Sidney Prize is an American foundation that honors a diverse group of individuals each year. Its prizes range from journalism and public service to the arts. It also provides a grant to support a fellowship for undergraduate students to study in the humanities. The organization was founded in the late 19th century and continues to operate today.
The prize honors the work of writers who explore new issues in a clear and compelling way. It is open to works from any discipline and can be in any form, from an essay to a play. The prize carries with it an honorarium of $500, which the winner can choose to spend on writing or on any other purpose that he or she sees fit.
This year’s Sidney Award winners include a former U.S. senator and a renowned historian of the Holocaust. They are all accomplished writers and scholars who have written books that have broad appeal. The prize’s selection committee includes prominent historians, philosophers and academics. In addition to the $20,000 prize money, each of the winners will receive a commemorative certificate and a trip to New York City.
The Society for the History of Technology has named York University Professor Edward Jones-Imhotep a 2018 Sidney Edelstein Prize laureate – the top prize in the field. The honour is one of the highest in the discipline, and it’s only the second time a Canadian scholar has received the prize. Jones-Imhotep is a member of the Department of History in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and teaches one of the department’s most popular courses, HIST 1777: Disasters and History.
All Sydney Film Festival Award winners are presented with the festival’s signature mesmeric swirl award, designed and handmade in Sydney by Louise Olsen and Stephen Ormandy of Dinosaur Designs. Winners are also given a bespoke trophy and a cash prize.
In recent years, many Sidney Prize selections have probed the intersection of science and the humanities. For example, this summer and fall, intellectual heavyweights Leon Wieseltier and Steven Pinker went toe-to-toe in The New Republic over the place of science in modern thought, with Pinker taking the expansive view that — contrary to what blinkered humanities scholars insist — science gives us insight into nearly everything.
Mercer University’s Southern Studies Program will present the 2014 Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature to fiction writer Elizabeth Spencer. The award is a recognition of outstanding achievement and promise in the first two years of graduate study. Spencer’s novel “Stillwater” is about a woman trying to maintain her independence in a world that offers her few choices.
The Overland Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize seeks short fiction up to 3000 words themed loosely around the notion of ‘travel’. The judges, Patrick Lenton, Alice Bishop and Sara Saleh, have selected a shortlist of eight pieces and chosen the winning entry – Annie Zhang’s story ‘Who Rattles the Night?’ In their new home, a couple learn to live with ghosts.