John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize
Deadline: December 31, yearly
The Jackson Prize was established to encourage and reward American geographers who write books about the United States which convey the insights of professional geography in language that is interesting and attractive to a lay audience. The prize, which carries an award of $1,000 to the author, is administered by the Association of American Geographers.
Eligibility: J.B. Jackson and his friends established the prize to recognize American geographers who write serious but popular books about the human geography of the contemporary United States. The prize is restricted to books written by geographers, with preference given to those by U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Textbooks, dissertations, and articles are ineligible. Special consideration will be given to books that are carefully designed, appropriately illustrated, and physically appealing. The Selection Committee reserves the right to make no award in a particular year. Awards are announced in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. Books published in calendar year 2013 are now eligible for the awards.
Submissions: Publishers are invited to submit entries for the Jackson Prize competition (authors may not submit their book directly and should consult their publishers, with whom the decision to submit rests). Publishers should forward one copy of the published book before December 31, to each of the four committee members:
- Craig Colten, Department of Geography and Anthropology, 227 Howe-Russell-Kniffen Geosciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Lousiana 70803;
- Anne Kelly Knowles, Department of Geography, McCardell Bicentennial Hall, 287 Bicentennial Way, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT 05753;
- Susan Hardwick, Department of Geography, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403–1251; and
- James Shortridge, Department of Geography, 209 Lindley Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045.
Inquiries: For more information about the Jackson Prize, contact Craig Colten at ccolten@lsu.edu.
About the Jackson Prize: John Brinckerhoff Jackson founded the magazine Landscape in 1951 and remained its owner and editor until 1968. After he retired as Editor he spent more than a decade writing about landscape and teaching celebrated courses in the history of vernacular landscapes at Berkeley and Harvard. The Jackson Prize of the AAG is dedicated to encouraging the kind of thinking and writing to which J. B. Jackson devoted much of his life: to encourage Americans to look thoughtfully at the human geography of their own country; to try to understand how that geography came to be and what it signifies; and to convey that understanding to the public at large.
Previous Jackson Prize Recipients
2012 James "Pete" Shortridge for Kansas City and How it Grew, 1822-2011; University Press of Kansas
2011 Jan Nijman for Miami: Mistress of the Americas, University of Pennsylvania Press.
2010 Paul F. Starrs and Peter Goin for Field Guide to California Agriculture
2009 Patrick McGreevy for Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping of America, State University Press of New York (Albany).
2008 Gumprecht for The American College Town. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
2007 Eric D. Olmanson for The Future City on the Inland Sea: A History of Imaginative Geographies. Ohio University Press.
2006 Arthur J. Krim for Route 66: Iconography of an American Highway. George Thompson Publishers.
2005 Craig Colten for An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Louisiana State University Press.
2004 Donald W. Meinig for Global America, 1915-2000. volume four of The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Yale University Press.
2003 Peirce F. Lewis for New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape. Center for American Places in association with University of Virginia Press.
2002 Daniel D. Arreola for Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province. University of Texas Press.
2001 John A. Jakle for City Lights: Illuminating the American Night. Johns Hopkins University Press.
2000 David B. Lowenthal for George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. University of Washington Press.
1999 Blake Gumprecht for The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth. Johns Hopkins University Press.
1998 Charles S. Aiken for The Cotton Plantation South Since the Civil War. Johns Hopkins University Press.
1997 Kenneth E. Foote for Shadowed Ground: America's Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy. University of Texas Press.
1996 Richard Francaviglia for Main Street Revisited: Time, Space, and Image-Building in Small Town America. University of Iowa Press.
1995 David J. Wishart for An Unspeakable Sadness: The Dispossession of the Nebraska Indians. University of Nebraska Press.
1994 Paul Groth for Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in The United States. University of California Press.
1993 John B. Wright for Rocky Mountain Divide: Selling and Saving the West. University of Texas Press.
1992 Wilbur Zelinsky for Cultural Geography of the United States (Revised & Enlarged Edition). Prentice-Hall Publishers.
