Mark Mayfield has won the Hazel Dicken-Garcia Award for his thesis, “At Home: Shelter Magazines and the American Life, 1890 to 1930.” Mayfield completed his research at the University of Alabama under the direction of Chris Roberts and Dianne Bragg.

Presented by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Dicken-Garcia Award recognizes the outstanding thesis in journalism or mass communication history completed during the previous calendar year.

Mayfield, Roberts and Bragg will receive cash prizes during the division’s Awards Gala Aug. 7 at the AEJMC national conference in San Francisco.

“This thesis offers a rich look at a largely untouched medium, the shelter magazine, and it provides a solid foundation for future study,” Thesis Committee Chairwoman Amy Lauters said. “Judges were particularly impressed with its originality and its contribution to the field of media history.”

Mayfield’s thesis explores how editors at these magazines chronicled the many changes in American home life while also influencing them.

“They developed – through correspondence with tens of thousands of readers, advertisers, and opinion makers – what we now know to be social networks at a time long before today’s modern digital communication,” Mayfield wrote. “Audiences looked to these magazines for a wide range of advice, from the style of houses they should build, to the furnishings they should choose, and the colors they should paint their walls.”

Chaired by Lauters, Minnesota State University, Mankato, the Thesis Award Committee also consists of Julie Lane, Boise State University; Brian Gabrial, Northwestern State University of Louisiana; and Pete Smith, Mississippi State University.

The History Division created the Thesis Award in 2019 to honor the late Hazel Dicken-Garcia, an esteemed journalism historian and long-time educator whose estate funds the award.