For more than thirty years, the American Historical Print Collectors Society (AHPCS) has recognized significant scholarship in the field of American historical prints with its Ewell L. Newman Book Award. In 2023 the AHPCS added two new awards to recognize shorter works published in journals and edited volumes, including exhibition catalogues and digital formats. The Essay award is named in honor of Lois W. Newman, a founding member of the Society, who continued as a generous supporter of the publication awards after her husband’s death.

Each annual cycle typically results in one book award in the amount of $2,000 and two essay or article awards in the amount of $750 each. One of the essay awards usually will be designated for the best article published in the AHPCS journal Imprint, as selected by the Newman Award Committee. Awards are not necessarily presented each year but are determined by the quality of available submissions. Occasionally, there may be multiple winners in an individual year.

2025 Ewell L. Newman Book Award

Tatiana Reinoza, Reclaiming the Americas: Latinx Art and the Politics of Territory.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2023. xii, 272 pp. Illus (29 in color); bibliography, index. $34.95 paper.

This important study, a significant scholarly achievement in the field of American historical prints, is centered on the production, iconography, and social role of prints by Latinx artists in North America from the 1960s into the 21st century. These contemporary works challenge the past practices represented in maps, charts, and views created since the sixteenth century. Referencing these earlier images, the author addresses printmaking’s historical role and complicity in European colonialization. In this new narrative, specific historical maps and prints have become points of departure for new graphic works that may reconfigure the older images.
The author explores the importance of printmaking as a medium and also acknowledges a complex relationship between contemporary Latinx printmaking and American prints over the centuries since the first contact between Europeans and the Americas.



2025 Lois W. Newman Essay Awards
Marina Wells, “Printing Whaling Masculinity in A Shoal of Sperm Whale,” The New England Quarterly (2024) Vol. 97, No.4, pp. 551-576.

The article’s strong focus on the visual culture of 19th-century whaling references artistic conventions, experiences of violence, and white American masculinity. The author discusses two prints depicting whaling scenes produced from designs by Cornelius B. Hulsart, a former whaleman, who drew upon conventional prints of naval battles rather than his own direct experience with bodily injury amid the dangers of whaling. She offers a deep and thoughtful analysis of the imagery in relation to gender, whaling, disability (to some degree), other images and texts, and the spread of such images.

The AHPCS is a non-profit corporation that encourages the collection, preservation, study, and exhibition of prints depicting or reflecting North American history and culture, made either in America or elsewhere. For further information about the Society, please visit the website at https://ahpcs.org. A list of all Newman Publication Award winners to date can be found at https://ahpcs.org/newman-award-winners/ and https://ahpsc.org/essay-award-winners