Du Bois-Wells Graduate Student Paper Prize
The AAIHS Conference Planning Committee invites submissions for the 2025 Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize named after W.E.B Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. This annual prize recognizes the most outstanding paper presented by a graduate student at the annual AAIHS conference. The committee will judge the written paper on which the presentation is based (normally 10-12 pages in length; double-spaced; size 12 font; one inch margins). Graduate students must first be accepted to present at the conference in order to be eligible for this award. In addition to a monetary prize of $150, the winner will receive a plaque and their conference registration fee will be waived. All academic fields of history will be considered, and essays must be submitted with full citations (Chicago style footnotes preferred).
The deadline for the 2025 Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize is February 16, 2025.
To apply for the prize, submit a cover letter listing your name, email, institutional affiliation, and phone number along with the name of your graduate adviser below. Please also indicate your graduate student year and verify that your paper was accepted by the conference planning committee. In addition to the cover letter, send a copy of the paper in Microsoft Word. Please do not send submissions to the committee members.
*Please send all submissions and questions about the 2025 Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize via the link below:
Du Bois-Wells Graduate Student Paper Prize application
Previous Recipients
2024–Adriana Green, The University of California, Berkeley
- “40 Acres and the Moon”
2023–Cinnamon Williams, Northwestern University
- “Home Is Where The Work Is: A Reading of Skills Articles in Third World Women’s Alliance’s Triple Jeopardy Newspaper.”
2022–Andrew Lester, Rutgers University-Newark
- “‘We Must Document Ourselves Now’: 1970s Black Lesbian Writing and Publishing as Everyday Memory-Making Practices.”
2021–Margarita Rosa, Princeton University
- “The Notorious Negress: Belle Williams, Black Geographies, and Carcerality in 1890s Los Angeles”
2020–Leo Valdes, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
- “Breaking Cages: Preliminary Thoughts on Race, Transgender Identity, and Black Prison Organizing.”
2019–Clayton Vaughn-Roberson, Carnegie Mellon University
- “Premature Anti-Fascists: The National Negro Congress and the Spanish Civil War”
2018–Natalie Shibley, University of Pennsylvania
- “‘Not fit material for anyone to print’: Race, Respectability, and Military Homosexuality Investigations, 1945-1950”
2017–Andrew Pope, Harvard University
- “Less Spelling, More Mathematics: Model Neighborhood, Inc. and the Remaking of Black Power in Atlanta, 1966-1974”
2016– Jonathan Lande, Brown University
- “The Black Badge of Courage: The Politics of Freedom and the Memory of Black Soldiers in the Civil War”
