The Robert G. Crist Prize is awarded for the outstanding article illuminating the history of Pennsylvania published by a graduate student in Pennsylvania History every odd-numbered year. Begun in 1997 (for the years 1995-96) prize includes one year’s complimentary subscription to Pennsylvania History and a cash award. Established in honor of Robert G. Crist, past president of the Association from 1991-1992, the prize is awarded at the annual conference’s banquet.


October 2021 (FOR THE YEARS 2019-2020)

Tesa Lark Burns, “Privilege and Silence in the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection,” Pennsylvania History 87 (Autumn 2020): 690-713.

October 2019 (FOR THE YEARS 2017-2018)

Richard Kent Evans, “’A New Protestantism Has Come’: World War I, Premillennial Dispensationalism, and the Rise of Fundamentalism in Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania History 84 (Summer 2017):  292-312.

October 2017 (for the years 2015-2016)

Katie A. Moore, “America’s First Economic Stimulus Package: Paper Money and the Body Politic in Colonial Pennsylvania, 17151730,” Pennsylvania History 83, no. 4 (2016), 52957.

October 2015 (for the years 2013-2014)

Thomas J. Balcerski, “‘Under These Classic Shades Together’: Intimate Male Friendships at the Antebellum College of New Jersey,” 80, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 169-203.

October 2013 (for the years 2011-2012)

Bernadette A. Lear, “Yankee Librarian in the Diamond City: Hannah Packard James, the Osterhout Free Library of Wilkes-Barre, and the Public Library Movement in Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History, 78 (Spring 2011): 123-62.

October 2011 (for the years 2009-2010)

Julien Comte, “‘Let the Federal Men Raid’: Bootlegging and Prohibition Enforcement in Pittsburgh,” Pennsylvania History, 77 (Spring 2010): 166-92.

October 2009 (for the years 2007-2008)

Thomas R. Saxton, “’In Reduced Circumstances’:  Aging and Impoverished Bucks County Continentals and Their Families in the Young Republic,” Volume 74, no.1 (Winter 2007): 21-73.

October 2007 (for the years 2005-2006)

Christopher M. Osborne, “Invisible Hands: Slaves, Bound Laborers, and the Development of Western Pennsylvania, 1780-1820,” Pennsylvania History, 72 (Winter 2005): 77-89.

October 2005 (for the years 2003-2004)

Daniel Sidorick, “The ‘Girl Army’: The Philadelphia Shirtwaist Strike of 1909-1910,” Pennsylvania History, 71 (Summer 2004): 323-69.

October 2003 (for the years 2001-2002)

Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, “Poor Children and Enlightened Citizens: Lutheran Education in America,” Pennsylvania History, 68 (Spring 2001): 162-201.

October 2001 (for the years 1999-2000)

Paul Sabin, “A Dive into Nature’s Great ‘Grab-bag’: Nature, Gender, and Capitalism in the Early Pennsylvania Oil Industry,” Pennsylvania History, 66 (Autumn 1999): 472-505.

November 1999 (for the years 1997-1998)

Jill E. Cooper, “Keeping the Girls on the Line: The Medical Department and Women Workers at AT&T, 1913-1940,” Pennsylvania History, 64 (Autumn 1997): 490-508.

November 1997 (for the years 1995-1996)

Jim Weeks, “A New Race of Farmers: The Labor Rule, the Farmers’ High School, and the Origins of The Pennsylvania State University,” Pennsylvania History, 62 (Winter 1995): 5-30.