The Kent State University Press is delighted to announce that Professor Jamie C. Capuzza’s new book, The Fifth Star: Ohio’s Fight for Women’s Right to Vote (Kent State University Press, 2023), has received the 2024 Senior Scholar Publication Award from the Ohio Academy of History. The award was announced on Saturday, March 16, 2024, at the Ohio Academy of History’s annual conference.
Founded in 1932, the Ohio Academy of History (OAH) is a professional society for historians who live in the state of Ohio. The OAH’s judges said that Capuzza has written “an eloquent and timely book that uncovers Ohio’s important early role in advancing women’s suffrage.”
OAH issues annual awards for outstanding publication, teaching, service, dissertations, and public history. The Publication Award is given to an active member of the Academy for “an outstanding publication in the field of history.”
Published in April 2023, The Fifth Star explores the history of how Ohio—the fifth state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment—had a key role in the national women’s suffrage movement. From 1850 through 1920, Ohio’s contributions were significant. Capuzza describes how Ohioans were the first to petition a government for women’s enfranchisement, Ohioans formed the nation’s first state-level women’s rights organization, and Ohio hosted two of the earliest national women’s rights conventions.
Capuzza’s The Fifth Star is also a finalist in Foreword magazine’s 2023 INDIE Awards for Women’s Studies. Selected by Foreword’s editorial team, the finalists will now be judged by teams of librarians and booksellers nationwide with winners to be announced in June 2024.
Jamie C. Capuzza is a professor in the Department of Literature and Communication Arts and directs the Gender and Sexuality Studies program at the University of Mount Union in Ohio. She has been published in several academic journals and books, and her coedited volume, Transgender Communication Studies: Histories, Trends, and Trajectories, has won three national awards.