Stamp will travel to Paris in July to accept the award for her latest book, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood, at the organization’s 40th anniversary conference titled “Media and History: Crime, Violence and Justice.”
The Nelson prize is awarded biennially to the book “making the best contribution on the subject of media and history” that has been published in the preceding two years.
Stamp’s book, Lois Weber in Early Hollywood (published by University of California Press), was previously named one of the best film books of 2015 by the Huffington Post.
It was also awarded the 2015 Richard Wall Award Special Jury Prize for “an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance” from the Theatre Library Association, which annually presents awards for the best English language works of scholarship on theatre, film, and broadcasting.
One of the most prolific directors of the silent film era, Lois Weber was a writer, producer, actress, and head of her own production company, who paved the way for filmmakers who envisioned film as an opportunity to inject their own ideas and philosophies into a rapidly growing entertainment industry.
Her work took on controversial subjects of the time—including poverty, addiction, capital punishment, and the fight to legalize birth control.
A leading expert on women and early film culture, Stamp is interested in tracing the contributions women made to early Hollywood as filmmakers, moviegoers, performers, critics and theorists.
She is also the author of Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon; co-editor of American Cinema’s Transitional Era: Audiences, Institutions, Practices; and founding editor of Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal.
Stamp is currently at work on a comprehensive history titled “Women and the Silent Screen in America.”
