Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Cromwell Book Prize to Margot Canaday

The American Society for Legal History is fortunate to announce every year the winner of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Cromwell Book Prize ("$5000 book prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American Legal History by a junior scholar"*). This year's award went to Margot Canaday (Princeton University) for The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton University Press, 2009).

The ASLH Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee, which reviews books and makes recommendations to the Foundation, issued the following citation:
Canaday’s book will surely become a standard source for anyone who wants to understand the regulation of sexual orientation during the twentieth century. Her description of the symbiotic relationship between the rise of the bureaucratic state and the growth of the law on sexual status, as revealed through an exhaustive examination of military, immigration, and welfare policy, is compelling, original and illuminating.
* Language comes from the ASLH website