It is with great pleasure that I announce the winner of our Richard J. Orsi prize for the best article published in California History in 2022. It was difficult to choose the best of the eleven peer-reviewed research articles we published in volume 99. Nonetheless, the committee unanimously selected Warren C. Wood, “S. An-Sky’s The Dybbuk and the Process of Jewish American Identity in 1920s San Francisco,” Vol. 99, No. 2, May (Summer) 2022, with each member agreeing that a very close second was Catherine Christensen Gwin, “The Selling of American Girls: Mexico’s White Slave Trade in the California Imaginary,” Vol. 99, No. 1, February (Spring) 2022.
The committee’s report on the winning article notes:
In this well-researched and fascinating case study of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century San Francisco’s small but vibrant Jewish community, Warren C. Wood shows how the 1928 staging of playwright S. An-Sky’s The Dybbuk helped heal...
University of California Press