The eighth annual Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes for the authors of exemplary high school history research papers were presented on March 12, 2002, at the Kidger Reception of the New England History Teachers Association in Boston.

The prizes—a copy of David McCullough's Truman and a check for $3,000—went to five authors, chosen from among 44 high school students whose work was published in volume 11 of The Concord Review, a much acclaimed quarterly journal founded in 1987 by Will Fitzhugh for publishing articles in history by secondary students.

The five prizewinning authors are Emily Alter (Carleton Coll.), from the Brandon School in Ross, California, who wrote an essay on the Spiritualist Movement in the U.S. and its early association with the Woman Suffrage Movement; Jonas Doberman (Harvard Coll.), from Boulder High School in Boulder, Colorado, who wrote a paper on the treason charges brought against Ezra Pound for his radio broadcasts from Italy during World War II; David Gopstein (Princeton Univ.), from Hunter College High School in New York, who wrote an essay on the history of the constitutional law on impeachment; Tanya Sibai (Tulane Univ.), from St. Mary's Episcopal School in Memphis, Tennessee, who wrote a history of the witch trials in Germany in the 16th and 17th centuries; Sarah Weiss (Yale Univ.), from Lincoln Park High School in Chicago, Illinois, for her two essays, one on a column for immigrant letters in the Jewish Daily Forward and one on the black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, at the turn of the century in Chicago. The winning essays are available on the journal's web site at http://www.tcr.org.