NJCH ANNUAL BOOK AWARD | TEACHER OF THE YEAR | LIBRARY BOOK COLLECTION

 

Each year NJCH recognizes individuals whose exemplary work in the public humanities has made a significant and lasting difference in the lives of New Jerseyans. The Council recognizes and lauds their signal contributions.

 

 

Special Recognition

 

 

Jane Brailove Rutkoff, for exceptional contributions to the public humanities in New Jersey.

 

2011 Award Winners

NJCH Book Award

The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen by Kwame Anthony Appiah

 

Kwame Anhony Appiah is Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. In The Honor Code, Appiah examines "moral revolutions" or moments when a society decides that a longstanding practice is no longer reputable. By using four case studies from divergent cultures and time periods, Appiah makes a compelling case that honor is a critical, though ignored, engine for social change, and has been at the heart of reforms as sweeping as the abolishment of the British slave trade and the end of Chinese footbinding. Appiah has taught and published widely in African-American studies and philosophy and currently serves as the President of the PEN American Center. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of its top global thinkers in 2010.

 

Honor Books

Thomas Belton, Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State (Rutgers University Press)

Ann Fabian, The Skull Collectors:  Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead (University of Chicago Press)

Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Michael Perino, The Hellhound of Wall Street:  How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance (Penguin Press).

 

Teacher of the Year

Ellen Cahill

Ellen Cahill is a kindergarten teacher at Bradford School in Montclair. She has been named Teacher of the Year for her ability to bring an interdisciplinary study of the humanities to some of New Jersey’s youngest students. By focusing the curriculum on her students’ interests, history, language, geography and the sciences are woven into their lives, creating a highly engaged learning environment. In particular, Cahill fosters her students’ love of learning through a Philosophy for Children program, encouraging democracy in her classroom and makes students owners of their own knowledge from an early age.  Her unique teaching of the humanities makes her a model of effective early childhood education, and NJCH is delighted to celebrate her as an outstanding humanities educator.


PAST WINNERS

2010

National Leadership in the Public Humanities

James Leach

NJCH Book Award

The Anti-Communist Manifestos: Four Books That Shaped the Cold War, by John V. Fleming

Teacher of the Year

Jeanne DelColle

Burlington County Institute of Technology

2009

Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities
James M. McPherson

NJCH Book Award
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

Teacher of the Year
Gregory Woodruff

Montclair High School, Montclair

 

2008

Public Humanities Award
Bruce Cole

Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities

NJCH Book Award
Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present, by Michael B. Oren

Teacher of the Year
Scott C. Sax

Cherokee High School, Marlton

 

2007

Civic Leadership Award

Representative Rush D. Holt

Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities

Robert Fagles

NJCH Book Award
The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the

Triumph of Hope, by Jonathan Alter

Teacher of the Year
Patricia Hans

Ridgewood High School, Ridgewood

 

2006

Public Humanities Award
Deborah T. Poritz

Chief Justice, Supreme Court of
New Jersey

NJCH Book Award
The Man Who Had Been King: The American Exile
of Napoleon's Brother Joseph,
by Patricia Tyson Stroud

Teacher of the Year
Bruce Paul Grefe

Creative Arts High School, Camden

 

2005

Public Humanities Award
Charles F. Cummings and John T. Cunningham

NJCH Book Award
Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer

Teacher of the Year
Tara Pignoli,

Westfield High School, Westfield


 

 

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