Every two years the History of Children and Youth Group (HCYG) of the
Canadian Historical Association awards the Neil Sutherland Prize for
outstanding scholarship in the history of young people. Neil is a
Professor Emeritus in EDST and a pioneer scholar in the history of
children and childhood in Canada. The winner for 2012 is Rachel Cleves,
in the Department of History at the University of
Victoria—Congratulations to Rachel!
Rachel Hope Cleves, “ ‘Heedless Youth’: The Revolutionary War Poetry of Ruth Bryant (1760-83),” William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 3 (July 2010):519–548.
Cleves’s article, which explores the experience of girls and war is
meticulously researched, insightful, and skillfully contextualized. As
Cleaves herself notes, “Largely excluded by their gender and youth from
political assemblies, academies, and the army, girls left few textual
clues about their beliefs.” Cleves weaves together the various threads
of Ruth Bryant’s poetry and its themes of domesticity, gender, family
and patriotism, finding a young girl’s voice in the historical record.
The committee agreed that Cleves’s work is an original and exciting
contribution to an understanding of the experiences of children and
youth and war, and to the field of the history of childhood.
