2019 Dodds Prize Winner

2019-09-09

I am pleased to announce that Renée Saucier has been awarded the Dodds Prize for 2019 for her paper "Medical Cartography in Ontario, 1880–1920: A Records Perspective." Renée Saucier graduated from the University of Toronto in June 2019, and her paper was submitted by Heather MacNeil. She is currently the Penny Rubinoff Fellow at the Ontario Jewish Archives.

Instituted in 2011, the Dodds Prize recognizes superior research and writing on an archival topic by a student enrolled in a Master's level archival studies program at a Canadian university. The award honours Gordon Dodds (1941–2010), first President of the ACA, and Archivaria's longest-serving general editor. Submissions received for the 2018–19 academic year were reviewed by adjudication committee members Amy Marshall Furness, Tom Nesmith, Rebecka Sheffield and Fiorella Foscarini. I thank the committee for their service.

Saucier's paper will be published in the Spring 2020 issue of Archivaria and the award will be formally presented at the ACA Conference in Vancouver.

The citation reads: In her well written and carefully researched article, Renée Saucier draws attention to a little known type of documentation in an understudied area of archival work, i.e., medical and cartographic records. Drawing on a rich body of primary and secondary sources to examine the relationships between cartography and public health surveillance, outbreak and disease mitigation response, citizen identity and control, Renée provides an excellent analysis of 19th and early 20th century’s disease maps as data management tools. The greatest strength of her article is its conceptualization of disease maps as a creation of socio-political circumstances reflective of state efforts at “governmentality.” This conceptualization takes our understanding of medical cartography in stimulating new directions and underlines the importance of researching the history of records and recordkeeping techniques.

Congratulations, Renée, on your excellent work.

Shyla Seller
Managing Editor, Archivaria