All graduate students in the second year of the Department of History's doctoral program are required to enroll in HIS 203, a year-long seminar during which they must produce a major research paper. At the end of the year-long History 203 seminar, students present shortened versions of their papers at a conference held in the department. After all students present the summaries of their papers, a faculty committee awards the Emile G. Scholz Prize to one of the graduate students for the best piece of written historical research.
ABOUT EMILE G. SCHOLZ
UC Davis alumnus Bret Hewitt established the prize in memory of his grandfather Emile G. Scholz. Born in 1893 in Bakersfield, Calif., Scholz served during World War I in the quartermaster corps in Brest, France. After returning home from the war, Scholz worked at the Southern Pacific Railroad headquarters at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco, where he rose to the rank of supervising accountant.
He often recollected about riding the ferry across the bay before the Bay Bridge opened in 1936. Scholz, an avid baseball fan, followed both the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, and their AAA Pacific Coast League predecessors, the Seals and the Oaks. He married Myrtle May Scholz and together they raised Emily May Hewitt (nee Scholz), Hewitt's mother. Just as his grandfather instilled in him a lifelong love of history, Mr. Hewitt hopes the prize will reinforce in the winners their commitment to learning, teaching, and the exploration of history.
EMILE G. SCHOLZ PRIZE WINNERS
2023-24 — Hao Zou, “The Murder of Gon Ying: Unraveling Family Relations in Early Chinese Trans-Pacific Migration.”
Honorable Mentions — Sabujkoli Mukherjee, “Muddy Lines and Murky Waters: The Making of a Colonial Delta, 1816-1828” and Francisca Espinosa, “Deciphering Chilean Childhood Experiences of Exile: Between Uprooting and Identity (1973-1990).”
- 2022-23 — Ibrahim Anoba, "Inheriting from the Dead: Ritual, Mimicry, and 'English Justice' in Colonial Lagos (1876-1937)" and Jen Alpers, "Hell's Belles and B.A.D.D. Moms: Race, Childhood, and Satanic Panic in 1980s United States."
- 2021-22 — David Morales, "Story Problems: Conquest, Performance, and the Taos 'Revolt' of 1847."
Runner Ups: — Huseyin Gocen, "Festivals and Celebrations in Ottoman Early Modernity through the Lens of Provincial Fatwa Collections" and Alvaro Grompone, "The Quest for Virile National Progress: Masculinity, Modernity, and Anxieties in Peruvian Intellectual Elites, 1884-1914."
- 2020-21 — Alejandro Renteria, "A Cultural Repercussion: Native Idolatry and the Paradox of Popular Religion in Early Colonial New Spain, 1525-1540".
Runner Ups: — Emma Chapman, "The Intimate Networks of Mary Starbuck: Trade, Family, and Settler Colonialism on Nantucket, 1659-1717" and Pooja Hazra, "Theorizing Collective Consciousness: The Munshis' Discourse on Fatalism in 18th Century South Asia."
- 2019-20 — Manoel Rendeiro Neto, "Denying Sovereignties: Empires, Maps, and Runaway Indigenous People and Maroons in the Amazonian Borderlands, 1777-1800."
Runner Ups: — Robert Hoberman, "War as though it were a Sport: World War II, Outdoor Recreation, and American Wilderness Politics" and Ellie Kaplan, "Accessing Leisure: A Disability History of Yosemite National Park."
- 2019 — Mehmet Celik, "The Emergence of a New Rural Gentry in Seventeenth Century Anatolia: The Case of Kütahya"
- 2018 — Julio Aguilar, "A Thirsty Colonization: Building Potosi Hydraulic Infrastructure, 1572-1626"
- 2017— Viridiana Hernandez, "The Green Revolution's Cradle: Mexican Agricultural Programs, 1942-1988"
- 2017— Ashley Serpa Flack, "'All for the Nation, Nothing Against the Nation:' J. William Fulbright, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Portugal's Propaganda Apparatus in the United States, 1961-1963."
- 2016 — Sean Gallagher, "'Every Year Worse and Worse': Enslaved Maritime Laborers and Military Overseership in Revolutionary South Carolina"
- 2016 — Michael Haggerty, "Low Company: Mike Walsh and the Politics of Freedom in Nineteenth Century America"
- 2015 — Stacy Roberts, "The Private Commons: Oyster Planting in Nineteenth-Century Connecticut"
- 2014 — Nathalie Esteban Collin, "Custody Battles: Patria Potestad and the Argentine Feminist Movement, 1975 - 1985"
- 2013 — Tyson Reeder, "American Pirates, Artigan Privateers: Foreign Privateering and Nation-States in the Early Nineteenth Century Atlantic."
Placement: Postdoctoral Scholar, University of Virginia - 2012 — Rajbir Judge, "Black Skin, White Breasts: Colonial Subjectivity, Miscegenation, and the Theosophical Society."
- 2012 — Jacob Lee, "A New World? Kinship, Rivers, and Power in Illinois County, 1763–1778."
Placement: Assistant Professor, Indiana University - 2011 — David Stenner, "Networking for Independence: The Moroccan Nationalist Movement and its Global Campaign Against French Colonialism."
Placement: Assistant Professor, Christopher Newport University - 2010 — Lia Winfield, "Claiming Their Place: Women in the U.S. Army, 1970-1980."
Placement: Research and Exhibit Development, Hill Aerospace Museum, Utah - 2009 — Miles Powell, "Vanishing Species, Dying Races: Environment, Science, Race and Class in the Writings of William T. Hornaday."
Placement: Assistant Professor of Environmental History, NTU, Singapore
For a list of external fellowships, please go to our Funding page