Skip to main content

IAMHIST prizes

THE MICHAEL NELSON - CHRISTINE WHITTAKER PRIZE

THE 2025 IAMHIST- MICHAEL NELSON PRIZE AND THE 2025 IAMHIST- CHRISTINE WHITTAKER PRIZE FOR WORKS IN MEDIA AND HISTORY

The IAMHIST- Michael Nelson Prize is a biennial prize awarded for the book making the best contribution on the subject of media and history, which has been published in the preceding two years. The prize is dedicated to Michael Nelson, whose passion for media and journalism inspired IAMHIST throughout the years. Books submitted for consideration should display a strong grounding in archival-based research. The committee is especially interested in work focused on under-researched topics and underrepresented film and media traditions.

The IAMHIST – Christine Whittaker Prize is a biennial prize awarded for the radio or television program or series, film, website, or multimedia project making the best contribution on the subject of media and history, which has been produced and released in the preceding two years. The prize is dedicated to Christine Whittaker, the first acknowledged archive film researcher for the BBC, and IAMHIST’s most influential film and television practitioner.

Each award carries a prize of $1000 USD. Submissions for the 2025 prizes should reach the committee before November 1, 2024. The prizes will be awarded for a publication and (multi) media contribution on the subject of media and history published or produced between September 2022 – September 2024.

Submissions should be sent directly to the sub-committee members. Please inquire for postal addresses – cynthia_miller@emerson.edu.

Rules of the Michael Nelson and Christine Whittaker prizes

  • The prizes are awarded biennially.
  • Invitations for submissions and names of the winners will be published in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, on the IAMHIST website, on flyers, displayed in the universities of teaching members of IAMHIST, and by letters to appropriate bodies.
  • The prizes will be awarded (1) for the book and (2) for the radio or television program or series, film, website, or multimedia project making the best contribution on the subject of media and history to have been published in the preceding two years (which, for the 2025 prize, will be from September 2022 – September 2024).
  • Three copies of the work must be submitted to the IAMHIST prize sub-committee by the designated date in the year preceding the award (in this case, November 1, 2024).
  • The submitted works must be in the form of printed text (in the case of books) or DVD or online link (in the case of multimedia submissions). They may be accompanied by supporting material, as appropriate, such as scripts and shot lists.
  • Works that are not in English must be accompanied by an English translation or an English synopsis.
  • The winners will be selected by a sub-committee of the Council of IAMHIST, under the chairmanship of IAMHIST Treasurer, Cynthia Miller.

Award history

The prize was awarded for the first time in 2007, at the XXII IAMHIST conference in Amsterdam. The winner was Wendy Webster, for her book Englishness and Empire, 1939-1965. Thanks to an especially strong field of entries, two winners were chosen in 2009: Reconstructing American Historical Cinema from Cimmaron to Citizen Kane, by J.E. Smyth and Voices in Ruins: German Radio and National Reconstruction in the Wake of Total War, by Alexander Badenoch. Both works were cited by the prize committee as making outstanding contributions to the field, based on excellence of research, originality, accessibility, and scholarly usefulness. In 2011, the prize was awarded to It’s the Pictures that Got Small: Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television, by Christine Becker. In 2013, the first year of the multi-media prize, the recipients were: J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies: The FBI and the Origins of Hollywood’s Cold, by James Sbardellati (book), and The Media History Digital Library (multi-media). In 2015, the recipients were How it Feels to be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, by Ruth Feldstein (book) and Brave Little Belgium, produced by VRT (multi-media). In 2017, the sole recipient was Shelley Stamp’s Lois Weber in Early Hollywood. In 2019, the sole recipient was Susan Murray’s Bright Signals: A History of Color Television. The 2021 winner was Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe’s Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema, and Media of the 1920s. In 2023, E. James West won the Michael Nelson Prize with A House for the Struggle: The Black Press & the Built Environment in Chicago, and Dominique Santana won the Christine Whittaker Prize for A Colônia Luxemburguesa.

In 2025, Eleanor Patterson won the Michael Nelson prize for Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television Distribution (University of Illinois Press, 2024).

Previous award winners

Congratulations to Eleanor Patterson: 2025 IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize Winner!

IAMHIST has the pleasure to announce that Eleanor Patterson (Auburn University) is the winner of the 2025 Michael Nelson Prize. She convinced the jury with Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternate Histories of Radio and Television Distribution (University of Illinois Press, 2024).

Congratulations!

”The prize committee found the volume original, engaging, as well as making a vitally important contribution to media and cultural history. The committee applauded the way in which author Patterson captured the passion and energy of an era of technological change, through use of rich archival sources and analysis of broadcast radio and television bootlegging between the 1960s and 1980s. Wonderfully written and engrossing in its depth of analysis, Patterson offers the reader key insights into the community of people who developed historic bootlegging practices to share pre-digital media with one another.

IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize Panel

Congratulations to Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe: 2021 IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize winners!

We are delighted to announce that the winners of this year’s IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize are Sarah Street (University of Bristol) and Joshua Yumibe (Michigan State University) for Chromatic Modernity: Color, Cinema and Media of the 1920s(Columbia University Press, 2019).

Congratulations!

”In Chromatic Modernity, Sarah Street and Joshua Yumibe offer an insightful analysis of the dynamic interrelationship of film, history, and the culture of the 1920s. The volume artfully demonstrates the interplay of film technology and experimentation with innovations in all things visual, from fashion to architecture. The authors have crafted a discussion of intermediality and aesthetic engagement that will influence the literature of film history for years to come.

IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize Panel

Congratulations to Susan Murray: 2019 IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize winner!

We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize is Bright Signals: A History of Color Television (Duke University Press, 2018) by Susan Murray (New York University).

Congratulations!

”Meticulously researched, engagingly written, and well-illustrated, the volume presents a detailed – but always accessible – account of the intertwined processes of social, cultural and technological change. In this volume, Susan Murray makes an important contribution to media historiography, and our understanding of the complexities of technological transformation.

IAMHIST-Michael Nelson Book Prize Panel