Irwin R. Marcus History Day Prize
Irwin Marcus was on the history faculty at Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 1965 until his retirement in 2002. For the entire period that IUP has hosted a regional History Day competition, and continuing for a decade following his retirement, Dr. Marcus judged both junior and senior papers.
Everyone at IUP has fond memories of Dr. Marcus sitting with students, discussing their papers, and encouraging them in their historical interests. Following his death in 2016, his family established the Irwin R. Marcus History Day Prize through the PHA for the best paper on Pennsylvania history in order to continue his encouragement of young historians.
October 2025
SENIOR PRIZE: Viraaj Randhawa, “The Day Philadelphia Stopped.”
JUNIOR PRIZE: Isabel Clark, “The United Mine Workers of America: Rights and Responsibilities Gained Throughout Pennsylvania Coal Mines.”
October 2024
Aicha Jaafar, “Bly in Blackwell’s: A Turning Point for Mental Health and Journalism.”
October 2023
Zachary Gardiner, “From Wasteland to Wild Area: How Local Activism Opened a New Frontier in Environmental and Governmental Reform.”
October 2022
Brontë Short, ““It Is a Terror … That Men Should Be Handlelled So in Pennsylvania”: Early Quaker Reasoning, Debate, and the Abolitionist Influence of the Germantown Friends’ Protest Against Slavery.”
October 2021
Alice Padula, ““The World Was Thinking Wrong About Race”: W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Philadelphia Negro.”
October 2020
Shaughnessea Richardson, “Conquering the Barriers Between Nature and Man: Rachel Carson and the Modern Environmental Movement.”
OCTOBER 2019
Jacob Roth, “Bethlehem Steel: The Rise and Fall of an Industrial Titan.”
October 2018
Emma Tierney, “Blackguarding: How the Conflict of the ‘Jeering Episode’ Created Compromise for Women Physicians.”