NPM announces 2020 awards for postal history scholarship

By Linn’s Staff

On June 8 the Smithsonian National Postal Museum announced the winners of the museum’s 2020 awards for scholarship in postal history.

David Johnson received a professional award for his book Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement, published by Columbia University Press in 2019.

Two graduate student prizes were awarded for doctoral dissertations.

L. Bao Bui received this award for his dissertation titled “ ‘I Feel Impelled To Write’: Male Intimacy, Epistolary Privacy, and the Culture of Letter Writing during the American Civil War.”

Alicia Maggard received the award for her dissertation titled “One Nation, under Steam: Technopolitics, Steam Navigation, and the Rise of American Industrial Power.”

Johnson is a professor in the department of history at the University of South Florida. Bui teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Alicia Maggard teaches at Williams-Mystic, the ocean and coastal studies semester of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum.

“It is remarkable in how many ways mail delivery has shaped the United States,” said Susan Smith, the Winton M. Blount research chair at the National Postal Museum and the chair of the award review committee. “I learned so much from these works.”

The museum will begin accepting submissions for the next awards for scholarship in postal history on Dec. 3, 2021.

More information on the prizes and the eligibility years can be found on the museum’s website.

The National Postal Museum is located at 2 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C., across from Union Station. It is temporarily closed to visitors as a public health precaution due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.

For more information, call 202-633-1000 or visit the National Postal Museum website.

Connect with Linn’s Stamp News: 

    Sign up for our newsletter
    Like us on Facebook
    Follow us on Twitter