The United States Military, Canned Foods and Guam: How Has Food Contributed to Structures of Dependence?” and Pia Treweeke-Stoner, “The Standing of Trees: The Emergence of the Rights of Nature Movement, from Christopher Stone to Lake Erie” (December 2022).

2021: Julie Morrow, “Adapting Against Assimilation: Recovering Anishinaabe Student Writings in Carlisle Indian School Periodicals, 1904-1918” (December 2021).

2020: Siobhan Ryan, “Columbia University’s ‘Gym Crow’: What the Contest over a Public Park Reveals about the Link between Race and Space” (December 2020).