This year, the Law and Society Association's Collaborative Research Network on Immigration and Citizenship (CRN2) launched a new award for the best paper on migration or citizenship written by or presented by a graduate student at an LSA annual meeting. Lila Teeters, PhD candidate in History at the University of New Hampshire has been awarded the 2019 Best Graduate Student Paper on Citizenship and Immigration Award. Her paper is entitled, "Making Native Citizens: The Fight For and Against Native American Citizenship in the 20th Century." As described by the award committee chair, Rebecca Hamlin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst:
We will be watching for details on the 2020 competition and its deadline.It explores the life of an understudied piece of legislative history, a1920 bill that was proposed in congress to make Native Americans U.S.citizens. The paper does a masterful job of explaining the ways in which debates over this bill showcased many different points of view about the topic of whether and how to make Native Americans into American citizens. Crucially, the paper centers the voices of Native Americans who were often (but not always) vocally opposed to such legislation. The paper is extremely well-written and tightly argued, and will likely make a major contribution to the study of American citizenship when it is published.