End: June 1, 2016
Contact: eedson@pvcc.edu
More Info: www.washmapsociety.org

The 2016 essay competition for the Ristow Prize is now open for applicants. Full- or part-time undergraduate, graduate, or first-year postgraduate students attending any accredited college or university worldwide are eligible to submit papers.

Research papers must be related to the history of cartography. Merely using maps to relate an episode in history is not sufficient, unless the maps date from the period of the event, and/or disclose new information about that event, and/or the study of those maps constitutes a major focus of the paper. It may be helpful to review the List of Ristow Prize Winners to help grasp the variety of papers that have won in past years’ competitions.

The papers must be completed to fulfill academic requirements. For example, they may be research papers submitted to fulfill course work, or they may be a portion or adaptation of a portion of a thesis or dissertation. The entrant must be prepared to provide the name and contact information of the professor, instructor, or reader for which the paper was done, and the title of the course. This need not accompany the paper.

The paper must be in English and must be documented in a style selected by the author. Papers must not exceed 7500 words. Bibliography and reference footnotes are not counted in the 7500 word limit. Textual or explanatory footnotes or asterisked remarks are counted in the 7500 word limit and cannot be used to circumvent that limit.

The winner of the Ristow Prize Competition shall receive the following:

• $1000 cash award
• a one-year membership in the Washington Map Society
• publication of the paper in The Portolan – Journal of the Washington Map Society
• six copies of The Portolan in which the winning paper appears

Submissions are due June 1, 2016, and should be sent to Dr. Evelyn Edson, 268 Springtree Lane, Scottsville, VA 24590, U.S.A. Visit the Washington Map Society home page: http://www.washmapsociety.org. For more information, see http://www.washmapsociety.org/Ristow-Prize.htm or send inquiries to eedson@pvcc.edu.