History PhD alumna Yvonne Pitts wins Cromwell Book Prize

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Yvonne PittsYvonne Pitts, who received her PhD from the Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in 2006, has been named the 2014 Cromwell Book Prize winner for her book, Family, Law, and Inheritance in America: A Social and Legal History of Nineteenth-Century Kentucky.

The annual Cromwell Book Prize awards $5,000 to a junior scholar in the field of American Legal History. Funded by the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and presented by the American Society of Legal History, the prize aims to recognize outstanding new work by untenured scholars.

Pitts’ book examines the standard of sanity required to write a valid will, using nineteenth-century Kentucky cases in which disinherited relatives challenged family wills. The book was based on the History dissertation she completed at the University of Iowa under the mentorship of Professors Linda Kerber, Allen Steinberg, Leslie Schwalm, and Patricia Cain.


The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.