Named in memory of Joan Kelly, this prize is awarded annually for the book in women's history and/or feminist theory that best reflects the high intellectual and scholarly ideals exemplified by the life and work of Joan Kelly (1928–82). The prize was established by the Coordinating Committee on Women in the Historical Profession and the Conference Group on Women's History in 1983, to be administered by the American Historical Association and carries a cash award of $1,000.

Submissions can deal with any chronological period, any geographical location, or any area of feminist theory that incorporates a historical perspective. Books should demonstrate originality of research, creativity of insight, graceful stylistic presentation, skillful use of analysis, and a recognition of the important role of sex and gender in the historical process. The interrelationship between women and the historical process should be addressed.

2023
Kerri K. Greenidge, The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family (W.W. Norton)

2022
Tiya A. Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Random House)

2021
Thavolia Glymph, The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2020
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (W. W. Norton & Co.)

2019
Nicole E. Barnes, Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945 (Univ. of California Press)

2018
Tera Hunter, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Belknap Press)

2017
Sarah Haley, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2016
Keely Stauter-Halsted, The Devil's Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Cornell Univ. Press)

2015
Susan S. Lanser, The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830 (Univ. of Chicago Press)

2014
Afsaneh Najmabadi, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Duke Univ. Press)

2013
Carol Pal, Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge Univ. Press)

2012
Gail Hershatter, Gender of Memory: Rural Women in China's Collective Past (Univ. of California Press)
Ruth Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in Medieval Europe (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press)

2011
Leslie Reagan, Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America (Univ. of California Press)

2010
Susan Klepp, Revolutionary Conceptions: Women, Fertility, and Family Limitation in America, 1760-1820 (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Inst. of Early American History and Culture)

2009
Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford Univ. Press)

2008
Kathy Davis, The Making of Our Bodies, Ourselves: How Feminism Travels across Borders (Duke Univ. Press)

2007
Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Duke Univ. Press)

2006
Dorothy Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (Univ. of California Press)

2005
Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Univ. of California Press)

2004
Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in 17th-Century England (Yale Univ. Press)

2003
Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2002
Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (Oxford Univ. Press)

2001
Laura Wexler, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of US Imperialism (Univ. of North Carolina Press)

2000
Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (Columbia Univ. Press)

1999
Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (Hill and Wang)

1998
Ellen Dubois, Harriot Stanton Blatch and the Winning of Woman Suffrage (Yale Univ. Press)

1997
Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in 20th-Century Shanghai (Univ. of California Press)

1996
Ann Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760-1860 (Johns Hopkins Univ. Press)

1995
Mary Felstiner, To Paint Her Life: Charlotte Salomon in the Nazi Era (Harper Collins)

1994
Mary Louise Roberts, Civilization without Sexes; Reconstructing, Gender in Postwar France, 1917-27 (Univ. of Chicago Press)

1993
Evelyn Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Harvard Univ. Press)

1992
Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women. Italy, 1922-45 (Univ. of California Press)

1991
Susan Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl: Life and Labor in the Immigrant Generation

1990
Laurel Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 (Alfred A. Knopf)

1989
Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia Univ. Press)

1989
Mary Blewett, Women and Work: Class, Gender, and Protest in the New England Shoe Factory, 1780-1910 (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1988
Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960 (Viking Press)

1987
Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex During World War II (Univ. of Illinois Press)

1986
Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy (Oxford Univ. Press)

1985
Claire Moses, French Feminism in the 19th Century (State Univ. of New York Press)

1984
Rosalind Petchesky, Abortion and Woman's Choice: The State, Sexuality, and the Conditions of Reproduction Freedom (Northeastern Univ. Press)