William G. Thomas III, Kaci Nash, and Robert Shepard have won the John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article published in Civil War History during 2016.  Their study, “Places of Exchange:  An Analysis of Human and Materiél Flows in Civil War Alexandria, Virginia,” Civil War History (December 2016), was selected by the journal’s editorial advisory board.  The prize earns the recipient a $1,000 award from The Kent State University Press.

This article argues that specific geographic, military, and topographical conditions created “funnel points” where the Union Army amassed men, material, and animals to sustain its incursions into the South. Applying the concepts of flows, funnels, and networks from critical geographic and urban studies, this article examines the characteristics of these interstitial zones in the Civil War between the home front and the battlefield. In these places, a series of large-scale processes and movements unfolded over the course of the war, as humans and animals exchanged microbes, landscapes and environmental conditions were altered, properties changed hands, and bureaucratic mechanisms were instantiated. This article examines in detail the character and significances of these disruptions through one of the principal central flow points in the war: Alexandria, Virginia.

Now in its 63rd year of publication, Civil War History is published quarterly by The Kent State University Press.  Edited by Brian Craig Miller (Mission College) and Associate Editor Frank Towers (University of Calgary), it is the premier journal in the study of the American Civil War.

William G. Thomas III is the John and Catherine Angle Professor in the Humanities and professor of history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  He is currently working on a book called A Question of Freedom:  The Ordeal of an American Family in the Age of Revolution.   Kaci Nash is a Research Associate Fellow at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  Robert Shepard is the GIS Developer at the Digital Scholarship and Publishing Studio at the University of Iowa.

Awarded annually by The Kent State University Press, the John T. Hubbell Prize recognizes the extraordinary contribution to the field of its namesake, who served as editor of Civil War History for thirty-five years.