ATHENS, Ga. – The Conference on the History of Women Religious, an international body of scholars numbering about 600 members, honored a book by a University of Georgia history professor at its sixth triennial conference in Atchison, Kan., in June.
Diane Batts Morrow, associate professor of history and African American studies, received the group’s Distinguished Book Award for her work Persons of Color and Religious at the Same Time: The Oblate Sisters of Providence, 1828-1860, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2002.
The citation reads in part, “Diane Batts Morrow, working from limited archival sources, crafts a delicate and sophisticated analysis of the interlocking themes of race, gender, class, religion, and ethnicity . . . to explain the nuances of the interaction between the Sisters’ race and their French identity within the socially constructed parameters of color in Southern society.” It further characterizes the book as “a signal contribution to . . . American religious history, American women’s history, and African American history, combining scholarship in all three fields to create a portrait of Black Catholic women religious, an almost unknown and under-researched group.”
This is the second award Morrow’s book has received. In 2002 the Association of Black Women Historians honored this work with its Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Publication Prize for the Best Book on Black Women’s History.
