Congratulations to the Winner of The Journal of the Civil War Era’s 2024 George and Ann Richards Prize

Tian Xu has won the $1,000 George and Ann Richards Prize for the best article published in The Journal of the Civil War Era in 2023. The article, “Chinese Women and Habeas Corpus Hearings in California, 1857–1882 appeared in the December 2023 special issue, Transpacific Connections in the Civil War Era, organized and guest edited by Hidetaka Hirota.

The prize committee wrote of Xu’s article: “Among the terrific articles considered for the 2024 George and Ann Richards Prize for Best Article, the committee has selected Tian Xu’s “Chinese Women and Habeas Corpus Hearings in California, 1857-1882” as its recipient. The article explores the ways in which Chinese women – allegedly the victims of trafficking or attempting to immigrate into the US— and the men claiming to be their lawful guardians – or owners— used habeas corpus proceedings in California to construe and contest rights and freedoms, gender constructions, transpacific relations and the nature of law. Through a close, thoughtful reading of court-room sources, the author makes the petitioners’ experience come alive, while throwing light on the complexities of the Chinese-American community’s constrained legal position in the US and the contradictory aspirations and paradigms engendered by Reconstruction. We think that this beautifully written article will become a go-to piece on habeas corpus cases.”

Dr. Xu is assistant professor of US History at Peking University. His research examines the sociolegal experience of Asian American and African American communities in the understudied field of administrative state-building. He is working on a book project that explores the Pacific genesis of immigration lawyering in America, while preparing for another project that looks at Black Union families’ interactions with military pension attorneys. His work has received support from institutions such as the Huntington Library, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Wilson Library at UNC, and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo.

The Richards Prize committee consisted of Erika Gabriela Pani Bano, El Colegio de México, Joanna Cohen, Queen Mary University of London, and Aston Gonzalez, Salisbury University.