Leslie Butler Awarded 2024 Society for U.S. Intellectual History Book Prize

In July 2024, Professor of History Leslie Butler was awarded the 2024 Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH) Annual Book Prize for her most recent work, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2023). The 2024 S-USIH Annual Book Prize committee of Shelby M. Balik, Ajay K. Mehrotra, and Josh Shepperd made the following statement on the prize-winning scholarship:

"We are excited to announce that the recipient of the 2024 S-USIH Annual Book Prize is Leslie Butler for her book, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America. From a deep pool of many excellent books, the committee selected Butler's Consistent Democracy because of its compelling and persuasive arguments, its creative use of a variety of primary sources, and its timely contribution to current debates about the meaning of democracy in principle and in practice."

Consistent Democracy recasts conventional narratives about the paradoxes of nineteenth-century American democracy. It does so by demonstrating how debates over the "woman question" forced theorists, activists, and everyday citizens to rethink the meaning of self-governance, universal suffrage, and the country's commitments to its fundamental political ideals.

Relying on a vast array of sources that Butler refers to as "published opinion," the book illustrates how the nineteenth-century battle for gender and racial equality was entwined with broader discussions about the meaning and operation of a liberal democracy.  Butler's narrative moves seamlessly from high-level political treatises and editorials to the vernacular texts of sermons, domestic advice manuals, and popular fiction.  In the process, it places women's intellectual contributions at the core of evolving understandings of democracy and self-government.

Among its many contributions, Consistent Democracy moves beyond standard stories about the movement for universal suffrage to explore the multifaceted aspects of everyday democratic self-governance.  From women's property rights to the role of women in public life, the book uncovers the many ways that nineteenth-century thinkers, reformers, and activists demanded that American become a consistent democracy. 

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(Source: SARA GEORGINI, JULY 29, 2024. "Announcement: S-USIH 2024 Annual Book Prize," U.S. Intellectual History Blog © 2007-2022, by The Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Link: https://s-usih.org/2024/07/announcement-s-usih-2024-annual-book-prize/)