The award was named in honor of Dr. Helen Hornbeck Tanner and is awarded every year at the annual meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory to the best paper presented by a student. The award will include a certificate and a cash prize of $250.
Student Conference Paper Award Submission Guidelines:
Any student who will be presenting a paper at the annual ASE conference may submit their paper for consideration for the Tanner award. Submissions must be between 10- to 12-pages (2,500 to 3,000 words), excluding citations and appendices, and should conform as closely as possible to the oral presentations. Authors of all nominated papers will also be considered for ASE student travel funds, and they must present their paper at the conference. Students who wish to have their work considered should submit electronic copies of their papers to each of the committee members listed below. The submission emails need to include, as the subject line, “Tanner Candidate.”
The award will be announced at the ASE annual meeting.
2025 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award Committee:
To be determined.
PAST AWARD WINNERS:
2024 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award winner: Travis Meyer, “Carnal K’iche’an Confessions: Gender and Sexuality in an Eighteenth-Century Mayan Confessional Manual”
In “Carnal K’iche’an” Confessions,” Travis Meyer provides a fresh challenge to the idea of the Spanish conquest of Indigenous sexuality. Meyer brings together a parish visitation record from the late eighteenth century and a Spanish-K’iche bilingual confessional manual to argue that parish priests in Guatemala lacked the linguistic ability or cultural understanding of K’iche social norms to effectively regulate Indigenous sexual practice. Meyer argues that these failures underscore the incomplete nature of the Spanish conquest and colonization. Meyer uses a seemingly “small,” yet richly textured case study to make a bigger argument that has relevance beyond the particular time and place discussed. In doing so, Meyer offers us an example of how much one can do in ethnohistory with careful analysis of a single document, cultural contextualization, and attention to the complex problem of linguistic and cultural translation. The author’s astute analysis reveals how both the manual itself and the presumably limited language skills of the priest essentially worked to limit his capacity to enforce (or even inquire about) the sexual behaviors that he intended to regulate. The committee was very impressed with Meyer’s skill in contextualizing the study historiographically, presenting it clearly and making a compelling historical argument.
2023 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award: Edward P. Green, “’Their Old Form of Government Has Been Abandoned’: Legitimacy and Authority in the Choctaw Nation in an Age of Attritional Ethnic Cleansing, 1825-1850″
Green’s paper examines Choctaw resistance to removal in the first half of the nineteenth century. Centering his research on local chiefs, Green shows that thousands of Choctaws successfully remained in the east, though many did ultimately remove west due to settler colonialism and violence. Green’s paper was particularly noteworthy for his extensive use of primary sources and Choctaw testimonies. In this excellent paper, Green expands our understanding of the Removal era.
2022 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award: Josh Anthony (Rutgers), “The Relación Acazitli Revisited: The Crisis of Peace and Memories of War in Chalco.”
In this paper, Josh Anthony offers a compelling reinterpretation of the relación (account) of don Francisco de Sandoval Acazitli, the Nahua tlatoani of Tlalmanalco (Mexico) in the mid-sixteenth century. Scholars usually approach this account as a colonial legal document, in which Acazitli petitions the Spanish Crown for reward for his service. But as Anthony eloquently explains, this approach has led scholars to see it as evidence of Nahua acculturation and a solidifying Spanish colonial order. Through a close analysis of the structure and content of the relation, Anthony instead argues that scholars should consider this source as a xiuhpohualli, or a Nahua community history. Anthony’s attention to Nahua culture, especially Nahuatl language and prose, is an essential perspective that respects Indigenous voices in a historical context and resurrects Acazitli’s perspectives on gender and masculinity in his community. Ultimately, Anthony’s paper is firmly rooted in ethnohistorical methods and is a fantastic example of those methods in practice.
2021 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award – David Dry, “Successfully Terminated: The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma and Post-Termination Nationhood Through Relationships, 1956-1978.”
2021 Helen Hornbeck Tanner Student Conference Paper Award: The 2021 winner is David Dry, UNC Chapel Hill, for his paper “Successfully Terminated: The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma and Post-Termination Nationhood Through Relationships, 1956-1978.” Dry’s analysis upends the traditional narrative of termination universalizing the policy’s disastrous outcomes. Dry integrates a wide array of secondary and impressive range of primary sources to show how citizens of the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma worked outside traditional bureaucratic/federal frameworks to bolster tribal identity. Lacking federal support and codifications following termination, the Ottawas looked toward other relationships to assert their distinctive and ongoing nationhood and accomplish tribal objectives. They did this through the establishment of their Labor Day powwow, the reinvention of their relationship with Ottawa University, and their intertribal organizing with the Wyandotte, Seneca-Cayuga, Eastern Shawnee, Miami, and Peoria to provide social services and boost the economy in northeastern Oklahoma. In this fine paper, Dry makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Oklahoma Indian ethnohistory, termination policy, and sovereignty.
2020 – In lieu of the regular conference paper award, in 2020 the Society recognized student digital ethnohistory projects. The winner is Stuart Marshall, “Slay Them Right and Left!: The Unionist Press, Eastern Cherokees, and the Question of Genocide.” Stuart Marshall is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Carolina – Greensboro. By mapping press rhetoric, Marshall demonstrates how we are able to envision the complex roles of Indigenous peoples in the Civil War, while highlighting significant racist rhetoric from the Unionist media. Honorable Mention goes to Nizhoni Tallas, “10,000 Years on Bent Mountain: Shining Light on the Past Indigenous Uses of the Land.” Tallas is an undergraduate at Virginia Tech. This project maps Bent Mountain, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains south of Roanoke, to present changes in land usage from the paleolithic era to sedentary indigenous settlement by the Monacan people. This is a highly situated history based on a series of archaeological findings and local indigenous knowledge. It was created at the explicit request of a Native women’s group in the area who wanted to understand more about pre-colonial life in a region affected by pipeline development.
2019 – The winner is Allyson LaForge, Brown University, for a paper entitled, “Wabanaki ‘Wonderworks’: Tomah Joseph’s Birchbark Art and the Dissemination of Indigenous Modernity.”
2018 – The winner is Samantha Davis, Penn State University, for a paper entitled, “The Racial Implications of the Proposed Fortifications in San Francisco de Campeche, 1600 – 1700.”
2017 – The winner is Mallory Matsumoto, Brown University, for a paper entitled, “Dividing Land and Defining Territory in Colonial Kiiche’an Narratives.” Honorable Mention goes to Aaron Luedke, Michigan State University, for a paper entitled, “Mythologizing the White Man’s Friend: Misrepresentation of Indian Leaders in the Writing of Chicago’s Origin Story.” Honorable Mention goes to Claudia Rogers, University of Leeds, England, for a paper entitled, “Going Beyond ‘The Beach’: In Between Spaces of First Encounter in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, 1492 – 1530.”