Awarded to the author of the most outstanding dissertation on any aspect of the history of the American West in the twentieth century.

2023 Joseph David Schiller, for “Zombie Miners: Life, Death, and Reanimation in the Wide Rural Rust Belt” (University of Oklahoma, 2022)

2022 Jorge Ramirez-Lopez, for “Indigenous Worldmaking in a World of Crisis: Race and the Making of the Migrant Circuit between Southern Mexico and the US/Mexican Pacific Coast, 1968-1994” (University of California, San Diego, 2021)

2021 Sean Harvey, for “Assembly Lines: Maquiladoras, Poverty, and the Environment in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (Northwestern University, 2020)

2020 Ashanti Ke Ming Shih, for “Invasive Ecologies: Science and Settler Colonialism in Twentieth-Century Hawai’i” (Yale University, 2019)

2019 Elwing Suong Gonzalez, for “Creating and Contesting Refugee Identity and Space in America: Vietnamese Refugees in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s” (Claremont Graduate University, 2018).

2018  Bernadette J. Pérez (Princeton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts), for “Before the Sun Rises: Contesting Power and Cultivating Nations in the Colorado Beet Fields” (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2017).

2017  Margaret Huettl (University of Nebraska, Lincoln), for “Nindandishinaabewimin: Ojibwe Peoplehood in the North American West, 1854-1954” (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2016).

2016  Mary Elizabeth Mendoza, for “Unnatural Border: Race and Environment at the U.S.-Mexico Divide” (University of California, Davis, 2015).

2015  Megan Asaka (Yale University), for “The Unsettled City: Migration, Race, and the Making of Seattle’s Urban Landscape.”

2014  Philip Van Huizen (University of British Columbia), for “Flooding the Border: Development, Politics, and Environmental Controversy in the Canadian-Skagit Valley.”

• Honorable Mention: Genevieve Carpio (University of Southern California), for “From Citrus Belt to Inland Empire: Race, Place, and Mobility in Inland Southern California, 1880-2000.”

2013  Proceso James Paligutan, for “American Dream Deferred:  Filipino Nationals in the US Navy and Coast Card, 1947-1970” completed for the University of California, Irvine.

2012  Trevor Griffey, for “Black Power’s Labor Politics: The United Construction Workers Association and Title VII Law in the 1970s” completed for the University of Washington.

2011 Veta Schlimgen, for “Neither Citizens Nor Aliens: Filipino ‘American Nationals’ in the U.S. Empire, 1900 to 1946” (University of Oregon, 2010)

2010  Catherine Christensen (University of California, Irvine), for “Mujeres Públicas: Euro-American Prostitutes and Reformers at the California-Mexico Border (1909–29).”

2009  Hillary Jenks (University of Southern California), for “‘Home is Little Tokyo’: Race, Community and Memory in 20th-Century Los Angeles.”

2008  Daniel HoSang (University of Southern California), for “Racial Propositions: Genteel Apartheid in Post-War California.”

2007  Cecilia Ming-Tsu (Stanford University), for “Grown in the ‘Garden of the World’: Race, Gender, and Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley, 1880–1940,” and Ana Elizabeth Rosas (University of Southern California), for “Flexible Families: Bracero Families’ Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries, 1942–1964.”

Honorable mention to Ann Gabbert (University of Texas, El Paso), for “Defining the Boundaries of Care: Local Responses to Global Concerns in El Paso Public Health Policy, 1881–1936.”