Associate professor Kimberly Hamlin, who teaches in both the Departments of Global and Intercultural Studies and History, has received project funding from the 2017 Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women and Politics.

Hamlin's project, "Woman Citizen: Helen Hamilton Gardener and Women's Suffrage in America," is the first biography of the woman who served as the suffragists' lead negotiator to the U.S. Congress and President Woodrow Wilson. Gardener is credited for her active role in the final push for the passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote.

The biography was one of seven research projects from around the U.S. to receive funding from the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, based at Iowa State University. Last year Hamlin's project was also the focus of her NEH Public Scholar award.

According to a Catt Center press release, the selection committee is composed of 16 faculty members who blind-reviewed the proposals. They chose a total of four projects as winners of the Catt Prize and three projects for honorable mentions. Each of the winning proposals will receive $2,000, while honorable mention awards each receive $1,000. Hamlin will use her award to help cover travel expenses for research visits to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

"We received a record 84 proposals from researchers in a variety of academic disciplines, which made the task of the selection committee difficult," said Dianne Bystrom, director of Iowa State University's Catt Center, which sponsors the annual awards.

Mrs. Helen Gardener and Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt leaving the White House.

"I am especially honored to receive this award because Helen Hamilton Gardener worked very closely with its namesake: Carrie Chapman Catt, who was the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association," Hamlin said. "I think Gardener would be pleased and honored too to know that her work, mostly undertaken out of the spotlight, is now being recognized for its significant political import."

The annual research prize has been funded since 1994 by the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, which was founded in 1992 at Iowa State University to interest, educate and engage citizens in the political process. Carrie Chapman Catt is a distinguished alumna of Iowa State and leader of the women's suffrage movement.

For more information about the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Women and Politics, contact the Catt Center (cattcntr@iastate.edu; (515) 294-3181).