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Graduate/Early Career Prizes
Carl S. Meyer Prize
Carl S. Meyer, 1907 - 1972, was the co-founding editor of The Sixteenth Century Journal and one of the founders of the Sixteenth Century Society. Dr. Meyer was professor of historical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, as well as Executive Director of the Center for Reformation Research. Dr. Meyer cared deeply about the Journal and always sought ways to encourage graduate students and early career faculty at the Sixteenth Century Society’s annual conference. This prize honors those commitments.
The Meyer Prize is awarded to the best paper delivered at the society’s annual meeting by a scholar who is still in graduate school or has earned the Ph.D. in the last five years.
Criteria for selection include:
quality and originality of research
methodological skill and/or innovation
development of fresh and stimulating interpretations or insights
literary quality
Papers placed in competition for the Meyer Prize cannot have been delivered at other conferences.
To be considered for the prize, presenters should submit a PDF version of the paper, as delivered at the conference, by using the Online Submission Form. Questions regarding submissions may be directed to the Prize Committee. Submissions are due no later than 1 January following the conference. You may submit anytime after the conference.
The Sixteenth Century Journal shall have first right to accept the paper for publication once it has been revised from an oral presentation to an article appropriate for a scholarly journal.
If you wish to help support the Meyer Prize, please donate here.
Past Winners:
2024: Bethan Davies, “To Satisfy the Curious: The Sugar Banquet in The Honorable Entertainment (1591),” presented at Baltimore in 2023
2023: Katherine Horgan, “"Marlowe and His Ovids: The Scholarly Eroticism of Hero and Leander,” presented at Minneapolis in 2022
2022: Claudia Antonini, “Not (Only) a Muse: Barbara Salutati’s Poetic Activity,” presented at San Diego 2021.
2021: Katherine M. Robiadek, “Mercenaries in Machiavelli’s Art of War” for the best paper accepted to the 2020 conference.
2020: Christine Zappella, “The Meta/Physics of Light, Confraternal Worship, and Andrea del Sarto’s Monochrome Life of St. John the Baptist,” presented at St. Louis, 2019
2019: Kristen C. Howard, “Child Welfare and the General Hospital in Reformation Geneva,” presented at Albuquerque, 2018.
2018: Anatole Upart, “A Ukrainian Apocalypse in Rome: Master Prokopii’s Woodblock Prints at the Archives of the Propaganda Fide,” presented atMilwaukee, 2017.
2017: Jennifer Binczewski, “Bestowed Upon God: The Movements of Catholic Children in Post-Reformation England and Beyond,” presented at Bruges, 2016.
2016: William Keene Thompson, “Conflict and Compromise in an English Parish: Long Melford under Edward VI,” presented at Vancouver, 2015.
2015: Christina Squitieri, “O Loyal Father?: Aumerle, treason, and Feudal Law in Shakespeare’s Richard II,” presented at New Orleans 2014.
2014: Amy Newhouse, “Bodies as Boundaries: Corporal Jobs and Contagious Disease in 16th Century Nuremberg,” presented at San Juan, Puerto Rico 2013.
2013: Patricia McKee, “Scorning the Image of Virtue,” presented at Cincinnati, 2012.
2012: Michael Tworek, “Patavium virum me fecit: Study Abroad and Renaissance Humanism from Poland to Italy and back in the Sixteenth Century,” presented at Dallas/Fort Worth, 2011.
2011: Adam Asher Duker, “The Hermeneutics of Emotional Restraint: Calvin’s Pastoral Theology of Imprecation in Comparative Context,” presented at Montreal, 2010.
2010: Prize not awarded.
2009: Jacob Baum, “Incense and Idolatry: The Reformation of Olfaction in Late Medieval German Christian Ritual,” presented at St. Louis, 2008
2008: Anastasia C. Nurre, “Among the Philippists: The Identification of a Magdeburg Patrician in a Lutheran Confessional Epitaphs,” presented at Minneapolis, 2007.
2007: Adam G. Beaver, “A Holy Land for the Catholic Monarchy: Spanish Reconstructions of Palestine, 1469-1598,” presented at Salt Lake City, 2006.
2006: Jonathan Reid, “Caught between Confessional Fronts,” presented at Atlanta, 2005
2005: John Frymire, “Rites of appeasement: Suffering and the Defense of Catholic Ritual in Early Modern Germany,” presented at Toronto, 2004
2004: Robert Christman, “Literacy and Self-Determination: Confessions of Belief Composed by the Common Man in Central Germany c. 1575,” presented at Pittsburgh, 2003
2003: Suzanne Jablonski, “Neutralizing Violence: Images of the Hunt at the Court of Phillip IV,” presented at San Antonio, 2002
