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OVH author awarded A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Filson Historical Society is pleased to announce that an article in “Ohio Valley History” has been awarded the prestigious A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize from the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH) for the best article published during the preceding year in the field of southern women’s history. “Virginia Penny’s ‘State of Desperation’: Anger, Insanity, and Struggles for Justice in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky,” authored by Pippa Holloway, ran in the Winter 2023 issue of “Ohio Valley History.” A summary of the article can be found below.

Desperate to protect her brother Henry, who had spent his life in and out of psychiatric institutions, nationally recognized Louisville journalist Virginia Penney was, herself, confined to the Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum in 1882. Pippa Holloway’s article examines Penny’s efforts to push the boundaries of genteel Southern womanhood. “Penny’s experiences…offer historians a unique opportunity to consider how aberrant behavior, especially anger, became evidence of insanity in women and to wrestle with how we characterize mental distress in historical subjects,” Holloway writes. “Rather than communicating this distress in socially acceptable ways, she expressed mad rage.” Working from an incomplete and problematic archival record, Penny’s story demonstrates “how the project of defining and treating mental illness has served to enforce social conformity with norms of race and gender.”

Pippa Holloway is the Cornerstones Chair in History and Chair of the History Department at the University of Richmond. She is the author of “Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship” (OUP, 2013). She is currently researching 19th century limitations on the ability to testify in court.

According to Dr. Patrick Lewis, Director of Collections and Research of the Filson Historical Society, “SAWH members are leading the most important conversations in US history at the moment, especially in regional history. Having the prize committee recognize an Ohio Valley History article as the pinnacle of the field in 2023 validates the Filson’s 140-year-old reputation as a leading archival and research institution.”

“Virginia Penny’s ‘State of Desperation,’” can be found online at Project MUSE. A limited number of print copies of the Winter 2023 issue of “Ohio Valley History” are available at the Filson Historical Society at 1310 S. 3rd St. in Louisville.

For more information about “Ohio Valley History,” including access to the article and issue, please contact Jamie Evans, Marketing and Public Relations Manager, at gro.l1731592916aciro1731592916tsihn1731592916oslif1731592916@snav1731592916ej1731592916.

About SAWH

Founded in Louisville in 1970 during a meeting of the Southern Historical Association, the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH) supports the study of women’s and gender history of the American South. The organization today has several purposes: to stimulate interest in the study of southern history and women’s history, to advance the status of women in the historical profession in the South, to provide a forum for women historians to discuss issues of professional concern, and to publicize and promote issues of concern to SAWH members.

About Ohio Valley History

“Ohio Valley History” is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal of the history and culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South collaboratively edited and published by The Filson Historical Society, Cincinnati Museum Center, and the University of Cincinnati. In addition to a print circulation of over 3,000, the entire run of OVH is globally available on Project Muse. In addition to articles, “Ohio Valley History” features historiographical and review essays, notes and documents, and reviews of books, exhibits, and historical sites.