The Norman Neuerburg Award ($500) honors the best book on California history that emphasizes the nineteenth century or earlier.
Born in Universal City, California, Norman Neuerburg was a scholar, teacher, and historical consultant for many of the California missions. After becoming the youngest tour guide of Mission San Fernando at age fifteen in 1941, he served in the Army artillery in Italy in World War II. Neuerburg subsequently earned a bachelor’s degree in Greek from UCLA and a master’s and a doctoral degree from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. From 1955 to 1957, he was a Fellow in Classics at the American Academy in Rome. Neuerburg taught at numerous universities, including UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, Indiana University, and the National University of Mexico. From 1966 onward he taught at California State University, Dominguez Hills and retired in 1980, having been recognized as the institution’s Outstanding Professor in 1976. In addition to teaching and research, Neuerburg was a consultant to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, and the Santa Barbara Trust for Historical Preservation, and he served as curator of Spanish colonial art for the Southwest Museum.
With the exception of the two article awards which will be given in alternating years, and the Fellows Award, the awards for HSSC have been suspended as the organization focuses on supporting the publication of the Southern California Quarterly.
Award Recipients
2018
Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, California Mission Landscapes: Race, Memory, and the Politics of Heritage (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).
2017
John Mack Faragher, Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles (W. W. Norton & Company, 2017).
and
Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (Yale University Press, 2017).
2016
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert M. Senkewicz, Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015).
2015
Steve Hackel, Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father (Hill and Wang, 2013).
2006
Steven Hackel
Children for Coyote, Missionaries of St. Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850 (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
and
Alan K. Brown, editor and translator
A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journal of the Fist Expedition into California, 1769-1770 by Juan Crespi (San Diego State University Press, 2001)
2005
Peter Uhrowczik
The Burning of Monterey: The 1878 Attack on California by Privateer Bouchard (Cyril Books, 2001)
2004
Donald C. Cutter, ed.
Writing of Mariano Payeras (Bellerophon Books, 1995)
2003
Rose Marie Beebe and Robert Senkewicz
The History of Alta California by Antonio Maria Osio (University of Wisconsin Press, 1996)
2002
August Frugé and Neal Harlow
A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands, and Around the World in the Years 1826-1829 (University of California Press, 1999)
2001
Albert Hertado
Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California (University of New Mexico Press, 1999).
