Other Prizes
There are other campus-wide prizes that History majors should consider applying for if their essays meet the criteria. Most deadlines will be in the Spring quarter.
The Harold E. Goettler Political Institutions Prize
Each paper in this competition must be clearly and significantly related to the origin, development, structure, or functioning of political institutions. Essays will be judged on the basis of the evidence which they give of the writer's ability to:
- formulate and distinguish the elements of the problem;
- assess relevant empirical and historical evidence;
- relate such elements and evidence to relevant theoretical literature;
This prize honors the memory of Harold E. Goettler, a 1914 B.S. graduate of the University of Chicago. He served during World War I with the U.S. Army Aviation Branch and was killed in action in October of 1918.
Ruth Murray Prize in Women’s Studies, Feminist Criticism, or Gender Studies
The Ruth Murray Prize will be awarded for the best essay written by a University of Chicago undergraduate or graduate student in the area of women's studies, feminist criticism or gender studies. The $500 prize sponsored is in memory of Ruth Murray who died in 1991, having served as Bibliographer for the Education, Psychology, Sociology and Women's Studies Collections at the Regenstein Library for many years. Ruth Murray had a strong interest in encouraging scholarship in women's studies and often served as a stimulus and facilitator of work by students and faculty in the area. It is the intent of the Ruth Murray Prize Committee that the essay competition sustain and encourage scholarship in women's studies, as Ruth Murray did during her lifetime.
Ignatio Martín-Baró Human Rights Essay Prizes
The Human Rights Program, in conjunction with the Center for Latin American Studies, announces the Ignacio Martín-Baró Human Rights Essay Prize. The Human Rights Program will award three (3) prizes in the amount of $250 each for the best essays in the field of human rights. The award categories are: 1) College, 2) Masters and Professional
(MA, MPP, JD, MD), and 3) Doctoral students.
The prize honors the memory of Ignacio Martín-Baró, a Jesuit priest from El Salvador who earned a Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Chicago. Martin-Baró taught at the Universidad de Centro America in El Salvador and was a leading scholar on social justice and human rights. In 1989, Martín-Baró and seven others were assassinated by the El Salvadorean army for their commitment to El Salvador’s dispossessed.