{"id":99,"date":"2012-08-15T08:03:09","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T13:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/?page_id=99"},"modified":"2026-03-11T13:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T18:46:11","slug":"rowberg-essay-prize","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/rowberg-essay-prize\/","title":{"rendered":"Rowberg Essay Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rowberg Prize recognizes excellence in historical writing by St. Olaf History majors.<\/strong> The History Department invites History majors to submit papers for this year\u2019s prize.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0Rowberg, 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.\u00a0 He was killed in action in the vicinity of Metz on 9 October 1944. \u00a0The Rowbergs’ strong interest in history guided their choice to establish a memorial fund to support excellence in historical writing.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Submissions may be made only by students who have <\/strong>declared\u00a0as<\/strong> History majors<\/strong>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Guidelines, Dates and Procedures for Submissions<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. The paper must be on a historical topic.\u00a0 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.<\/li>\n
  2. If the paper was written for a college class, the submitted version should be rewritten in light of the professor\u2019s comments.<\/li>\n
  3. Students may submit only one paper per year and previous winners are not eligible.<\/li>\n
  4. Papers should be in the range of 12-18 pages of text (double-spaced, 1\u2033 margins, 12-point font).<\/li>\n
  5. Use Turabian or Chicago citation format.<\/li>\n
  6. Please prepare the paper for blind review.\u00a0 Put your name only on the title page.\u00a0 Each page of the paper should include a header with the abbreviated title and a page number, but without the author\u2019s name.<\/li>\n
  7. Submit a digital copy of the paper to Kat Middeldorp<\/a>, <\/strong>the History Department\u2019s administrative assistant (Holland Hall 327), no later than\u00a0noon\u00a0<\/span>on Friday, April 17, 2026<\/span>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/h3>\n

    Past Rowberg Essay Prize Winners:<\/h3>\n

    2025<\/h5>\n
      \n
    • 1st Place: David Scheil – Generational Scars: Revolutionary War Violence and Evidence of PTSD Among its Veterans<\/em><\/li>\n
    • 2nd Place: Evan Atchison – The Illusion of Peace: How Catholic Victims’ Groups Perpetuated Sectarianism in Northern Ireland<\/em><\/li>\n
    • 2nd Place: Patrick Hagerty – Spells and Statutes: The Scholarship Surrounding Ancient Magical Law<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
      2024<\/h5>\n
        \n
      • 1st Place: Emma Ellings – Corsets and Consumerism<\/em><\/li>\n
      • 2nd Place: Sophia Hayes – Queerness, Liberation, and Colonialism<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
        2023<\/h5>\n
          \n
        • 1st Place: Talia Williams – Cityscapes of Terror and Memory: Children and the Return to Democracy in Buenos Aires<\/em><\/li>\n
        • 2nd Place: Julia Boissonneault – Nazi Visual Propaganda as a Facilitator for Their Ideal Image of Women<\/em><\/li>\n
        • 2nd Place: Abigail Peterson – The Persistence of the Plantation: The Struggle for Land Reform in Northeast Brazil<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
          2022<\/h5>\n
            \n
          • 1st Place: Annelise Pardee – A Matter of Motivation: The Treatment of Muslims in the Latin Kingdoms & First Crusade<\/em><\/li>\n
          • 2nd Place: Cade O’Fallon – The Roman Navy: How the Functions of Warships Reflected the Goals of an Empire<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
            2021<\/h5>\n
              \n
            • 1st Place: Margaux Daniel – Virtue, Autonomy, and Importance of Women in Plutarch<\/em><\/li>\n
            • 2nd Place: Cade O’Fallon – Argentina’s Dirty War: The Origins and Legacy of the Nation’s Worst Disaster<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
              2020<\/h5>\n
                \n
              • 1st Place: Erin Magoon – Erasure of Black Women from the Commemoration of the American Women’s Suffrage Movement<\/em><\/li>\n
              • 2nd Place: Katie Mollison – Not Just Another Saint-Cyr<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                2019<\/h5>\n
                  \n
                • 1st Place: Gabrielle M. Lattery – Gaius Caligula: Monster, Maniac, or Man?<\/em><\/li>\n
                • 1st Place: Erik D. Lepisto – The Unrealized Crusade: Race and the Defeat of Operation Dixie<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                  2018<\/h5>\n
                    \n
                  • 1st Place: Nicholas J. Gonnerman – The Most Infernal Outrage: Northern Public Reaction to the Fort Pillow Massacre<\/em><\/li>\n
                  • 2nd Place: Amanda R. Westcott – The English College in Rome: Anthony Munday, the Missionary Priests, and English Catholic Identity<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                    2017<\/h5>\n
                      \n
                    • 1st Place: Elizabeth Branscum – Toward a More Perfect Knowledge: Men-Midwives as Authorities in Eighteenth-Century England<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                      2014<\/h5>\n
                        \n
                      • 1st Place: Elizabeth Bews – Caesar and Cleopatra: A Political Affair <\/em><\/li>\n
                      • 2nd Place: Julia Irons – Electoral Bribery and Gift-Giving in Ciceronian Oratory<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
                        2013<\/h5>\n
                          \n
                        • 1st Place: Rebecca A. Frank – The Roman Olympias<\/em><\/li>\n
                        • 2nd Place: Robert David Hahn – The Aryan Paragraph and Kirchenkampf<\/em><\/li>\n
                        • 2nd Place: Maren T. Magill – Politicized Religion in the American Civil War: An Examination of Newspaper Responses to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

                          <\/p>\n

                          <\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                          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\u2019s prize. The Leland R. Rowberg […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2200,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-99","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3810,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/99\/revisions\/3810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}