This competition recognizes the accomplishments of IAWM member scholars and researchers, and fosters IAWM’s goal of increasing awareness of the music journalism contributions of and about women. Past winners include some of the most distinguished scholars writing about women and music.
2017
Book prize
Laurel Parsons and Brenda Ravenscroft (eds.) Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert Music, 1960–2000. OUP, 2016.
Article prize
Gurminder Kaur Bhogal, “Listening to female voices in Sikh kirtan.” Sikh Formations 13/1–2 (2016): 48–77.
Runner-up prize for dissertation
Jessica Rudman Common-Tone Preserving Contextual Inversions in the Music of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. PhD thesis, City University of New York, 2015.
Runner-up prize for reference work
Judith Barger Music in The Girl’s Own Paper: An Annotated Catalogue, 1880–1910. Routledge, 2016.
2015
Book prize
Denise Von Glahn, Music and the Skillful Listener: American Women Compose the Natural World. Indiana University Press, 2013.
Article prize
Victoria Malawey, “‘Find Out What It Means to Me’: Aretha Franklin’s Gendered Re-Authoring of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’.” Popular Music 33/2 (2014): 185–207.
2013
Book prize
Michael Slayton (ed.) Women of Influence: Nine American Composers. Scarecrow Press, 2011.
Article prize
Kate Bowan “Living Between Worlds Ancient and Modern: The Musical Collaboration of Kathleen Schlesinger and Elsie Hamilton.” Journal of the Royal Music Association 137/2 (2012): 197–242.
Honorable mention
Dorothy de Val In Search of Song: The Life and Times of Lucy Broadwood. Ashgate, 2012.
2011
Book prize:
Tara Rodgers, Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. Duke University Press, 2010.
Article prize:
Sarah Day-O’Connell, “The Composer, the Surgeon, His Wife, and Her Poems: Haydn and the Anatomy of the English Canzonetta.” Eighteenth-Century Music 6/1 (2009): 77–112.
2009
Book prize:
Susan Thomas, Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric Stage. University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Article prize:
Lisa Colton, “The Articulation of Virginity in the Medieval Chanson de nonne.” Journal of the Royal Music Association 133/2 (2008): 159–188.
Honorable mention:
Bess Lomax Hawes, Sing it Pretty: A Memoir. University of Illinois Press, 2008.
2007
Book prize:
Susan Rutherford, The Prima Donna and Opera, 18151930. Cambridge Studies in Opera. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Article prize:
Elizabeth Eva Leach, “‘The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly as the Fowler Deceives the Bird’: Sirens in the Middle Ages.” Music and Letters 87/2 (2006): 187–211.
Reference work prize:
Marion Gerards and Freia Hoffmann (eds.), Musik-Frauen-Gender: Bücherverzeichnis 1780–2004. Schriftenreihe des Sophie Drinker Instituts vol. 4. BIS-Verlag, Oldenburg, 2006.
Honorable mentions:
Book prize
Claire Fontijn, Desperate Measures: The Life and Music of Antonia Padoani Bembo. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Article prize:
Elizabeth Eva Leach “Gendering the Semitone, Sexing the Leading Tone: Fourteenth-Century Music Theory and the Directed Progression.” Music Theory Spectrum 28/1 (2006): 1–21.
Historically researched sound recording:
Kristina Guiguet, “Mrs. Widder’s Soiree Musicale, Toronto, 1844.” Melotrope Limited, Ottawa, 2005.
2005
Book prize:
Lori Burns and Melisse Lafrance, Disruptive Divas: Feminism, Identity, and Popular Music. Routledge, 2002.
Article prize:
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner, “Women and Music Technology: Pioneers, Precedents and Issues in the United States.” Organised Sound 8/1 (2003): 31–47.
Honorable mention:
Jane Bernstein (ed.), Womens Voices Across Musical Worlds. Northeastern University Press, 2002.
2004
Book prize:
Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composers Search for American Music. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Article/book chapter prize:
Suzanne G. Cusick, “Gender, Musicology, and Feminism.” In: Rethinking Music, ed. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 471–498.
Honorable mentions:
Article:
Juanita Karpf, “‘As With Words of Fire’: Art Music and Nineteenth-Century African-American Feminist Discourse.” Signs 24/3 (Spring 1999): 603–632.
Dissertations:
Elizabeth Jane Kertesz.“Issues in the Critical Re ception of Ethel Smyth’s Mass and First Four Op eras in England and Germany.” PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne, 2000.
Lisa A. Urkevich, “Anne Boleyn, A Music Book, and the Northern Renaissance Courts: Music Manuscript 1070 of the Royal College of Music, London.” PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, 1997.
1997
Book prize:
Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Article prize:
Bonnie Jo Dopp, “Numerology and Cryptography in the Music of Lili Boulanger: The Hidden Program in Clairières dans le ciel.” The Musical Quarterly 78/3 (Fall 1994): 557–583.
Reference work prize:
Julie Anne Sadie and Rhian Samuel, The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, 1st American ed. Norton, 1995.
1993
First Prize
Judith Lang Zaimont, Editor-in-Chief, and Jane Gottlieb, Joanne Polk, and Michael J. Rogan, Associate Editors
The Musical Woman: An International Perspective, Volume III: 1986-1990. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Second Prize
Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991.
Third Prize
Karin Pendle, Women and Music: A History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
1989
First Prize
Diane Jezic, Women Composers: The Lost Tradition Found. New York: Feminist Press of the City University of New York, 1988.
Second Prize
Judith Vander, Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988.
1988
First Prize
Virginia Bortin, Elinor Remick Warren: Her Life and Her Music. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1987.
Second Prize
Edith Borroff, “The Apprentice System and the Music of Women.” Unpublished paper given at the Fourth International Congress on Women in Music, Atlanta GA, 1986.
Third Prize
Susan Finger
The Los Angeles Heritage: Four Women Composers, 1918–1939. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1986.
1987
First Prize (only prize awarded)
Jane Bower and Judith Tick, Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
1986
First Prize
Catherine Parsons Smith and Cynthia S. Richardson, An American Woman: The Life and Music of Mary Carr Moore. Typescript, 1985. Subsequently published by the University of Michigan Press, 1987.
Second Prize
Nancy B. Reich, Clara Schumann: The Artist and the Woman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Third Prize (shared):
Judith Rosen. Grazyna Bacewicz: Her Life and Works. Los Angeles: Friends of Polish Music, 1985.
Joanne Riley, “Tarquinia Molza (1547–1617): A Case Study of Women, Music, and Society in the Renaissance.” Typescript, 1985. Subsequently published by Greenwood Press in The Musical Woman II, 1987.