Elizabeth Garner Masarik, Assistant Professor of History, received the H. Wayne Morgan Prize from the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era for her book The Sentimental State: How Women-Led Reform Built the American Welfare State.
The H. Wayne Morgan Prize awards the best book published on any aspect of political history in the United States from 1865-1920s. Masarik’s book explores the transformative reform efforts led by women that were central to the creation of the American welfare state during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Masarik examines the work of the female reformers from that time who provided safeguards for women and children and created a network of female-oriented programs that both aided and policed women of child-bearing age at the turn of the twentieth century. Through an examination of these reform programs, she demonstrates the strong connection between nineteenth-century sentimental culture and female political action.
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