IAMHIST Prizes 2021 for Media and History

Llewella Chapman Announcement
Subject Fields
Archival Science, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Film and Film History, Popular Culture Studies

THE 2021 IAMHIST- MICHAEL NELSON PRIZE

AND

THE 2021 IAMHIST- CHRISTINE WHITTAKER PRIZE

FOR WORKS IN MEDIA AND HISTORY

 

 We are pleased to open submissions for the IAMHIST- Michael Nelson Prize and IAMHIST- Christine Whittaker Prize for works in media and history. 

 

The IAMHIST- Michael Nelson Prize is a biennial prize awarded for the book making the best contribution on the subject of media and history, which has been published or shown in the preceding two years.  The prize is dedicated to Michael Nelson, whose passion for media and journalism inspired IAMHIST throughout the years.  For more information on Michael Nelson, please consult: www.michaelnelsonbooks.com.

 

The IAMHIST – Christine Whittaker Prize is a biennial prize awarded for the radio or television program or series, film, DVD, CD-ROM, or URL making the best contribution on the subject of media and history, which has been produced and released in the preceding two years.  The prize is dedicated to Christine Whittaker, the first acknowledged archive film researcher for the BBC, and IAMHIST’s most influential film and television practitioner.  For more information on Christine Whittaker, please consult: https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/christine-whittaker

 

Each award carries a prize of $1000 USD. Submissions for the 2021 prizes should reach the committee before September 30, 2020. The prizes will be awarded for a publication and (multi) media contribution on the subject of media and history published or produced between September 2018 – September 2020. 

 

The prize was awarded for the first time in 2007, at the XXIInd IAMHIST conference in Amsterdam. The winner was Wendy Webster, for her book Englishness and Empire, 1939-1965. Thanks to an especially strong field of entries, two winners were chosen in 2009: Reconstructing American Historical Cinema from Cimmaron to Citizen Kane, by J. E. Smyth and Voices in Ruins: German Radio and National Reconstruction in the Wake of Total War, by Alexander Badenoch. Both works were cited by the prize committee as making outstanding contributions to the field, based on excellence of research, originality, accessibility, and scholarly usefulness.  In 2011, the prize was awarded to It’s the Pictures that Got Small: Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television, by Christine Becker.  In 2013, the first year of the multi-media prize, the recipients were: J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood’s Cold, by James Sbardellati (book), and The Media History Digital Library (multi-media). In 2015, the recipients were How it Feels to be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, by Ruth Feldstein (book) and Brave Little Belgium, produced by VRT (multi-media). In 2017, the sole recipient was Shelley Stamp’s Lois Weber in Early Hollywood.  In 2019, the sole recipient was Susan Murray’s Bright Signals: A History of Color Television.

 

Rules of the Michael Nelson and Christine Whittaker prizes: 

 

  1. The prizes are awarded biennially. 
  2. Invitations for submissions and names of the winners will be published in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, on the IAMHIST website, on flyers displayed in the universities of teaching members of IAMHIST, and by letters to appropriate bodies. 
  3. The prizes will be awarded (1) for the book and (2) for the radio or television program or series, film, DVD, CD-ROM, or URL making the best contribution on the subject of media and history to have been published or shown in the preceding two years (which, for the 2021 prize, will be from September 2018 – September 2020). 
  4. Three copies of the work must be submitted to the IAMHIST prize sub-committee chair by 30 September of the year preceding the award (in this case, September 30, 2020).  
  5. The submitted works must be in the form of printed text, DVD or CD-ROM. They must be accompanied by back-up material, as appropriate, such as scripts and shot lists. 
  6. Works which are not in English must be accompanied by an English translation or an English synopsis. 
  7. The winners will be selected by a sub-committee of the Council of IAMHIST, under the chairmanship of IAMHIST Treasurer, Cynthia Miller.

Submissions should be sent to:  Professor Cynthia J. Miller 484 Bolivar St. Canton, MA  02021 USA. Email: Cynthia_Miller@emerson.edu  

Contact Information

Professor Cynthia J. Miller

Contact Email
Cynthia_Miller@emerson.edu