The Joan B. Gruen Essay prize is dedicated to the memory of Joan B. Gruen who passed away in October, 2004. It commemorates her many years in University Relations (the campus development office) and recognizes her devoted efforts in shifting the fund-raising activities of that office toward the support of graduate students.
The year 2006 marked the award of the first annual Joan B. Gruen Prize. It is designated for the best essay composed by an AHMA student in the course of the previous calendar year (spring and fall semesters). The essay could be a paper submitted for a seminar, for a conference, for publication in a journal, or as a chapter of a dissertation. The call for submissions goes out to AHMA students in the spring semester. The prize carries a cash award of $2000 and an award certificate. The announcement of the winner comes at Commencement each year.
The recipients of the prize are:
- 2024: Flavio Santini, "“A Martyr of Civil Wars: Ambrose on the Death of Valentinian II” and Dimitrios Sparis, “Foreign Judges and Arbitration in the World of the Koinon.”
- 2023: Christian Hall, "Scales of Identity: Funerary Objects and the Creation of Mycenaean Cultural Identity at Prosymna."
- 2022: Darcy Tuttle, "Hoc saxsum: Conversation and the Creation of History inside the Tomb of the Scipios."
- 2021: Darcy Tuttle, “'Dutifully They Were Crucified': The Moral and Legal Redemption of the Sabine Women in Augustine's City of God."
- 2020: Anysia Metrakos, "Runaway Wives, Wicked Husbands: Marriage, Money, and Renunciation in the Life of Metrona."
- 2019: Evan Vance, "Epigraphic Evidence for Public and Sacred Finance in the Archaid Argolid."
- 2018: Jesse Obert, "The Cloud of War: Battlefield Attendants in Late Archaic and Early Classical Greek Warfare" and Evan Vance, "Reassessing Rural Voters in the Roman Republic"
- 2017: Talia Prussin, "Socioeconomics of Public Land Leasing in Hellenistic Thespiai"
- 2016: Melissa Cradic, "An Archaeological Model for Funerary Religion at Canaanite Megiddo," and Eli Weaverdyck, "Isolation or Integration? A Spatial-Analytical Approach to the Local Impact of the Roman Army on the Northern Frontier"
- 2015: Eric Driscoll, "Rhetoric and Narrative in Beazley's Connoisseurship"
- 2014: Randall Souza, "Mercenaries between Mobility and Stability."
- 2013: David DeVore, “A Proposal for Strength of Weak Ties: Eusebius’ Construction of the Christian Network and its Role in the Roman Empire," and Eric Driscoll, "Stasis and Reconciliation: Politics and Law"
- 2011: Lisa Eberle, "Towards an Architecture of Mobility: Sources and Remedies of Violence in the World of the Polis"
- 2010: Amy Russell, "Aemilius Paullus sees Greece"
- 2009: Carolyn Roncaglia, "Aquileia in the Empire"
- 2008: Laura Pfuntner, "Religion and Empire in Western Sicily"
- 2007: Ryan Boehm, "The Greek Communities in the Parthian Empire"
- 2006: Elisabeth R. O'Connell, "Transforming Monumental Landscapes in Late Antique Egypt"