Alas, I spent all my travel money going to an academic conference in the first Zion (Missouri), so I’m stuck in the second Zion (Utah) and getting regular dispatches from Christopher in the Almost Zion (California). Here’s the list of winners from this year’s awards ceremony.

Best Undergrad Paper: John Brumbaugh, “Return of Anti-Mormonism: Fred Dubois and the Reed Smoot Hearings.” 

Best Grad Papers: Stan Thayne, “Holiness to the Lord: Delineating and Maintaining the Symbolic Boundaries of Zion” and Matt Bowman, “The Crisis of Mormon Christology: History, Progress, and Protestantism, 1880-1930” (JIers cleaned house)

Best MA Thesis: Nathaniel Ricks, “A Peculiar Place for the Peculiar Institution: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Territorial Utah” and Jeremy S. Parkin, “Police Work on the Mormon Trail, 1846-1847.” 

Best Dissertation: Christine Talbot, “Mormons, Polygamy, and the American Body Politic: Contesting Citizenship, 1852-1890.”

Best Article: George Tate, “Death, The Great War, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic as Context for D&C 138” in BYU Studies.

Awards of Excellence: Paul Reeve, “Places That Can Be Easily Defended,” (Utah Historical Quarterly) and Jake Olmsted “The Mormon Hierarchy and the MX” (JMH)

Best First Book: Paul Reeve (Making Space on the Western Frontier) and Matt Godfrey on Mormons and sugar in Idaho.

Best Book: Terryl Givens (People of Paradox)

Best Documentary: Jed Rogers, Nuttall Diaries

Arrington Award for Lifetime Achievement: Jim Allen

Thomas L. Kane Award for Best Gentile: Bill MacKinnon

Larry and Arlene King got an award for their contribution to MHA. Membership has increased by 125% since they took over.