Alice Smith Prize in Public History

The Alice Smith Prize in Public History honors a public history project completed in the previous calendar year (2024) that contributes to broader public reflection and appreciation of the Midwestern past. The prize is named after the director of research at the Wisconsin Historical Society from 1947 to 1965 who authored six books and numerous articles on the state's history.

The winner of the 2025 Alice Smith Prize is “Students Speak Out: Student Activism at the University of Minnesota” a project at the University of Minnesota mentored by faculty members Yalile Suriel and Ellen Holt-Werle.

“Students Speak Out” exemplifies community engaged public history at its best. Through collaboration between students, faculty, and community members, the project equips students with the practical and philosophical proficiencies that drive robust civic discourse. The project invites both students and the larger community to engage in place-based inquiry and reflection. The project required students to consider student life in generative ways by exploring archival material and engaging with past campus activists. This is an especially significant pedagogical practice for undergraduate education. In addition to student impact, the project also benefitted the larger university community by contextualizing a longer history of activism at the University of Minnesota. It fosters reflection on the past as well as imagined futures, ultimately equipping students to step into roles as organizers and changemakers. 

The project additionally invites the wider community to engage with hitherto untouched histories and ideas of the Midwestern past. Institutional histories are often hagiographic. This bottom-up institutional history critically examines the role of universities in dissent (or not). The digital component, especially the ArcGIS portions, promote longer term, accessible content whilst guiding the reader through a series of reflective questions. The project helps students revisit their own positionality, privilege, and community relationships, whilst also exploring the utility of public history as a tool for creating empowered and engaged civic discourse. The emphasis on continuing this learning journey is both novel and sustainable. Pedagogically, the project nurtures students’ taking ownership of their learning but doing so in new ways that rely on place-based engagement. Overall, “Student Activism at the University of Minnesota” enriches Midwestern history by enmeshing place-based queries with institutional and global histories.

PAST RECIPIENTS

2024 - Broadcast Wars, Twin Cities PBS, https://www.tpt.org/broadcast-wars/

State Historical Society of Iowa - 1980s Farm Crisis

State Historical Society of Iowa - Iowa 175th Anniversary

Rapid City Indian Boarding School Lands Project 

Muslims in Muncie - Elizabeth Agnew

Durham Museum - Women in Omaha

Making History - Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights - UMKC Center for Midwestern Studies 

Native American Cultural Trail - Mackinac Island 

HISTORYAPOLIS - Augsburg College History Department 

Photo by Ted Frantz