Sharon Ritenour Stevens Prize, 2025
The Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) invites applications for its annual prize in honor of Sharon Ritenour Stevens (1950-2013), Associate Editor of the Papers of George C. Marshall at the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. Inspired by Sharon’s work as a documentary editor, researching women in military service, the prize seeks to support other scholars either working on a documentary edition or a project that relies heavily on documentary editing and manuscript sources. Further preference is given to those working on women in military service or in various military support services or on the home front during wartime. Advanced students, scholars (including independent and public scholars), as well as editors may apply. The committee especially invites scholars whose projects may lie outside of traditional funding structures or do not have access to institutional support. Those invited to apply may include but are not limited to the following:
- Archivists
- Collectors
- Curators
- Digital Humanists
- Documentary Editors
- Historians
- Independent Scholars
- Librarians
- Literary Scholars
- Providers of texts in variable Accessible and Alternative Formats
- Public Historians
- Special Collections
The two-part prize of $1500 seeks to facilitate the use of documentary sources for a project or doctoral dissertation at its research stage. It consists of $1,000 toward travel to collections, reproduction of sources, or other costs associated with utilization of
documents in research, along with $500 to support the prizewinner’s participation in the annual meeting of the Association for Documentary Editing (usually held in June). Winners are required to report on their work through an in person or virtual presentation at our annual scholarly conference and will also be required to submit a brief report detailing how the funds were used to further their research, to be submitted one year after notification of the award. The prize also includes a year’s membership in ADE.
The award was established in 2019 to honor the life and work of Sharon Ritenour Stevens (1950-2013), Associate Editor of the Papers of George C. Marshall at the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington, Virginia. Using her own time and money,
Sharon also labored on a biography of Lt. Col. Susanna P. Turner, a protégé of George C. Marshall and a member of the first Officers Candidate School for the Women’s Army Corps (WACs) in 1942, as well as one of ten women selected for Command and General Staff School. Unfortunately, this biographical project never reached fulfillment. The Ritenour Stevens prize was established to aid other scholars and editors working in fields allied with her interests but for whom institutional support such as sabbaticals and release-time or research funds is not available.
Specifically, those interests were:
- Uniformed women’s roles in military conflict, declared or undeclared
- Women’s history
- Military history
A submission packet will comprise, (as PDF documents):
- One-page application letter describing the project’s significance, the applicant’s status (Student? Independent scholar? Contingent/contract faculty? Retired?) and a summary of the planned use of documents in the project.
- Two-page statement about the research and documents under consideration.
- Three-page (maximum) curriculum vitae.
- Letter of recommendation from an academic or professional advisor or other person familiar with the applicant’s work.
- All documents should be double-spaced, except for the letter, which may be single-spaced.
The deadline for submissions is 15 November 2025. A committee of six members of the Association for Documentary Editing will judge the submissions. The prize winner will be announced in mid-January 2026 and introduced to the organization at its annual meeting, usually held in June. Queries may be sent to Sharonritenourstevensprize@gmail.com.
At the conclusion of the award period (due 31 December of the award year), recipients should provide a one-page (200 word) summary report to the ADE President on their use of the prize. A version of this report may be considered for publication in the association newsletter and on the ADE website.
