Frances Clarke and Emma Christopher won book awards at the 2012 Australian Historical Association Conference

By Stephen Robertson

31 July, 2012

Frances Clarke was joint winner of the W. K. Hancock Prize for a first book in any field of history for War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (University of Chicago Press)

Citation:

This beautifully written book offers a deft cultural analysis of the sentimental stories about Union soldiers that circulated during the American Civil War, depicting the soldiers as young men willing to
sacrifice life and limb for the authentically human and democratic values of the Union. Frances Clarke seeks to account for the persistence of such popular sentimental patriotism and idealising war stories in the face of the growing recognition, in the press and among writers and intellectuals, of the damage being done by the war. Her brilliant excavation of why and how such apparently hackneyed clichés of sentimental culture exerted continuing appeal convincingly demonstrates the value of taking popular conservative sentiment seriously. Making poignant use of individual stories of suffering, heroics, and identity, War Stories connects sentimental sources and ideas to the national project at a time when the meaning of the American nation was being tested and re-defined.

Emma Christopher won the Kay Daniels Award in Early Colonial History for A Merciless Place: The Lost Story of Britain’s Convict Disaster in Africa and How it Led to the Settlement of Australia (Allen & Unwin)