Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State historian and director of a university-based regional center again is being recognized for his book on agriculture in the modern American South.
James C. Giesen is this year's selection for the Francis B. Simkins Award of the Southern Historical Association, the third largest organization for professional historians in the United States.
The award recognizes "Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth and Power in the American South" (University of Chicago Press, 2011), for which Giesen won the first Deep South Book Prize last year. The earlier honor was given by the University of Alabama's Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South.
Giesen accepts the SHA honor later this week during the organization's annual meeting [Oct. 31-Nov. 3] in St. Louis, Mo. For more information, visit sha.uga.edu.
A University of Georgia doctoral graduate, he is an assistant professor in MSU's history department and head of its Center for the History of Agriculture, Science and the Environment of the South. He also is executive secretary of the Agricultural History Society.
The Simpkins Award honors the best first book by an author in the field of Southern history. Sponsored in cooperation with Virginia's Longwood University, the recognition is presented in odd-numbered years and, in this case, covers books published during 2011 and 2012.
Giesen also holds degrees from DePauw University and University of North Carolina, Greensboro.