We are delighted to announce that historian Thavolia Glymph has won the 2021 John Nau Prize for best book in the American Civil War Era for her book The Women's Fight: The Civil War Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
From the chair of the 2021 Nau Book Prize committee:
“Deeply researched, brilliantly analyzed, and compellingly written, Glymph provides an illuminating and foundational study of women during the Civil War that brings to the light a vast array of stories, black and white, rich and poor, North and South as they endured the conflict. She has given a fresh voice to how women battled both men and each other across the gendered chasm of race and class with the survival of their families and themselves at stake. She uncovers many surprises north and south of the Mason-Dixon line regarding the impact of the war upon various cohorts of women, as well as how they leveraged the war to maintain or expand previous notions of home and citizenship. For many women, the battlefield was not a distant landscape; instead, the war came to their homes. Ironically, the centerpiece of this struggle was white slave-owning women who fled their homes and became refugees and black enslaved women who escaped hoping to create their own homes and refuge. Glymph’s truly ground-breaking work on the diverse roles of American women across the spectrum of race, class, and geography will force readers to never again see the Civil War as only a men’s fight.”
In addition to the Nau Prize, The Women’s Fight has also received the following honors:
2021 Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award, Organization of American Historians
2021 Darlene Clark Hine Award, Organization of American Historians
2021 Mary Nickliss Prize, Organization of American Historians
Finalist, 2021 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
Please join us in congratulating Professor Glymph!