The Rowberg Prize recognizes excellence in historical writing by St. Olaf History majors. The History Department invites History majors to submit papers for this year’s prize.
The Leland R. Rowberg Memorial Fund was established as a gift to the College by Mr. and Mrs. A. A. Rowberg in memory of their son, who died in France during World War II. Rowberg, a member of the Class of ’44, was drafted into service in 1943, and was with General Patton’s Third Army as it pressed eastward in the liberation of France following the Normandy invasion. He was killed in action in the vicinity of Metz on 9 October 1944. The Rowbergs’ strong interest in history guided their choice to establish a memorial fund to support excellence in historical writing. Mr. Rowberg was an early member of the Norwegian-American Historical Society, president of the Rice County Historical Society and, after his retirement, a founder and officer of the Loudoun County Historical Society in Virginia. Students will compete for a first prize award of $350 and a second prize of $250. Papers on any historical topic, meeting the criteria outlined below, will be eligible.
Submissions may be made only by students who have declared as History majors. Previous winners are NOT eligible to enter the contest. The award will be announced by the end of the spring semester. The department reserves the right to make no award. Entries will be reviewed by a three-person committee of History Department faculty. The committee chair will be a tenured member. Committee members must recuse themselves if they recognize a student’s work. It is the duty of the committee chair to remind members of the criteria and create a rubric to use in judging.
Guidelines, Dates and Procedures for Submissions
- The paper must be on a historical topic. Although the paper need not have been written for a history class, it should focus on a significant historiographic issue and/or be based on primary sources.
- If the paper was written for a college class, the submitted version should be rewritten in light of the professor’s comments.
- Students may submit only one paper per year and previous winners are not eligible.
- Papers should be in the range of 12-18 pages of text (double-spaced, 1″ margins, 12-point font).
- Use Turabian or Chicago citation format.
- Please prepare the paper for blind review. Put your name only on the title page. Each page of the paper should include a header with the abbreviated title and a page number, but without the author’s name.
- Submit a digital copy of the paper to Kat Middeldorp, the History Department’s administrative assistant (Holland Hall 327), no later than noon on Friday, April 11, 2024.
Past Rowberg Essay Prize Winners:
2013
- 1st Place: Rebecca A. Frank – The Roman Olympias
- 2nd Place: Robert David Hahn – The Aryan Paragraph and Kirchenkampf
- 2nd Place: Maren T. Magill – Politicized Religion in the American Civil War: An Examination of Newspaper Responses to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
2014
- 1st Place: Elizabeth Bews – Caesar and Cleopatra: A Political Affair
- 2nd Place: Julia Irons – Electoral Bribery and Gift-Giving in Ciceronian Oratory
2017
- 1st Place: Elizabeth Branscum – Toward a More Perfect Knowledge: Men-Midwives as Authorities in Eighteenth-Century England
2018
- 1st Place: Nicholas J. Gonnerman – The Most Infernal Outrage: Northern Public Reaction to the Fort Pillow Massacre
- 2nd Place: Amanda R. Westcott – The English College in Rome: Anthony Munday, the Missionary Priests, and English Catholic Identity
2019
- 1st Place: Gabrielle M. Lattery – Gaius Caligula: Monster, Maniac, or Man?
- 1st Place: Erik D. Lepisto – The Unrealized Crusade: Race and the Defeat of Operation Dixie
2020
- 1st Place: Erin Magoon – Erasure of Black Women from the Commemoration of the American Women’s Suffrage Movement
- 2nd Place: Katie Mollison – Not Just Another Saint-Cyr
2021
- 1st Place: Margaux Daniel – Virtue, Autonomy, and Importance of Women in Plutarch
- 2nd Place: Cade O’Fallon – Argentina’s Dirty War: The Origins and Legacy of the Nation’s Worst Disaster
2022
- 1st Place: Annelise Pardee – A Matter of Motivation: The Treatment of Muslims in the Latin Kingdoms & First Crusade
- 2nd Place: Cade O’Fallon – The Roman Navy: How the Functions of Warships Reflected the Goals of an Empire
2023
- 1st Place: Talia Williams – Cityscapes of Terror and Memory: Children and the Return to Democracy in Buenos Aires
- 2nd Place: Julia Boissonneault – Nazi Visual Propaganda as a Facilitator for Their Ideal Image of Women
- 2nd Place: Abigail Peterson – The Persistence of the Plantation: The Struggle for Land Reform in Northeast Brazil
2024
- 1st Place: Emma Ellings – Corsets and Consumerism
- 2nd Place: Sophia Hayes – Queerness, Liberation, and Colonialism