The 2019 Paul A. Stellhorn Undergraduate New Jersey History Award

The Stellhorn Award recognizes excellence in undergraduate writing about New Jersey history.  It commemorates the career of an outstanding and much-loved historian of New Jersey, the late Paul A. Stellhorn.

In 2019, there will be one or more awards in two categories, one for course or seminar papers, the other for senior theses.  Awards will consist of a certificate and a modest cash award.  The sponsors will present the award(s) at the New Jersey Historical Commission’s Annual Conference in November 2019.  The New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance will invite the recipient(s) to speak about her, his, or their work at one of the Alliance’s 2020 meetings. 

Stellhorn Award recipients’ papers will be eligible for publication in the online journal, New Jersey Studies:  An Interdisciplinary Journal, https://njs.libraries.rutgers.edu/index. php/njs/index.

2018 Recipients

Term/Seminar Paper:  Caleb Dagnall, Kean University, “Statehood and Sovereignty: A Case Study of William Livingston from Philosophe to Federalist.”

Senior Thesis:  E. Rosie Driscoll, The College of New Jersey, “Without the Least Provision”:  Black and Desegregationist Resistance to Systemic Racial Discrimination in Private and Public Housing in Trenton, New Jersey, 1938-1965.”

Both papers are published in the current (winter) edition of New Jersey Studies:  An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Submission Criteria

• Papers or theses may be about any subject in New Jersey’s history and may come from history and other departments, and from institutions in New Jersey and elsewhere.

• Nominated works should be truly outstanding in all respects (see evaluation criteria, below).

• Senior theses are eligible for the award and will be judged separately in their own category.

• Papers or theses must be nominated by the professors for whose courses students wrote them or who mentored the thesis or served as one of its readers.  Students may not nominate their own papers or theses.

• Papers or theses must have been written by undergraduate students attending colleges (including community colleges) or universities during calendar 2017, 2018, or 2019.

• Papers by graduate students are not eligible unless a student submitted an undergraduate paper about New Jersey history during 2016, 2017, or 2018.  NOTE:  The New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance sponsors an annual award for graduate student writing about New Jersey history.  Contact Paul Israel at pisrael@rutgers.edu or visit njsaa.org for requirements.

• Email nominating letters and papers by  June 1, 2019, to acrelius@optonline.net, or surface-mail nominating letters and four (4) copies of each paper by the same date to Richard Waldron, 150 Flock Road, Hamilton, NJ 08619;  609.468.3824.

NOTE:  Read the papers of previous PAS Award recipients at the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance’s website, njsaa.org. 

Evaluation Criteria

A paper or thesis submitted for the Stellhorn Award will be evaluated on the basis of its narrative strength, the thoroughness of its author’s research (mastery of sources and the standard forms of historical citation), and analysis of the paper’s subject, including its historical context.  A nominated paper should, therefore, tell a good story, explain its subject’s significance and how the subject changed over time, and utilize a broad array of relevant primary and secondary sources.  Evaluators are historians the sponsors have chosen for the breadth and depth of their knowledge of New Jersey and American history.

Sponsors

The Stellhorn Award’s sponsors are the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance; the New Jersey Historical Commission, New Jersey Department of State; Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University Libraries; and the New Jersey Caucus of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.