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2008 Drusilla Dunjee Houston Memorial Scholarship recipients are Shannen D. Williams and Kim Gallon.
Shannen’s essay, “‘Liberation Is Our First Priority’: Black Nuns, Soul Politics, and the Modern African-American Freedom Struggle,” explores the little-known history of Black Catholic nuns and their encounter with Black power in the postwar American nation. Aiming to restore a lost dimension of the modern Black freedom movement, namely the struggle waged by Black Catholic women religious to desegregate the American Catholic Church, to the American historical narrative, this essay not only uncovers a rich and vibrant tradition of resistance to white supremacy and segregation among the nation’s population of Black Catholic nuns, but also directs much-needed attention to Black religious women and their contributions to the Black radical imagination of the postwar era.
Shannen Dee Williams is a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Rutgers University. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Agnes Scott College where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History in 2004, Shannen also holds a Master of Arts degree in Afro-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Her teaching and research interests include: 19th and 20th United States social and political history, African-American history, African-American women’s intellectual history, and American Catholic history. Her dissertation will examine the political culture and activism of Black Catholic nuns in the 20th century American nation. In addition to her studies, Shannen is also an instructor at the U.S. History High School Saturday Academy on the Rutgers-Newark campus.
Kim's essay, “For the Good of the Race: Female Beauty and Sexuality in Black Newspapers 1925-1940," argues that black newspapers rearticulated negative white images of black womanhood, conveying to readers representations of sexuality they believed were befitting of early twentieth century African American females. Forced to serve as literal breeders during slavery, black women’s bodies signified for both white men and women unfettered sexuality well into the twentieth century. In this sense, whites used race as a predetermining factor for their negative assessments of African American women’s sexuality. Between 1925 and 1940 African American male editors and reporters directly responded to white stereotypes of black womanhood. Through photographs and coverage of “bathing beauties” black newspapers drew on revolutionary ideals of sexual liberalism and constructed an image of the "New Negro Woman" that was at once middle-class, heterosexual, respectable, and seductive.
Kim Gallon is an ABD graduate student in history at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in English. She also holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Drexel University. Her research interests are gender, race, and sexuality in 20th century U.S. history. She is currently completing her dissertation, titled “Between Respectability and Modernity: Sexuality in Black Newspapers, 1925-1940.” Kim is presently a visiting instructor and a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellow at Sewanee: The University of the South.
2008 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize Recipients are
Carole Boyce Davies
Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones
Duke University Press (December 2007) - Paperback.
Link about Carole Boyce Davies' book
Paula J. Giddings
Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching Amistad (March 11, 2008) - Hardcover.
Link about Paula Giddings' book
Anthology:
Deborah Gray White, editor
Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower (Gender and American Culture) The University of North Carolina Press (March 25, 2008) - Paperback.
Link about Deborah Gray Whites' Anthology
2008 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Article Prize Recipients are
Robyn Ceanne Spencer
“Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California” Journal of Women's History 20.1 (2008) 90-113.
Shanara R. Reid-Brinkley
“The Essence of Res(ex)pectability: Black Women's Negotiation of Black Femininity in Rap Music and Music Video” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism Volume 8, Number 1, 2008 (Entire issue is dedicated to hip-hop and gender).
Lorraine Anderson Williams Leadership Award honors an African American woman in education or an area providing related services such as archives, libraries, historical societies and museums. She should have demonstrated outstanding scholarship and service in administration and teaching and, together with her leadership skills, should have made an impact upon African American women. The nominee need not be a member of ABWH. Deadline for nomination: August 31st.
Lillie M. Newton Hornsby Memorial Award is a $250 prize given for historical research by a black female undergraduate, either at the end of her junior year or during her senior year. It cannot be awarded to those who have graduated. Deadline for nomination: September 1st.
For more information about the ASALH convention, go to www.asalh.org.