Hines Prize

The Carolina Lowcountry & Atlantic Worlds (CLAW) Program biennially awards the Rachel Hines Prize for the best manuscript relating to any aspect of the history and life of the Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World.  

The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program’s book series.

Funded by a generous donation by retired professor, Sam Hines in honor of his mother, Rachel Hines, this award supports early career scholars.

Previous Winners

  • 2023—Evan Turiano – The Politics of Fugitive Slave Rendition and the Coming of the Civil War 
  • 2021—Caroline Grego- Hurricane of the New South: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Jim Crow LowCountry
  • 2019—Andrew Johnson– Enslaved Native Americans and the Making of South Carolina, 1659–1739
  • 2017—Michael Schoeppner- Regulating Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America
  • 2015—Huw David – The Atlantic at Work: Britain and South Carolina’s Trading Networks, c. 1730 to 1790
  • 2013—Tristan Stubbs – The Plantation Overseers of Eighteenth-Century Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia
  • 2011—Michael D. Thompson – In Working on the Dock of the Bay: Labor and Life along Charleston’s Waterfront, 1783-1861
  • 2009—Barry Stiefel – Jewish Sanctuary in the Atlantic World: A Social and Architectural History
  • 2007—T.J. Desch-Obi – Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World
  • 2005—Nicholas Michael Butler – Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1820
  • 2003—Bradford Wood – This Remote Part of the World: Regional Formation in Lower Cape Fear, North Carolina, 1725-1775

Call for Submissions - 2027 Hines Prize

The Hines Prize is awarded to the best book manuscript relating to any aspect of the Carolina Lowcountry and/OR the Atlantic World. Early career scholars will be prioritized. The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program's book series.

If you have a manuscript on a topic pertaining to the Carolina Lowcountry and/or Atlantic World, please send a copy to CLAW Director Sandra Slater, slaters@cofc.edu, before May 15, 2027. If you have graduate students with potential manuscripts that could contend for the Prize, please make sure that they know of this biennial opportunity.

Submit a Manuscript