Jack Temple Kirby Award

Award Description

The Jack Temple Kirby Award was established in 2010 to commemorate the scholarship and service of Jack Temple Kirby, who was the current SHA President when he died in August 2009. In keeping with Professor Kirby's scholarly contributions to southern history, the Kirby Prize was originally awarded in odd-numbered years for an article published during the previous two years. Thanks to a generous donation, and in recognition of the maturation of the field he helped to define, the Kirby Award became a book prize beginning in 2026. The next article award will be presented at the annual meeting in St. Pete Beach in 2025 for an article published in 2023 or 2024. Off-prints or articles should be submitted to [email protected] by May 1, 2025. The first Kirby book prize will be made in 2026 in our meeting in Atlanta for books published in 2024 or 2025.

2025 Award Committee

Valerie Grim, Indiana University
Paul Sutter, University of Colorado, Boulder
Brian Drake, University of Georgia

2026 Award Committee

James C. Giesen, Mississippi State University
Department of History
208 Allen Hall
Mailbox H
Mississippi State, MS 39762

Rebecca Sharpless, Texas Christian University
Department of History
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, Texas  76129 

Kathryn Olivarius, Stanford University
450 Jane Stanford Way
Building 200, Room 113
Stanford, CA 94305-2024

Past Winners

2023 - Katherine Leah Pace
"Forgetting Waller Creek: An Environmental History of Racce, Parks, and Planning in Downtown Austin, Texas," Journal of Southern History (November 2021)

2021 - Andrew Baker
"Risk, Doubt, and the Biological Control of Southern Waters," Environmental History 24 (2019)

2019 - Caroline Peyton
“Kentucky’s Atomic Graveyard: Maxey Flats and Environmental Inequity in Rural America,"Kentucky Historical Register (2017).

2017 - Alec Fazackerley Hickmott
"Black Land, Black Capital: Rural Development in the Shadows of the Sunbelt South, 1969-1976," Journal of African American History (Fall 2016).

2015 - T. Robert Hart
"The Lowcountry Landscape: Politics, Preservation, and the Santee-Cooper Project," Environmental History 18 (January 2013).

2013 - Chris Evans
"The Plantation Hoe: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Commodity, 1650-1850," William & Mary Quarterly (January 2012).

2011 - James Giesen
"'The Truth about the Boll Weevil': The Nature of Planter Power in the Mississippi Delta," Environmental History 14 (October 2009).