Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize

The Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize is an annual $400 prize that recognizes the best monograph in the field of history published by a WAWH member. Applicants to the Keller-Sierra Prize must be current members of WAWH when they submit their book. Current WAWH board members are not eligible to apply

The book must be a single-authored monograph based on original research. Anthologies and edited works are not eligible. The book must have been published in the year prior to the prize. Books may only be submitted for consideration once. Books cannot be submitted a second time as paperbacks or new editions. All fields of history are eligible.

Award bylaws are also available.

To apply for the Frances Richardson Keller Sierra Prize , please visit our WAWH 2022 Prize Submission Form here.

WAWH is working to re-endow its awards and prizes. Please consider a donation, of any amount, to support any of our eight awards and prizes. Donate now!

For questions about the Keller-Sierra Prize, please contact the Current Chair.

Previous Recipients

2022
Sarah Coleman, Texas State University
The Walls Within: The Politics of Immigration in Modern America (Princeton, 2021)

2021
Hanna Dudley Shotwell
Revolutionizing Women’s Healthcare: The Feminist Self-Help Movement in America (Rutgers, 2020)

2020
Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué
Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2019)

Honorable Mention: Katherine M. Marino
Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement (UNC Press, 2019)

2019
Ana Raquel Minian
Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (Harvard University Press, 2018)

2018
Sue Peabody
Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies (Oxford University Press, 2017)

2017
Carolyn Chappell Lougee
Facing the Revocation: Huguenot Families, Faith, and the King’s Will (Oxford University Press, 2016)

2016
Terri Snyder
The Power to Die: Slavery and Suicide in British North America (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

2015
Paula Michaels
Lamaze: An International History (Oxford University Press, 2014)

2014
Estelle Freedman
Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregation (Harvard University Press, 2013)

2013
Nancy Kollman
Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

2012
Edith Sheffer
Burned Bridge: How East And West Germans Made The Iron Curtain (Oxford University Press, 2011).

2011
Sarah Curtis
Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of the French Empire, (Oxford University Press, 2010).

2010
Rebecca M. Kluchin
Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America, 1950-1980, (Rutgers University Press, 2009).

2009
Rachel Fuchs
Contested Paternity: Constructing Families in Modern France, (Johns Hopkins, 2008).

2008
Jill Fields
An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, and Sexuality, (University of California Press, 2007).

2007
Linda Nash
Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge, (University of California Press, 2006).

2006
Lisa Forman Cody
Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

2005
Irene Guenther
Nazi ‘Chic’?: Fashioning Women in the Third Reich, Berg Publishers, 2004. (on Google Books)

2004
Tanis C. Thorne
The World’s Richest Indian: The Scandal Over Jackson Barnett’s Oil Fortune, Oxford University Press, October 2003.

2003
Lucy G. Barber
Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

2002
Patricia A. Schechter
Ida B. Wells-Barnett and American Reform, 1880-1930, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

2001
Jessica Weiss
To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change, (University of Chicago Press).

2000

Margaret D. Jacobs
Engendered Encounters: Feminism and Pueblo Cultures, 1879-1934, (University of Nebraska Press, 1999).

Diane Wolfthal
Images of Rape: The “Heroic” Tradition and its Alternatives, (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

1999
Nina Rattner Gelbart
The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madam du Coudray, (University of California Press, 1998).

1998
Pamela Beth Radcliff
From Mobilization to Civil War: The Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City Gijón 1900-1937, (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

1997
Estelle B. Freedman
Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition, (University of Chicago Press, 1996).

1996
Susan L. Smith
Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women’s Health Activism in America, 1890-1950, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).

1995
Angel Kwolek-Folland
Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870-1930, (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). (on Google Books)

1994
Marilynn S. Johnson
The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II, (University of California Press, 1994).

1993
Glenna Matthews
The Rise of Public Woman: Woman’s Power and Woman’s Place in the United States, 1630-1970, (Oxford University Press, 1992).

1992
Francesca Miller
Latin American Women and the Search for Social Justice, (University Press of New England), 1991. [JSTOR review]

1991
Mary Elizabeth Perry
Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville, (Princeton University Press, 1990).

1990
Karen Lystra
Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth-Century America, (Oxford University Press, 1989).

1989
Margaret Washington Creel,
A Peculiar People:’ Slave Religion and Community Culture Among the Gullah, (New York University Press, 1988). [JSTOR review, on Google Books]

1988
Nina Rattner Gelbart
Feminine and Opposition Journalism in Old Regime France: Le Journal des Dames, (University of California Press, 1987). [JSTOR review, on Google Books]

1987

Joan M. Jensen
Loosening the Bonds: Mid-Atlantic Farm Women, 1750-1850, (Yale University Press, 1986).

Dolores E. Janiewski
Sisterhood Denied: Race, Gender, and Class in a New South Community, (Temple University Press, 1986).

1986
No Prize Awarded.

1985
Michelle Root-Bernstein
Boulevard Theater and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris, (UMI Research Press, 1984). [JSTOR review, on Google Books]

1984
Sharon L. Sievers
Flowers in Salt: The Beginning of Feminist Consciousness in Modern Japan, (Stanford University Press, 1983). [JSTOR review]

1983
Susan Strasser
Never Done: A History of American Housework, (Pantheon Books, 1982). [on Google Books]

1982
Mary Elizabeth Perry
Crime and Society in Early Modern Seville, (University Press of New England, 1980). [Full text, Library of Iberian Resources Online, on Google Books]

1981
Erna Olafson Hellerstein, Leslie Parker Hume, and Karen M. Offen
Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women’s Lives in Nineteenth Century England, France, and the United States, (Stanford University Press, 1981). [on Google Books]

Reception at the 2006 Conference for Keller-Sierra Prize winners