University of California, Santa Cruz Historian Wins Book Award

Catherine A. Jones, an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was named the recipient of the Grace Abbott Book Prize presented by the Society for the History of Children and Youth. The award honors the best book published in the previous calendar year that focuses on the history of children and youth.

Dr. Jones is being honored for her book Intimate Reconstructions: Children in Post-Emancipation Virginia (University of Virginia Press, 2015). The prize committee noted that the book “reveals not only how children in Virginia were affected by the process of Reconstruction but also how Reconstruction itself was shaped by concerns and debates about the treatment, training, reformation and protection of children.”

Dr. Jones joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2007. She is a graduate of Haverford College in Pennsylvania and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.