This prize, given since 2003 for senior essays making significant use of the collections in Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, was expanded in 2022 to include use of all of the Yale Library's special collections.

2024

• Leo Egger (Trumbull College).  “Living its Strange Life” A literary biography of Margery Latimer from the archives in 18 scenes. Advisor: Professor Karin Roffman. Department: Humanities.
• AJ Laird (Benjamin Franklin College). Whaling Logbooks: Colonial Knowledge Acquisition in the Pacific World Advisor: Professor Paul Sabin. Department: History.
• Shira Minsk (Pauli Murray College). Steady Through Time: Ella Barksdale Brown and the Perception-Based Politics of Black Women’s Racial Uplift in 20th Century America Advisor: Professor Matthew Jacobson. Department: History.

2023

• Lydia Broderick, Ezra Stiles College. Militants in the Model City: Richard Lee, the Hill Parents Association, and the Limits of Citizen Participation in New Haven's Urban Renewal Anti-Poverty Programs
• Elaina Foley, Saybrook College. Sense-able Hauntings: Ethics and Narratives in Ornithological Specimen Preservation at Yale's Peabody Museum 
• Sofia Ortega-Guerrero, Ezra Stiles College. Between Specificity and Myth: An Analysis of Carlos Mèrida's 'Mexican Costume'

2022

• Sam Battles, Davenport College. Paper Sons and Chosen Families: Blurry Archives and Non-Biological Kinship in the Chong Family Album.
• Sarah Gannett, Davenport College. "A Cascade of Shifts in the Brain": Kay Ryan's Poetics.
• Madeleine Stern, Pierson College. "The Language of Our Dreams": James Baldwin's Project of Identity Formation on Paper and Film.

2021

• Nathalie J. Bussemaker, Morse College. Imperialism's Stepchild: Dura-Europos and the Political Uses of Archaeology in the French Mandate of Syria, 1920-1939.

2020

• Steven Rome, Grace Hopper College. The Apostle of Dissent: J. Hendrix McLane's Fight Against History in Post-Reconstruction South Carolina.
• Sahaj Sankaran, Silliman College. Ambassadors Extraordinary: Chester Bowles, B.K. Nehru, and Ambassadorial Agency in Indo-American Relations, 1961-1969.

2019

• Samuel Bennett, Ezra Stiles College. "A Critic Friendly to McCarthy": How William F. Buckley, Jr. Brought Senator Joseph R. McCarthy into the American Conservative Movement between 1951 and 1959.
• Ethan Swift, Pierson College. Young Americans for Freedom and the Anti-War Movement: Pro-War Encounters with the New Left at the Height of the Vietnam War.

2018

• H. William Bernstein, Pierson College.  From Paris to New Haven: Maurice Rotival and the Longue Durée of Urban Renewal.

2017

• Sarah D. Kim, Jonathan Edwards College. Of a Healthy Constitution: Socialized Medicine Between the Triumphs of Social Security and Medicare.
• Sarah E. Pajka, Morse College. Doctors, Death, and Denial: The Origins of Hospice Care in 20^th Century America.

2016

• Thomas Hopson, Trumbull College. The Roots of Radicalism: Natural Rights, Corporate Liberty, and Regional Factions in Colonial Connecticut, 1740-1766.
• Jacob L. Wasserman, Saybrook College. Internal Affairs: Untold Case Studies of World War I German Internment.

2015

• Elizabeth D. James, Branford College. The True University: Yale's Library from 1843-1931.
• Raymond L. Noonan III, Saybrook College. Insurgent Labor Activists at Yale, 1968-1971.

2014

• Jonah Coe-Scharff, Pierson College. "New Roads" in Leftist Thought: Dwight Macdonald, Lewis Coser, and the Postwar Crisis of American Marxism.
• John (Jack) Doyle, Berkeley College. Measuring "Problems of Human Behavior": The Eugenic Origins of Yale's Institute of Psychology, 1921-1929.

2013

• Brendan Ross, Berkeley College. From Practical Woodsman to Professional Forester: Henry S. Graves and the Professionalization of Forestry in the United States, 1900-1920.
• Nathaniel Zelinsky, Davenport College. Who Governed Yale?: Kingman Brewster and Higher Education in the 1970s.

2012

• Emily Dominski, Silliman College. A Nowhere Between Two Somewheres: The Church Street South Project and Urban Renewal in New Haven.
• Benjamin Will Horowitz, Jonathan Edwards College. The Solomons on Cedar Street: The Intellectual Origins of Yale's Institute of Human Relations and Progressive Agenda at Yale.

2011

• Daniel Stone, Branford College. Put a Nickel on the Drum: Problems Policing Prohibition at Yale.
• Joshua Tannen, Saybrook College. Making the Case for Privacy: Potter Stewart and the Fourth Amendment .

2010

• Sean Fraga, Silliman College. "Two Days By Plane": America's First Transcontinental Passenger Airline and the Selling of the Skies.
• Danielle Kehl, Timothy Dwight College. The Buckley-Coffin Crusade: Preaching the Gospel of Political Ideology to Yale and America in the 1960s.

2009

• Jennifer K. Lin, Silliman College. From Chemical Terror to Clinical Trial: The Development of Chemotherapy at Yale in World War II.
• Kevin Michel, Trumbull College. A Struggle Between Brothers: A Reexamination of the Idea of a Cohesive Conservative Movement Through the Intellectual Life and Personal Conflict Surrounding L. Brent Bozell.

2008

• Scott Chaloff, Morse College. Dynamite Tonight: Vietnam On and Off-Stage at the Yale School of Drama, 1966-1969.
• Aaron Wiener, Berkeley College. Hiram Bingham's Expedition and the Peruvian Response: A Connecticut Yanqui in the Land of the Incas.

2007

• Jonathan Bressler, Silliman College. The Red Badge of Infamy: John Punnett Peters and the Fate of the Federal Employment Loyalty Program.
• Matthew Busick, Branford College. Becoming a Yale Man: Intimacy among Yale Students in the Nineteenth Century.

2006

• Julia Gegenheimer, Timothy Dwight College. Between Rhetoric and Reality: The Effects of Ideological Transition in the 1970s-1980s on the Status of Women in the Sudan.
• Mary Ellen Leuver, Jonathan Edwards College. Defying Death, Disease, & Darkness: Yale, New Haven, and the Institutionalization of Public Health in America, 1880-1930.

2005

• Sandra Chwialkowska, Branford College. It's About College. [Feature-length Documentary, available at the Yale Film Study Center]
• Robert Tice Lalka, Saybrook College. Surviving the Death of God: Existentialism, God, and Man at Post-WWII Yale.

2004

• Wallis K. Finger, Ezra Stiles College. From the 'Bland Leading the Bland' to the Mississippi Freedom Vote.
• Laura Finkelstein, Berkeley College. Disclosure of Holocaust Experiences: Reasons, Attributions, and Health Implications.

2003

• Chirag Badlani, Davenport College. Walking the Line of Diplomacy: The Mutual Failures of Chester Bowles and The United States in India, 1951-1969.
• Elizabeth Waldman, Pierson College. What's In a Name: The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 1965-1972.