Founders’ Prize

The SCSC Founders’ Prize: 

About this Award 

The SCSC Founders’ Prize is a biennial award which honors the scholars who established, sustained, and advanced the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference during its initial decades. The Prize is designed to assist early career scholars in their effort to secure publication of their first book manuscript in the field of early modern studies (ca. 1450-ca. 1660). Preference will be given to applications to offset publication costs, yet the Prize committee also welcomes applications for the funding of research that addresses the remaining gaps in an applicant’s book manuscript.

Nominations for the prize may be made by anyone, and self-nominations are welcomed. The deadline for submission of an application is 1 April of odd numbered years. Announcement of the awards will be made by the chair of the committee at the annual Prize & Plenary Session of the SCSC. An announcement of the awards will also be published in The Sixteenth Century Journal and Perspectives on History of the American Historical Association. 

Submissions Requirements and Procedures: 

Applicants must  

  1. be current members of the SCSC itself (not counting membership in affiliated societies), and have been a member for at least one year  
  2. have successfully defended their Ph.D. at least two years prior to the biennial deadline 
  3. be employed at an academic institution in an untenured capacity (including part-time, adjunct, lecturer, and tenure-track statuses) 
  4. attest that their submission has not previously been published 

The application should include the following: 

  1. project abstract (no more than 750 words) 
  2. statement of how the current manuscript revises the applicant’s dissertation (no more than 500 words) 
  3. book-length manuscript (no fewer than 70,000 words) in English, corresponding to the manuscript preparation guidelines which are standard in the field 
  4. a current curriculum vitae 
  5. evidence of completion of the PhD 
  6. statement of other funding sources to which the author has applied, with notice of award status 
  7. proposed budget (including projected costs of, for example, copyeditor, indexer, copyright permissions, design, typesetting, provision for open access, etc.) 

Entries will be judged on the following: 

  1. quality and originality of research  
  2. methodological skill and/or innovation  
  3. development of fresh and stimulating interpretations or insights  
  4. literary quality  

The Founders’ Prize will be awarded only for individually authored first books. (Multiple authored books, anthologies, and collections of essays are not eligible.  An applicant who has already published an edited collection will not be disqualified).

Funds will be awarded directly to the publisher, the author, or both, depending on the application. 

The chair of the prize committee will work with each winner to help identify potential presses for publication.  The book’s author and its publisher must agree to acknowledge support from The Founders’ Prize of the SCSC in the front matter of the book (e.g.: “Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by financial support from the Founders’ Prize of the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference”). 

Previous winners: 

2021, Lynneth Miller Renberg, Women, Dance and Parish Religion in England, 1300-1640: Negotiating the Steps of Faith, (Boydell, 2022)

2019, Jennifer Binczewski Solitary Sparrows: Widowhood and the Catholic Community in Post-Reformation England (under consideration, Brill)

The Prize was revised in 2018 to better reflect current publishing and academic trends. 

2015, Ayesha Ramachandran, The Worldmakers: Global Imagining in Early Modern Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

2014, Mark Rosen, The Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and Intellectual Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015).