Recently graduated history major Daniel Ahrendt (B.A. December 2018), has received the 2019 Iwanter Prize for Undergraduate Research from the Center for the Humanities! The Iwanter Prize is an annual award of $2,000 given to a graduating senior who, “through a senior thesis and general academic distinction, demonstrates outstanding humanities-based scholarship of a broad and interdisciplinary nature.” Ahrendt won the award for his senior thesis, titled “Purchasers of Their Own ‘Kith and Kin’: Southwest Borderlands Captive-Taking and the Limits of U.S. Authority in New Mexico, 1849-1852,” supervised by Professor Susan Lee Johnson. In the process of working on his thesis, Ahrendt conducted original research and site visits in New Mexico, with the help of a competitive Hilldale Fellowship from the University. Professor Johnson recommended Ahrendt receive the Iwanter Prize, and the selection committee agreed that Ahrendt’s thesis “best represented the ideals the Iwanter Prize is intended to recognize: originality, clarity, interdisciplinarity, and scholarly depth.” This spring, Ahrendt also won the Andrew Bergman Prize from our Department for this same project. Read the full announcement of the Iwanter Prize (pdf).