2013 Awards
Anne M. Butler, Distinguished Book Award
The organization presented its Distinguished Book Award to Anne M. Butler for her 2012 book, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920. Butler was unable to attend the conference and accepted the award via video call.
Caroline Bowden, Distinguished Historian Award
Caroline Bowden received CHWR’s Distinguished Historian Award. Bowden is principal investigator and research fellow for a prosopographical study of the English convents in exile in the 17th and 18th centuries, Who Were the Nuns? The project, based at Queen Mary University of London, included building a database of the 22 convents that were founded on the continent and around 4,000 women were professed when it was illegal to establish a convent in England. The convents became significant cultural centers, fostering the education of Catholic girls, making collections of books, commissioning works of art, and maintaining substantial buildings. In spite of wars and natural disasters, sources revealing much about the importance of the members of these convents have survived.
These award were presented at the Conference on the History of Women Religious in 2013.