At the 2018 annual meeting for the
Society for Historians of Early American Republic (SHEAR), Women in the World of Frederick Douglass, by Leigh Fought, associate professor of history and director of Gender and Women's Studies at Le Moyne, was awarded the Mary Kelley Prize for the best book on the history of women, gender and sexuality published in 2017. The meeting took place from July 19 to 22 in Cleveland, Ohio. In photo, Fought, on left, is pictured with Mary Kelley.
The prize committee described the book as "a scrupulously researched and richly contextualized study that serves as a kind of collective biography of white and black women within Douglass’s family and household, and without." They based their award on the observation that "It is a testament to Fought’s skills as a researcher and a writer that a book with a man in its title can so thoroughly be a book about women, with important contributions to make not just in the realm of the history of women and gender, but also of race."
The Mary C. Kelley Prize honors the best book published on the history of women, gender, or sexuality in the Early American Republic. It is named in honor of Mary Kelley, the Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, who has produced path-breaking work on gender and intellectual history, the history of reading, and the history of education.
Earlier this year, Fought’s book won the
Herbert Lehman Prize for New York History. You can learn more about
Women in the World of Frederick Douglass at the
Oxford University Press website and read more about
Fought's research here.