Awards Selection Process

Annual awards are given to works published in the calendar year before the annual conference. Biennial awards are given to works published in the two calendar years before the conference. Student paper, thesis, and dissertation awards are given for works written and submitted to meet college/university requirements.

Committee Structure

The Awards Chair of MHA’s Board of Directors conducts the awards program at MHA’s annual conference and oversees the three subcommittees of three to five members each, which specialize in the various categories of written works. The subcommittee chairs are selected by the Awards Chair and approved by the MHA Board. All awards committee members serve a three-year term and donate their time as a contribution to MHA. Those on subcommittees giving awards for books are allowed to keep the candidate books. Given the immense amount of time it takes to read, digest, and judge each submission, this is small compensation.

Donors

The Leonard J. Arrington Award, MHA’s highest recognition given each year, and MHA’s annual Special Citations do not carry a monetary component. The other awards are endowed or supported by generous donors.

Calendar

After the annual conference: Subcommittees are reviewed for vacancies which are filled as needed.

In the summer: The nomination process on the MHA website is updated as needed.

October or November: The MHA Board meets, approves newly nominated chairs and discusses issues related to awards.

February 15 and March 1: Deadlines for receiving submissions for consideration of material produced in the previous year. Subcommittee chairs then submit the list of nominees to the Board of Directors, who determine whether the list properly reflects the field.

April 15: Deadline for award decisions. After the awards chair presents the slate of winners to the board for approval (usually by email), the Awards Chair gives the go-ahead to subcommittee chairs to notify the winners, ask if they will attend the awards banquet, and solicit photos of them to be used during the awards ceremony as well as on MHA’s website.

Conference: The Awards Banquet is typically held on the Friday evening of the annual conference. The Awards Chair is the master of ceremonies; subcommittee chairs may be called upon to present the winners for their particular category. If they cannot attend, someone from their subcommittee or the Awards Chair may fill in.

Judging Criteria

The criteria used to judge entries varies slightly among the subcommittees, but in principle, MHA desires to recognize published and student work in the field of Mormon history that is comparable to the best work produced by those writing for other genres of historical publication.

The candidate for each award should exhibit a professional and scholarly tone befitting scholarly literature as evidenced by:

• Creativity and originality
  • Themes never before explored
  • New views or insights about traditional themes
  • Better presentation of traditional themes
• Solid and thorough research
• Understanding of the extant pertinent literature—primary and secondary
• Application of accepted stylistic forms of presentation
  • Conforms to the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) or other standards used in several of the social sciences
  • For documentary editing, demonstrates clear and consistent editorial form, such as the several methods recommended in Kline and Perdue’s A Guide to Documentary Editing (3rd ed.) or Stevens and Burg’s Editing Historical Documents (1997).
• Excellent writing style appealing to a wide range of the reading public
  • Without jargoned, arcane, or recondite language

Decision Meeting

The subcommittee members spend many hours reading and rating each book, article, dissertation, thesis, or student paper before the subcommittee meets to make a decision. The decision meeting is conducted on a day before the deadline when subcommittee members are able to meet, either in person or virtually. Decisions are kept strictly confidential until the awards presentation.

The Awards Presentation / Banquet

In preparation for the MHA Awards Presentations, the Executive Director orders a certificate for each award and prints a program listing the winners to hand out at the end of the Awards Presentation. The award recipients will also receive the donor’s name and address so that they can thank them. MHA also provides a complimentary Awards Presentation ticket to each winner. The Awards Committee Chair prepares a PowerPoint presentation for the public presentation that names each award and donor, lists the subcommittee members, and announces the winner, the title of their work, and shows a photo of them.