The results are in for our Colby, Peterson and Field Development awards and grants!
Robert and Vineta Colby Book Prize
The winner of this year’s Robert and Vineta Colby Book Prize is Priti Joshi’s Empire News: The Anglo-Indian Press Writes India (SUNY Press, 2021). The prize committee praised Empire News as “a valuable, innovative and timely study that brings to life the circulations of English language newspapers published in mid-century India with an immaculate level of care and attention to archival detail.” This book “compellingly illuminates the ways in which the empire was not a monolithic construct of the press, but an often contradictory space of competing voices, shaped by the journalistic need for copy, access to sources, and volatility in the business of press production.”
The committee would also like to give an honourable mention to Alison Moulds’ Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s-1910s (Palgrave, 2021) as a highly impressive work of scholarship for an early career researcher.
Linda H. Peterson Prize
Laura Vorachek is this year’s recipient of the Linda H. Peterson Prize for her project, The Society of Women Journalists, 1894-1914. As the decision committee commented that with its “impressive” temporal and international scope, this project “promises to add significantly to our knowledge and understanding of the role of women journalists and the press from the late nineteenth century to the beginning of World War One.”
RSVP Field Development Grant
This year, the Field Development Grant committee has made the somewhat unusual decision to divide the award equally between two equally worthy and complementary projects: Printed Matters: Early Representations of the Caribbean in British Periodicals (Louise Kane) and Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition: Investigating an Archival Future (James Mussell, Mark Turner, and Paul Caton).
Collecting articles from British periodicals that represent the Caribbean, Printed Matters will “expand and expedite” new research possibilities in the field. Scholars of British imperialism, transatlanticism, Caribbeanism, and more will benefit immensely from this exciting project.
Investigating an Archival Future, meanwhile, will be invaluable as “a clear model for how to wind down digital projects while preserving their usability.” While it focuses on preserving and archiving an existing resource, the Nineteenth Century Serials Edition (ncse), it will nonetheless develop the field of periodical studies in a crucial way.
Congratulations to all! Thanks to those who submitted and to our awards committees for all their hard work. Stay tuned for further announcements regarding our Sally Mitchell Dissertation, VanArsdel and Expanding the Field prizes, which will be made later this summer.