The Utah State History conference tonight made its annual awards, with two of the most prestigious going to William P. MacKinnon, a good friend and sometime Keepa participant and guest author. His awards:

Dale L. Morgan Award for his article “‘Sex, Subalterns, and Steptoe’: Army Behavior, Mormon Rage, and Utah War Anxieties,” published in Utah Historical Quarterly, Summer 2008.

Smith-Pettit Foundation Best Documentary Book in Utah History Award for his book At Sword’s Point, Part 1: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858, published by the Arthur H. Clark Company/University of Oklahoma Press.

Other worthy awards with some element of Mormon content are:

Best Utah History Article Award, to Thomas G. Alexander, for “‘Carpetbaggers, Reprobates, and Liars’: Federal Judges and the Utah War (1857-1858), published in The Historian, Summer 2008.

Francis Armstrong Madsen Best Utah History Book Award, to Jared Farmer, for On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape, published by Harvard University Press.

Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award, to Robert S. McPherson and John Fahey, for “‘Seeing Is Believing’: The Odyssey of the Pectol Shields,” published in Utah Historical Quarterly, Fall 2008.