In 2012, Linda Moore Miller established a prize in honor of her departed husband, William Lee Miller. The William Lee Miller Prize fund supports a prize of $1000 to be given each year for the senior thesis in the Program in Political and Social Thought that most fully unites solid intellectual content, persuasive argument, originality, imagination, and the lively and thoughtful expression of ideas. Professor Miller directed the program from 1995-99 and was the author of many highly regarded books, including Lincoln's Virtues (2002) and President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (2008).
The prize is awarded annually at the PST Diploma Ceremony from among the thesis projects of the current class.
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Past Winners and their Thesis Titles
2013 Camilla M. Griffiths
Intergroup Dialogue in our Communities: Walking the Walk
2014 Carl David Goette-Luciak
The Mirrors of Miskitu and Mestizo Nicaragua: Identity Formation through Cultural Collision on the Coast
2015 Scott Tilton
Liberty on the Walls of Prisons: The Louisiana Tripartite Racial System and the Fight Against Segregation
2016 Porter Nenon
Sexual Politics in James Baldwin's Early Fiction
2017 Alexa L. Hazel
"First fight. Then fiddle": The Politics of Form in Assia Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia
2018 Margaret Grace Haltom
Citizens of the Old Forest: Roads, Race, and Resistance in Memphis's Overton Park
2019 Brian Cameron
Unaffordable Injustice: Segregation, Gentrification, and Urban Policy in Charlottesville, Virginia
2020 Javaria Abbasi
Challenges to Imperial Discourse: The Reactivation of Indigenous Visual Culture in 16th Century Imperial Cartography
2021 Zachary Mulhollan Zamoff
Historical Memory in Colombia: The Conflict Over the Narrative
2022 Reva Joshi
A New 'Jane Crow': How the Foster Family System Polices and Punishes Black Families
2023 Jessica Moore
Passing Across the Color Line: Reconciling the Realities of Race with the Myth of Color Blindness
2024 Yirui Gui
The Political Sociology of Global Data Governance: Renegotiating the Social Contract for Data
2024 Talib Kante
Freedom, Justice and Love v. The United States: A Trial of White Epistemological Ignorance