The WHA announces the David J. Weber Prize given annually for the best non-fiction book on Southwestern America. The competition will be open to any non-fiction book, including biography, on any aspect of Southwestern life, past or present with a 2023 copyright. The purpose of the prize is to promote fine writing and original research on the American Southwest. The author will receive $2500 and an invitation to give the annual David J. Weber Prize Lecture at Southern Methodist University.
All submissions must have a 2023 copyright date. Presses should submit nominations and a copy of the book to each member of the award committee listed below. While the formal process requires presses/journals to submit the work of their authors, the WHA strongly recommends that authors check with the award committee chair a week before the deadline to see if they received a copy of their work.
-2024 Awards Cycle opens January 15, 2024
-2024 Award Submission (Postmark) Deadline: April 15, 2024
The WHA office sends notifications to selected award recipients at the end of August.
WEBER PRIZE COMMITTEE
Monica Perales, Chair
University of Texas at San Antonio
801 E. Cesar E. Chavez Blvd.
San Antonio, TX 78205-3296
monica.perales@utsa.edu
Andrew Offenburger
Miami University
100 Bishop Circle
Upham Hall 236
Department of History
Oxford, OH 45056
offenba@miamioh.edu
2024 | Victor M. Valle,The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands (University of New Mexico Press, 2023)
2023 | Natalia Molina,A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community (University of California Press, 2022)
2022 | Paul Barba, Country of the Cursed and the Driven: Slavery and the Texas Borderlands (University of Nebraska Press, 2021)
2021 | Jennifer Holland, Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement (University of California Press, 2020)
2020 | Maurice Crandall,These People Have Always Been a Republic: Indigenous Electorates in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1598-1912(University of North Carolina Press, 2019)
2019 | Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert,Hopi Runners: Crossing the Terrain between Indian and American(University Press of Kansas, 2018)
2018 | Julian Lim for Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)
2017 | David Wallace Adams for Three Roads to Magdalena: Coming of Age in a Southwest Borderland, 1890-1990 (University Press of Kansas, 2016)
2016 | Andrew Torget for Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (University of North Carolina Press)
2015 | Andrew Needham forPower Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest (Princeton University Press, 2014)
2014 | John L. Kessell for Miera y Pacheco: A Renaissance Spaniard in Eighteenth-Century New Mexico (University of Oklahoma Press, 2013)
2013 | Lance R. Blyth for Chiricahua and Janos: Communities of Violence in the Southwestern Borderlands, 1680-1880(University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
2012 | William deBuys for A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest (Oxford University Press, 2013)
BACKGROUND:
WEBER AND CLEMENTS
In 2011, the Western History Association Council and the Clements Center agreed to sponsor a new book prize to be administered by the WHA. The David J. Weber-Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America was presented for the first time at the 2012 WHA conference. The prize originated as the William P. Clements Prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book on Southwestern America, where it has been awarded by the Center since 1999. William P. Clements, Jr., who passed away in May 2011, was the Governor of Texas and the founding benefactor of the Center. The prize honored both Governor Clements and the Center's Founding Director and past WHA President, David J. Weber, who passed away in August 2010.
The award was renamed in November 2020 in honor of the Center's Founding Director and past WHA President David J. Weber.
The WHA is located in the Department of History at the University of Kansas. The WHA is grateful to KU's History Department and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences for their generous support!
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