Frantz Essay Competition Rules

Guideline for the Joe B. Frantz Prize for Best Graduate/Undergraduate History Paper

Description:
This award recognizes the best history research paper in each of two categories: upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students. It is awarded annually at the end of the Spring semester. The monetary prize is $200 for the best undergraduate paper and $300 for the best graduate paper.

Minimum Qualifications:

This award is reserved exclusively for research papers. Papers must clearly address a historical question or problem, advance a thesis, and be grounded in primary and secondary source research. The paper must include properly formatted footnotes or endnotes and bibliography according to Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style. Historiographical essays will qualify as long as they critically evaluate the literature and pose new questions or directions. Mere literature surveys or bibliographic essays are excluded. Undergraduate papers must have been completed in the three academic terms prior to the deadline (including the previous Spring, Summer, and Fall terms). Graduate research papers must have been completed in the twenty-four months prior to the deadline (including the previous Spring, Summer and Fall terms). Each unique paper may be nominated only once for the award. Students must be currently enrolled in the university to qualify and participate in the competition.

Nomination Process:

Papers may be nominated by faculty or by the student authors themselves. Nominations shall be made by completing a simple nomination form, which must be typed, provide all requested information, and bear the signature of both the student and the instructor in whose class the student completed the work. Students must submit three clean copies of the paper along with their form to the Frantz professor.

Deadline: 

The deadline for completed submissions is the last official day of classes for the spring academic term. An announcement of the winner will be made by the Frantz Professor approximately three weeks thereafter. In the event that none of the submissions meets the criteria of scholarly excellence established by the history faculty, no award will be given.

Criteria:

The winning papers will demonstrate originality, solid critical thinking, depth and breadth of research, and sound writing and organization. They must include a bibliography and citations (either endnotes or footnotes) properly formatted according to Turabian/Chicago Manual of Style. Plagiarized or poorly documented papers will be disqualified. Judges may summarily dismiss submissions that are not properly formatted or that fail to conform to the stated requirements of the competition regardless of content.

Judging and Administration of the Award:

During the Spring semester, the Frantz chair will solicit three judges, one from the history area and two from outside the History area. The committee will be expected to read the papers and reach consensus on the awards within three weeks of the deadline. Each committee member will be expected to provide written comments for each paper based on the criteria provided below. When the winners have been determined, the Frantz professor will notify the award winners using the contact information provided by the applicant on the nomination form. The Frantz Professor will contact all applicants with the results, a copy the judge's comments on the applicant's paper, publicly announce the winners (using an appropriate forum), and manage all payments to the award winners, the judges, and for any ancillary costs. In the event that none of the submissions meets the criteria of scholarly excellence established by the history faculty, no award will be given.

Judging Criteria:

The three essay judges will be asked to evaluate all papers using a fifty point scale based on the following criteria

1. Clarity of argument: (0-10) Is the argument/thesis clear? Can you restate it succinctly? Does the paper support the argument? How so? Does the paper "hang together?" In other words is it clearly about two or three specific things or does it ramble through a variety of arguments? Do all the stories, data points, etc., all point toward the main thesis?
2. Links to historical narrative and literature (0-10) Does the author explain clearly the temporal, geographic, and topical scopes of the paper? Does the write locate her or himself in the literature? Does she or he explain the paper's contribution to historical knowledge? Is it placed within the context of the broader narrative of history?
3. Quality of scholarship (0-10) How well does the paper use primary and secondary sources? Does the author seem to make an original contribution to the knowledge of history (meaning, does the writer use their sources to make a distinct/unique conclusion). Does the paper promote "scholarly excellence?" Is the paper properly documented (using Turabian/ Chicago Manual of Style)?
4. Quality of writing (0-10) Is the writing clear? Is the paper written at the appropriate level? Are there topic sentences? Is each paragraph about only one idea or topic? Does the introduction really introduce the paper, or is it simply the first set of material in the paper? Does the conclusion really conclude the paper in a meaningful way?
5. Overall Impression (0-10)

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