The Sidney Prize, named after a founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a leader of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, honors journalism that illuminates the great issues of our times—from the search for a basis for lasting peace to the need for better housing, medical care and employment for all. It also supports the promotion of civil liberties, democracy and the battle against discrimination of all kinds.
Clare Jackson, a former Sidney student and Junior Research Fellow, has written an acclaimed book that has won one of the world’s top prizes for historical writing. The book, titled Royalist Ideas in Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland, won the 2022 Sidney prize.
The book examines the ways in which people used the language of royalist ideology to justify their political claims in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745-46. It draws on primary source material and seeks to challenge traditional understandings of the period, arguing that a more holistic approach to the history of religion is required in order to understand the roots of modern nationalism.
Dr Clare Jackson (Trinity Hall, Cambridge), author of The Sidney Book Prize-winning book Royalist Ideas in Late seventeenth-century Scotland (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022).
This is the second time that Jackson’s work has been awarded a major literary prize. In 2010, her first book, a study of the political thought of the Irish nationalist leader Charles Stuart, won the John Fell Prize from the University of Dublin.
Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Syracuse and editor of two benchmark publications on art history, Professor Sidney Thomas died in 2009. In his memory, the department established this award to honour an outstanding undergraduate paper in art history, based on original research including beguiling imagery. The winner receives a cash prize and a commemorative plaque.
Sophia Jactel, an art history major, has won this year’s prize for her paper ‘Domesticity and Diversions: Josef Israels’s The Smoker as a Symbol of Peasant Culture and the Role of the Home in Nineteenth-Century Holland’. Her prize-winning paper was based on her work for the exhibition Domesticities: The Art of Daily Life in nineteenth-century Europe curated by herself and other senior art history students, under the supervision of Professor Sally Cornelison.
The Edelstein prize is awarded annually by SHOT to an outstanding scholarly book in the field of the history of technology published during the preceding three years. It is named in honor of Sidney Edelstein, founder of the Dexter Chemical Company and an early champion of scholarship in the history of technology.
Each month, New York Times columnist David Brooks selects a piece of journalism that is “so good it deserves to be read in full.” Nominations are due by the end of each month and can be submitted online or via the New York Times app. The winning article will be published the following Wednesday. See the Rules and Procedures for more information.