About This Award
The Carl S. Meyer Prize, named for the co-founding editor
of The Sixteenth Century Journal and one of the
founders of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, professor
of
historical theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis,
as well as executive director of the Center (Foundation)
for
Reformation Research, is awarded annually for the best
paper delivered at the yearly meeting by a scholar who
is still
in graduate school or has earned the Ph.D. in the last
five years. The winning paper is chosen by a committee
of three
conference members appointed by the president who shall
designate the chair as well. The committee shall be named
by 1 January
of each year.
Criteria for selection include:
1) quality and originality of research
2) methodological skill and/or innovation
3) development of fresh and stimulating interpretations
or insights
4) literary quality
Papers placed in competition for the Meyer Prize cannot
have been delivered at other conferences.
To be considered for the prize, presenters must give three
copies of the paper as read at the conference to the Executive
Director of the SCSC, who shall forward the copies of the
paper to the prize committee members by April 1. The committee
shall make its decision by August 15. The chair shall then
submit the top-ranked paper to an expert in the field of
the paper’s topic. If the reader determines the work
is not of prize-winning caliber, the second-ranking paper
shall be submitted by the chair to an expert reader, and
so on, until the winner is selected.
When the committee has arrived at the final decision, the
winner will be reported to the Executive Director of the
SCSC who in turn shall notify the winner. The winner must
be present at the annual meeting to receive the award, which
will be announced by the chair of the prize committee along
with the presentation of the $500.00 prize. The Sixteenth
Century Journal shall have first right to accept the paper
for publication. It is not necessary that the Meyer Prize
be awarded each year. An announcement of the winner will
appear in The Sixteenth Century Journal.
Previous Winners
- 2009 - Jacob Baum, “Incense and
Idolatry: The Reformation of Olfaction in Late Medieval
German Christian Ritual,” presented at the SCSC Annual
Meeting in St. Louis, 2008.
- 2008 - Anastasia C. Nurre, “Among the Philippists:
The Identification of a Magdeburg Patrician in a Lutheran
Confessional Epitaph” Presented at the SCSC annual
meeting in Minneapolis, 2007.
- 2007 - Adam G. Beaver, “A Holy Land
for the Catholic Monarchy: Spanish Reconstructions
of Palestine, 1469-1598” (presented at the
2006 SCSC)
- 2006 - Jonathan Reid, “Caught between
Confessional Fronts”
- 2005 - John Frymire, “Rites of Appeasement:
Suffering and the Defense of Catholic Ritual in Early Modern
Germany”
- 2004 - John Frymire, "Rites of
appeasement: Suffering and the Defense of Catholic Ritual in Early Modern Germany"
- 2003 - Robert Christman, “Literacy and
Self-Determination: Confessions of Belief Composed by the
Common Man in Central Germany
c. 1575”
- 2002 - Suzanne Jablonski, “Neutralizing
Violence: Images of the Hunt at the Court of Phillip IV””(San
Antonio, October 2002)
