Awards

The Conference on the History of Women Religious administers three awards: the Distinguished Book Award, the Distinguished Historian Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award. Awards are presented at a banquet during each triennial conference. Award citations are linked below.
2022
- Distinguished Book | Mary J. Oates, Pursuing Truth: How Gender Shaped Catholic Education at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (2021)
- Distinguished Historian | Rosa Bruno-Jofré
2019
- Distinguished Book | Catherine O’Donnell, Elizabeth Seton: American Saint (2018)
- Distinguished Historian | Deirdre Raftery
2016
- Distinguished Book | Margaret M. McGuinness, Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America (2013)
- Distinguished Historian | Carol K. Coburn
- Lifetime Achievement | Karen Kennelly, C.S.J.
2013
- Distinguished Book | Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920 (2012)
- Distinguished Historian | Caroline Bowden
2010
- Distinguished Book | Emily Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of the New World, 1727–1834 (2007)
- Lifetime Achievement | Elizabeth M. Smyth
2007
- Distinguished Book | Elizabeth Makowski, “A Pernicious Sort of Woman”: Quasi Religious Women and Canon Lawyers in the Later Middle Ages (2005)
- Distinguished Historian | Elizabeth Kolmer, A.S.C.
- Lifetime Achievement | Suellen Hoy
- Lifetime Achievement | Irene Mahoney, O.S.U.
2004
- Distinguished Book | Anita Caspary, I.H.M., Witness to Integrity: The Crisis of the Immaculate Heart Community of California (2003)
- Distinguished Book | Diane Batts Morrow, “Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time”: The Antebellum Experience of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828–1860 (2002)
- Distinguished Historian | Elizabeth Rapley
- Lifetime Achievement | Mary Hermenia Muldrey, R.S.M.
2001
- Distinguished Book | Martha Smith, C.S.J., and Carol K. Coburn, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920 (1999)
- Distinguished Historian | Mary Oates, C.S.J.
1998
- Distinguished Historian | Mary Ewens, O.P.
- Distinguished Historian | Jo Ann McNamara
1995
- Distinguished Historian | Karen Kennelly, C.S.J.
1992
- Distinguished Historian | Sister Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D. de N.
1989
- Distinguished Historian | Sister Mary Evangeline Thomas, C.S.J.
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