FIRST SDAW/GSA PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED

The Stiftung für Deutsch/Amerikanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen (SDAW) has generously funded a new “SDAW/GSA Award for Best Paper by a Social Scientist within Five Years of the Doctorate.” It provides an award of €1,000 plus publication in the journal German Politics & Society. The award will be given every second year, beginning
in 2009.

    The prize committee was composed of Professor Louise K. Davidson-Schmich (political science, University of Miami), chair; Professor Wade Jacoby (political science, Brigham Young University); and Professor Jonathan Wiesen (history, Southern Illinois University). The GSA is very grateful to them for the time and care that they devoted to this competition.

    The first SDAW prize winner is Dr. Katie Sutton, University of Melbourne, Australia.

    Here is what the committee had to say in its laudatio:

“The consensus of the Prize Committee is that this new award should go to Dr. Katie Sutton from the University of Melbourne in Australia for her 2008 paper 'The Masculinized Female Athlete in Weimar Germany.' In this piece, the author examines the media depiction of athletic women during the Weimar Republic. She explores the varying reactions to women’s new athleticism in an era where women were also enjoying new political rights. In Sutton’s words, 'the perceived threat to traditional male dominance symbolized by the female athlete … prompted some commentators to denounce women’s physical activity and overemphasize traditional gender roles. … At the same time I … point to ways in which less conservative commentators held up women’s growing physical fitness as a positive sign of progress and modernity,' especially within the female homosexual subculture ofinterwar Berlin.

“Sutton’s arguments are richly illustrated with examples from Weimar-era periodicals. She concludes with evidence from the early Nazi era revealing that the 'masculinized female athlete' remained in the media of this period as well. Indeed,
some aspects of the Weimar-era media’s treatment of female athletes are evident in sports coverage today.”

    Committee members from both political science and history were impressed with Sutton’s work. One member described the piece as “fascinating and rich in analysis,” and commends the author for moving beyond the familiar focus on “the new woman” to illuminate how post-World War I concerns about sexuality, motherhood, population decline, and the physical health of the nation crystallized around the female athlete.

    Another member commented, “This engaging article makes a clear and original contribution to our understanding of athletics and society in Weimar Germany.”

    The GSA congratulates Dr. Sutton for this outstanding honor.