Raymond J. Cunningham Prize
The American Historical Association offers the Raymond J. Cunningham Prize annually for the best article published in a journal written by an undergraduate student. The prize was established in memory of Raymond J. Cunningham, who was an associate professor of history at Fordham University. He was an authority on American historian Herbert Baxter Adams. See the list of past recipients.
Eligibility
The prize selection committee has typically given preference to articles that incorporate primary sources. The article must be published in a journal between May 1, 2019, and April 30, 2020.
Submission Details
Nominations should include:
- Award nomination form (you will be prompted to complete this form online in step 3 of the application process)
- A letter of support (no more than 2 pages). Be sure to include the name of the undergraduate author of the article, the publishing journal, and the faculty advisor.
- A copy of the article
Please note: Only ONE article from a specific journal may be nominated each year.
The AHA has partnered with Interfolio to manage our nomination process. Submitting a nomination package through Interfolio is FREE for nominators. When submitting a nomination, if you don't already have an account with Interfolio, you will be asked to set up an account and create a password, but you will NOT be charged any fee to create the account.
Nominations must be submitted through Interfolio by May 15, 2020, to be eligible for the 2020 competition. Mailed, e-mailed, or faxed applications will not be accepted. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2020 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2021 AHA annual meeting in Seattle.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
2019 Cunningham Prize
Lena Giger, Stanford Univ. (BA, 2019)
“The Right to Participate and the Right to Compete: Stanford Women’s Athletics, 1956–1995,” Herodotus (Spring 2019)
Faculty Advisor: Estelle Freedman
This article on women’s participation in college athletics is written with verve, and clearly argued. It makes excellent use of the Stanford archives, especially oral histories, without losing sight of the national context. Admirably, Lena Giger explores complex change over time and avoids a simple progress narrative, investigating three periods and characterizing each to demonstrate how participation, tension, and then competition won out in women’s athletics. Giger shows how generational divides, and ideas about competition versus participation, made the implementation of Title IX difficult. The detailed analysis of Stanford’s programs is convincing enough to make it more widely applicable.