The Nineteenth Century Studies Association is pleased to announce the Article Prize, which recognizes excellence in scholarly studies from any discipline focusing on any aspect of the long nineteenth century (French Revolution to World War I). The winning article will be selected by a committee of nineteenth-century scholars representing diverse disciplines. The winner will receive a cash award of $500 to be presented at the annual NCSA conference. NCSA encourages winners to attend the annual conference and will waive the conference registration fee. (Winners have to become NCSA members, but will be provided with a coupon during the conference registration period.)
Eligibility
Entries can be from any discipline, and submission of essays that are interdisciplinary is especially encouraged. Entries must be published in English or be accompanied by an English translation. Articles that appeared in print in a journal or edited collection in 2024 or between January 1, 2025 and June 30, 2025 are eligible for the 2026 Article Prize; if the official date of the publication does not fall within that span, but the work appeared between those dates, then it is eligible.
Essays published in online, peer-reviewed journals are considered to be “in print” and are thus eligible. The first format in which an article is published, whether print or online is considered to be the official publication date.
Articles may be submitted by the author or the publisher of a journal, anthology, or volume containing independent essays.
Articles submitted to the NCSA Emerging Scholars Award competition are ineligible for the Article Prize and vice versa; only one entry per scholar or publisher to one of the two awards is allowed annually. Graduate students and colleagues within 6 years of completing a doctorate are encouraged to submit for the NCSA Emerging Scholars Award.
Nineteenth-Century Studies Association’s Officers, Board, Senior Advisory Committee, and Article Prize and Emerging Scholars Award Committee members are not eligible to receive the award until two years have elapsed since their service.
Deadline
The deadline for submission is July 1, 2025.
To Apply
Please use this Google Form to submit your application and a PDF of your article.. Note that applicants must verify date of actual publication for eligibility.
Inquiries:
Dr. David Ogawa, Chair of the Article Prize Committee
ogawad@union-edu / ArticlePrizeNCSA@gmail.com
Previous Recipients
2025
Tahmasebian, Kayvan and Rebecca Ruth Gould. “The Translatability of Love: The Romance Genre and the Prismatic Reception of Jane Eyre in Twentieth-Century Iran.” In Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close Reading a World Novel Across Languages, edited by Matthew Reynolds.Open Book Publishers, 2023.
Honorable Mention:
Tageldin, Shaden M. “Hugo, Translated: The Measures of Modernity in Muhạmmad Rūhị̄ al-Khālidī’s Poetics of Comparative Literature” PMLA 138.3(2023): 616-638.
2024
Terry F. Robinson. “Deaf Education and the Rise of English Melodrama,” Essays in Romanticism 29.1 (April 2022): 1-31.
Honorable Mention:
Kliger, Gili. “Translating God on the Borders of Sovereignty.” American Historical Review 127.3 (2022): 1102-1130.
Senior, Emily. “’Glimpses of the Wonderful’: The Jamaican Origins of the Aquarium.” Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 19.1 (2022): 128–152.
2023
Heidi Pennington: “Interpreting the Labor and Legacy of the Independent Literary Typist; or, the Typing of Ethel Kate Dickens.” Victorian Literature and Culture 50.2 (Summer 2022): 386-416.
2022
Michelle Foa. “In Transit: Edgar Degas and the Matter of Cotton, between New World and Old.” The Art Bulletin 102:3 (September 2020): 54-76.
2021
Brian Sweeney. “Throwing Stones Across the Potomac: The Colored American Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Cultural Politics of National Reunion.” American Periodicals 29:2 (September 2019): 135-162.
2020
Sharon A. Weltman. “Melodrama, Purimspiel, and Jewish Emancipation.” Victorian Literature and Culture. 47.2 (Summer 2019): 305–345.
2019
Michael Tondre. “The Impassive Novel: ‘Brain-Building’ in Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean.” PMLA 133.2 (March 2018).
2018
Henry Cowles. “The Age of Methods: William Whewell, Charles Pierce, and Scientific Kinds.” Isis 107.4 (December 2016): 722-737.
2017
Richard Taws, “The Dauphin and His Doubles: Visualizing Royal Imposture after the French Revolution,” The Art Bulletin 98.1 (2016).
2016
James W. Cook. “Finding Otira: On the Geopolitics of Black Celebrity.” Raritan 34.2 (Fall 2014).
2015
Elizabeth Buhe. “Sculpted Glyphs: Egypt and the Musée Charles X.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 13.1 (Spring 2014).
2014
Edward Melillo. “The First Green Revolution: Debt Peonage and the Making of the Nitrogen Fertilizer Trade, 1840-1930.” The American Historical Review 117.4 (October 2012): 1028-60.
2013
Dehn Gilmore. “The Difficulty of Historical Work in the Nineteenth-Century Museum and the Thackeray Novel.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 67.1 (June 2012): 29-57.
2012
Deborah Lutz. “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry and Death Culture,” Victorian Literature and Culture 39.1 (2011): 127-142.
2011
Adriana Craciun. “The Frozen Ocean.” PMLA 125.3 (2010): 693-702.
2010
Michael Gamer and Terry F. Robinson. “Mary Robinson and the Dramatic Art of the Comeback.” Studies in Romanticism 48.2 (Summer 2009): 219-256.
2009
Marilyn R. Brown. “‘Miss La La’s ‘Teeth”: Reflections on Degas and ‘Race,'” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 89. 4 (December 2007): 738-65.
2008
Holly Jackson. “Identifying Emma Dunham Kelley: Rethinking Race and Authorship,” PMLA 12.3 (2007): 728-41.
2007
Stefan Bargheer. “Fools of the Leisure Class: Honor, Ridicule and the Emergence of Animal Protection Legislation in England, 1740-1840,” European Journal of Sociology. 47.1 (2006): 3-35.
2006
Alan C. Braddock. “‘Jeff College Boys’: Thomas Eakins, Dr. Forbes, and “Anatomical Fraternity in Postbellum Philadelphia,” American Quarterly, 57.2 (2005): 355-83.
2005
April F. Masten. “Shake Hands? Lily Martin Spencer and the Politics of Art,” American Quarterly, 56.2 (2004): 348-94.
2004
H. Glenn Penny. “The Politics of Anthropology in the Age of Empire: German Colonists, Brazilian Indians, and the Case of Alberto Vojtech Fric,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45.2 (2003): 240-80.