Zane L. Miller Prize Recipients 2013
The Department of History announced
the Zane L. Miller prizes for this year’s best graduate papers at the spring
awards ceremony. First Prize, which
comes with a $500 award, went to first-year doctoral student Alyssa McClanahan. Her paper, “‘Take the Toys from the Boys!’
Anti-Nuclear Feminism and the Women’s Liberation Movement,” offers a
fascinating glimpse into the struggles among feminist groups. Taking the anti-nuclear feminists as her
lens, McClanahan concludes, “Movements like anti-nuclear feminism were the main
heirs to women’s liberation of the late 1960s and 1970s.” While her careful analysis lays bare how the diverse feminist presuppositions and agendas got in the way
of a unified movement, her insightful conclusion
suggests that lack of homogeneity does not equal dysfunctionality, but rather
connotes a vibrant, stimulating, and ongoing feminist discourse.
Second Prize, with a $250 award,
went to first-year doctoral student Nathan McGee. His “‘Renfro Valley Is Your Community Too’: A
Modern Vision of the Past at Renfro Valley, 1937-1950” offers an intriguing
examination of the rich material on the emerging radio culture and radio host
John Lair. McGee shows the powerful draw
of Lair’s juxtaposition of the fleetingness of the city with the timelessness
of the country. But McGee also demonstrates the tensions underlying Lair’s
broadcast of “good, old, American values” associated with hardworking American
farmers through a thoroughly modern medium, the radio.
Third Prize, and its $125 award,
went to David Weyhe, who earned his Master’s degree this spring. His
beautifully written paper, “‘Wasnatürlichist,
kannnichtunmoralischsein’: Magnus
Hirschfeld, Cosmopolitan Right, and the World League for Sexual Reform 1921-1935,”
takes us into the world of the interwar period and its initiatives regarding
sexual reforms. Weyhe’s careful study of
sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld and the series of international congresses on
sexual reform demonstrates the extent to which Hirschfeld’s scientific,
cosmopolitan, pan-humanist ideas shaped the contents and conduct of the
congresses.
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