Bell and Inscoe Awards

Publication Awards

Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award

The Bell Award, established in 1992, is the highest publication award given by the Georgia Historical Society. It recognizes the best book on Georgia history published in the previous year. The award is named in honor of Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell in recognition of their contributions to the recording of Georgia’s history.

Nomination Information:

The deadline for submissions is January 31. Books submitted should be published between January 1 and December 31 of the previous calendar year. Four copies of the nominated books should be sent to the Georgia Historical Society at the address below. Nominated books cannot be returned. Only the winner will be notified in advance of the presentation of the award.

Nominations should include a cover page with the following information:

  • title of book
  • contact name, address, phone number, and email
  • date of publication

Please submit 4 copies of each book to:

Bell Award
The Georgia Historical Society
104 W. Gaston Street
Savannah, GA 31401

Previous Winners

  • 2024: Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied The South, by Elizabeth R. Varon, published by Simon and Schuster
  • 2023: Loserville: How Professional Sports Remade Atlanta—and How Atlanta Remade Professional Sports by Clayton Trutor, published by the University of Nebraska Press
  • 2022: Cornerstone of the Confederacy: Alexander Stephens and the Speech that Defined the Lost Cause, by Keith S. Hébert, published by University of Tennessee Press
  • 2021: Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture, by Grace Elizabeth Hale, published by University of North Carolina Press
  • 2020: Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America, by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, published by W.W. Norton
  • 2018: Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest Over Southern Memory, by Andrew Denson, published by University of North Carolina Press
  • 2018: The Georgia Peach: Culture, Agriculture, and Environment in the American South, by William Thomas Okie, published by Cambridge University Press
  • 2016: Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South, by Talitha LeFlouria, published by University of North Carolina Press
  • 2015: Dixie Highway: Road Building & the Making of the Modern South, 1900-1930, by Tammy Ingram, published by the University of North Carolina Press
  • 2014: Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World, by Glenn T. Eskew, published by the University of Georgia Press
  • 2014: On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World, by Paul Pressly, published by the University of Georgia Press
  • 2013: Remaking Wormsloe Plantation: The Environmental History of a Lowcountry Landscape, by Drew Swanson, published by the University of Georgia Press
  • 2012: Writing the South through the Self, by John C. Inscoe, published by the University of Georgia Press in partnership with the Georgia Humanities Council
  • 2011: African-American Life in the Georgia Lowcountry: The Atlantic World and the Gullah Geechee, edited by Philip Morgan, published by the University of Georgia Press
  • 2010: What Virtue There is in Fire: Cultural Memory and the Lynching of Sam Hose, by Dr. Edwin Arnold, published by the University of Georgia Press
  • 2009: Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, by Jacqueline Jones, published by Alfred A. Knopf
  • 2008: Georgia’s Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony, by Ben Marsh, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 2007: White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, by Kevin Kruse, published by Princeton University Press
  • 2006: Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, by Erskine Clarke, published by Yale University Press
  • 2005: Okfuskee: A Creek Indian Town in Colonial America, by Joshua Piker, published by Harvard University Press
  • 2004: And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank, by Steve Oney, published by Pantheon Books
  • 2003: Highbrows, Hillbillies, and Hellfire: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880-1930, by Steve Goodson, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 2002: Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia, 1940-1980, by Stephen G.N. Tuck, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 2001: Free Labor in an Unfree World: White Artisans in Slaveholding Georgia, 1789-1860, by Michele Gillespie, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 2000: Secret Yankees: The Union Circle in Confederate Atlanta, by Thomas G. Dyer, published by Johns Hopkins University Press
  • 1998-1999: Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865-1870, by Paul Cimbala, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 1996-1997: Co-winners: The Temple Bombing, by Melissa Fay Green, published by Addison-Wesley, and “What Nature Suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920, by Mart Stewart, published by University of Georgia Press
  • 1994-1995: Andersonville: The Last Depot, by William Marvel, published by University of North Carolina Press
  • 1992-1993: Lachlan McGillivary, Indian Trader: The Shaping of the Southern Colonial Frontier, by Edward J. Cashin, published by University of Georgia Press

John Inscoe Award

The Inscoe Award was established in 2018 to honor John Inscoe, the Albert B. Saye Professor of History at the University of Georgia and editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly from 1989 to 2000. It is given for the best article published in the Georgia Historical Quarterly in the previous year.

  • 2024: Jeffrey Washburn, University of Texas Permian Basin, for “‘The fate of the Southern States’: The Creation of the First Federal Indian Policy and Its Impact on the Southeast" GHQ, Volume CVII No. 4, 2023.
  • 2023: William P. Hustwit, Birmingham-Southern College, for “‘Death for a Dollar Ninety-Five’: The Jimmy Wilson Case Reconsidered” GHQ, Volume CVI No. 1, 2022.
  • 2022: Kevin Kokomoor, Coastal Carolina University, for “The Importance of the Oconee War in the Early Republic,” GHQ, Volume CV No. 1, 2021.
  • 2021: Andrew Denson, Western Carolina University, for “Cherokee Ambassador: Gertrude McDaris Ruskin and the Personal Politics of Southern Commemoration,” GHQ, Volume CIV No. 2, 2020.
  • 2020: Donald S. Summerlin, University of Georgia, for “‘We Represented the Best of Georgia in Chicago’: The Georgia Loyalist Delegate Challenge at the 1968 Democratic Convention,” GHQ, Volume CIII No. 3, 2019.
  • 2019: Dr. Ken Wheeler, professor at Reinhardt University, and his students, David Busman, Jessica Fanczi, Madeline Gray, Gladys Guzman-Gomez, Abigail M. Merchant, Madelyn Montgomery, Bradley Dane Niday, Kailey Payne, and Aliyah Reeves, for “Black Student Experiences in the Racial Integration of Reinhardt College, 1966-1972,” GHQ, Volume CII No. 4, 2018.
  • 2018: Drew Swanson, Wright State University, for “From Georgia to California and Back: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Southern Gold Mining,” GHQ, Volume C No. 2, 2016.