The Museum of the Confederacy announced the recipients of the 40th annual Jefferson Davis Award this past week. The recipients are Joan Waugh’s U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth and Daniel E. Sutherland’s A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War. Both books are titles in the Civil War America Series published by the University of North Carolina Press.
The Jefferson Davis Award is given annually to recognize outstanding narrative works relating to the origins, life, and legacies of the Confederate States of America and the Civil War. The award consists of a framed red wax seal made from the original Great Seal of the Confederacy and a cash prize. This is the first time that two books have shared the Davis Award.
The judges praised Waugh for taking the study of historical memory “to new levels of sophistication,” interweaving the analytical study of memory with a more traditional narrative, and for demonstrating how “popularity (and memory) is not static, but subject to the whims of politics and other national trends.” Sutherland, the judges observed, “reshapes the landscape” of Civil War history and “reconfigures how we understand the relationship between the battlefield and Southern home-front, as he persuasively demonstrates how the war immediately turned irregular throughout the Confederacy.”
Joan Waugh is professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles; Daniel Sutherland is professor of history at the University of Arkansas.
The award is given for works published during the previous year. The Museum is accepting nominations for the 2010 Jefferson Davis Award and for the 2009-2010 Founders Award (recognizing excellence in the editing of primary sources relating to the origins, life, and legacies of the Confederate States of America and the Civil War). For details see the Programs section of www.moc.org or contact Dr. John M. Coski at “library @ moc.org” (remove spaces and quotes).
