Announcing the 2025 Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award

The Journal of the Civil War Era is pleased to announce that Dr. J. Jacob Calhoun has been selected as the recipient of the Anthony E. Kaye Memorial Essay Award for 2025. His winning essay is titled, “‘Nothing was known of the dead’: Coroners and the Massacres of 1866.”

 

The prize committee, consisting of Paul Barba (chair), Erin Mauldin, and Whitney Stewart, praised the article as follows: “By closely and creatively interrogating the records of the coroner’s offices in Memphis and New Orleans in the aftermath of the 1866 massacres, Calhoun reveals the vast power and responsibility vested in these officials and their institutions. Significantly, Calhoun demonstrates in convincing fashion how these men shaped both the government’s investigations of mass racist violence and how historians have interpreted these pivotal moments in Civil War era history. Insightful and meticulous, Calhoun’s essay brings into relief the enduring methodological value of close readings and comparative lenses.”

 

Calhoun is a Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of History and the David A. Moore Chair in American History at Wabash College. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Nau Center for Civil War History 2024-2025, and he received his PhD from the University of Virginia in 2024.  His research focuses on the history of emancipation and Reconstruction, specifically the intersection between politics, race, and violence.

 

The Kaye Award is awarded every two years and is co-sponsored by the JCWE, the Society of Civil War Historians, the University of North Carolina Press, and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center.