Deadline Approaching for Fellman Award in History Writing Submissions

The submission deadline for the second annual Michael Fellman Award for Historical Writing is fast approaching.

This is a writing prize of $1,000 co-established by the SFU History department and The Tyee to honour the life and work of the popular and engaging history professor and Tyee contributor who passed away in June 2012.

The award is intended honour a piece of publicly accessible writing that demonstrates bold thought, clear analysis, rests on well-researched historical understanding and helps unpack an issue relevant to contemporary readers.

Contest criteria

Deadline: Nov. 1, 2014.

Winner selected: Dec. 30, 2014.

Length: Less than 2,500 words.

Winning criteria

• Spirit of public engagement. The piece must be about an issue of broad and current public interest.
• Accessible writing. What good is historical analysis couched in the passive, inscrutable voice of the academy? The piece should be written in a lively, engaging, accessible style.
• Bold thought, clear analysis, historical understanding. The piece has to connect the dots of history to the events of today to create a picture that helps us better see our present world and the challenges we face.

To submit an entry for the award, send the document in PDF or Microsoft Word format by email addressed to editor@thetyee. Subject line should read: "Michael Fellman Award, 2014".

The winner will be chosen by a trio of judges: Mark Leier, Tyee contributor and professor of labour history at SFU; Geoff D'Auria, a Tyee editor and former student of Fellman's; and Michael Fellman's partner, Santa Aloi.

Last year's winner

Last year, historian Christopher Phelps won for his piece, Trayvon's Legacy: How Diversity Hides Racism. In it, Phelps explored how in a land where there's a president of African-American descent could the man who killed Trayvon Martin be found not guilty of murder.

Phelps argued that the market individualist ideology that developed along with or soon after the civil rights movement created an illusory "race blindness" that reactionary forces used to marginalize anyone attempting to tackle the structural racism embedded into the fabric of North American capitalism.

"If [Martin Luther] King's 'I Have a Dream' speech emphasized law and attitude," Phelps wrote, "his broader career indicates that his unfinished agenda is more structural, economic and social. Race is sunk in 'hood and 'burb, in property values and school district boundaries, in wage differentials and portfolios, and in credit ratings and loan rates."

Read the entire piece here.

Why did it win?

Because it elegantly wove together a subtle and complex argument with a deep understanding of two divergent historical threads -- the civil rights movement and neo-liberal capitalism -- to help explain a pressing issue in both the United States and Canada.

Does the piece have to be about Canada? Not exclusively. But, like Phelps' entry, it should have resonance with a Canadian audience.

Who was Michael Fellman?

Michael was the author of critically acclaimed books on American history, a much-loved history professor at Simon Fraser University and a regular Tyee contributor.

At the time, The Tyee's founding editor, David Beers, wrote: "The world has lost a renowned scholar, Canada has lost a committed citizen, and this publication has lost an irreplaceable source of wisdom, insight and support..."

"Michael was a clear-eyed optimist whose years spent unearthing the grim record of America's internecine guerrilla war did not undermine his fundamental faith in reason and humanity. He said that he chose the Civil War as his recurring focus because its archival sources were so rich -- the last uncensored war, he called it -- and because the racial and economic inequalities so powerfully at work then so evidently had not been resolved by that terrible conflict. The wounds linger even today, and so their origins, believed Michael, were in constant need of honest scrutiny."

Michael Fellman's writing for The Tyee ranged from U.S. election coverage to unfolding Canadian politics to deconstruction of Clint Eastwood's films. His Tyee work can be found here.