Join us in Celebrating
Cunningham Prize awarded to Pennsylvania History!
The American Historical Association has awarded its 2020 Raymond J. Cunningham Prize to an article that appeared in the Spring 2020 (87.2) issue of Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies. The article is “Race, Death, and Public Health in Philadelphia, 1750-1793,” by Jubilee Marshall. The article had previously won the Pennsylvania Historical Association’s 2019 William A. Pencak Prize for best paper written by an undergraduate student. Ms. Marshall wrote the paper while at Villanova University as part of her History Capstone and Honors Thesis. Her professor was Dr. Whitney Martinko. The article explored understudied African American burial and church records in Philadelphia. The Pencak committee was especially impressed by the range of archival and archeological materials the paper employed.
“The author has managed to tease new information out of existing primary sources such as church records and utilize cemetery information to make a powerful argument about race and health in Philadelphia,” one reader commendingly wrote, and continued:
Marshall’s argument – that burial locations served to focus racial contest and to spur the development of black churches – does not appear in existing scholarship. Marshall’s command of relevant historiography, original research and argumentation…merit[ed] nomination.
Jubilee Marshall is now a Master’s student in Archives and Public History at New York University, on the Public History track. She spent the last year in the Czech Republic, teaching English through the US State Department’s Fulbright Program. In 2019, she graduated summa cum laude from Villanova University. There, she majored in History with a concentration in Peace and Justice Studies and minors in Political Science and Economics. Marshall is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She is interested in research questions related to race and public health, as well as in writing instruction, educational resources and programming, community engagement, and public history. She currently resides in Washington DC with her dog, Tutoo.
The Pennsylvania Historical Association offers its heartiest congratulations to Jubilee Marshall in winning this prestigious national award.
AHA established the prize in memory of Raymond J. Cunningham, who was an associate professor of history at Fordham University. It is awarded to the best paper by an undergraduate appearing in a history journal.