The Frederick C. Luebke Award is given to the best article published in the Quarterly each year. A $250 prize is also awarded to the winner. This recognition is named after Frederick C. Luebke who was the first editor of the Quarterly, the third director of the Center, and is Professor emeritus of History at UNL.
In 2022, The Center for Great Plains Studies instituted the Charles A. Braithwaite Award for Student Publication in conjunction with Charles and Dawn Braithwaite. This award distinguishes the best article published by a student in Great Plains Quarterly during a volume year. This student award will be offered annually beginning with submissions included in Volume 43 of the journal; all articles submitted to Great Plains Quarterly while the author was a student are eligible for this award. Judges are drawn from the Publication Committee of the Board of Governors for the Center for Great Plains Studies. The award will be presented at the Center for Great Plains Studies’ annual meeting of Fellows and includes a cash stipend of $300. Charles A. Braithwaite was the longest-serving editor for GPQ; he served at this position for 20 years, retiring in 2021. A Senior Lecturer at UNL’s Department of Communication Studies for 21 years, he was a Fellow and active scholar of the Center for Great Plains Studies doing work in the areas relevant to the center, including the award-winning book, African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology (Univ. of Nebraska Press: 2009).
Award winners
| Year | Name |
|---|---|
| 2021 | Justin Scott Horn Where Meteorologists Fear to Tread": Rainmakers and the 1890s Great Plains Drought, Volume 41, Numbers 3-4, Summer-Fall 2021 |
| 2020 | Paul McKenzie-Jones Sending a Sailor to War: The Ponca Singers, California Hobbyists, Vietnam, and the Rejection of the Counterculture Myth of the New Age Indian, Volume 40, Number 2, Spring 2020 |
| 2019 | Elaine Marie Nelson Draft by Draft: The Battle of Sandoz and Her Bighorn Manuscript, Volume 39, Number 2, Spring 2019 |
| 2018 | Joel Zapata Taking Chicana/o Activist History to the Public: Chicana/o Activism in the Southern Plains through Time and Space, Volume 38, Number 4, Fall 2018 |
| 2017 | Kiara M. Vigil Who Was Henry Standing Bear?: Remembering Lakota Activism from the Early Twentieth Century,Volume 37, Number 3, Summer 2017 |
| 2016 | Mark A. Griep, Beverly R. Devore-Wedding, Janyce Woodard, and Hank Miller The Sharing Cycle of Science Learning: Connecting Community Topics to Tribal College Science Lab Courses, Volume 36, Number 2, Spring 2016, pp. 131-146 |
| 2015 | Rachel Wolters As Migrants and as Immigrants: African Americans Search for Land and Liberty in the Great Plains, 1890–1912, (Fall 2015, Vol. 35/No. 4). |
| 2014 | Linda English Southern Reflections: Evolving Attitudes on Race and Region in Indian Territory, (Fall 2014, Vol. 34/No. 4). |
| 2013 | Jay M. Price and Sue Abdinnour Family, Ethnic Entrepreneurship, and the Lebanese of Kansas, (Summer 2013), Vol. 33/No. 3; 161-188. |
| 2012 | Harvey Markowitz Converting the Rosebud: Sicangu Lakota Catholicism in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, (Winter 2012), Vol. 32/No. 1; 3-23. |
| 2011 | Kathy Bahr From 'No Place' to Home: The Quest for a Western Home in Brewster Higley's 'Home on the Range Fall 2011, Vol. 31/No. 4 |
| 2010 | Kathy Bahr Collateral Damage: Veterans and Domestic Violence in Mari Sandoz’s The Tom-Walker Spring 2010, Vol. 30/No. 2 |
| 2009 | George Colpitts The Methodists' Great 1869 Camp Meeting and Aboriginal Conservation Strategies in the North Saskatchewan River Valley Winter 2009, Vol. 29/No. 1 |
| 2008 | Linea Sundstrom 'The Pageant of Paha Sapa: An Origin Myth of White Settlement in the American West' Winter 2008, Vol. 28/No. 1 |
| 2007 | Shawn Lee Alexander Vengeance Without Justice, Injustice Without Retribution. The Afro-American Council's Struggle Against Racial Violence Spring 2007, Vol. 27/No. 2 |
| 2006 | Peter Feron Relief for Wanderers: The Transient Service in Kansas, 1933-35 Fall 2006, Vol. 26/No. 4 |
| 2005 | Linda Clemmons We Will Talk of Nothing Else': Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837 Summer 2005, Vol. 25/No. 3 |
| Year | Name |
|---|---|
| 2004 | Andrea G. Radke Refining Rural Space: Women and Vernacular Gentility in the Great Plains, 1880-1920 Fall 2004, Vol. 24/No. 4 |
| 2003 | Jill E. Martin 'The Greatest Evil': Interpretations of Indian Prohibition Laws, 1832-1953 Winter 2003, Vol. 23/No. 1 |
| 2002 | Bernard Lemelin Congressman Usher Burdick of North Dakota and the 'Ungodly Menace': Anti-United Nations Rhetoric, 1950-1958 Summer 2002, Vol. 22/No. 3 |
| 2001 | Jeffrey Ostler The Last Buffalo Hunt' and Beyond: Plains Sioux Economic Strategies in the Early Reservation Period Spring 2001, Vol. 21/No. 2 |
| 2000 | Barbara Risch The Picture Changes: Stylistic Variation in Sitting Bull's Biographies Fall 2000, Vol. 20/No. 4 |
| 1999 | Kari Forbes-Boyte Litigation, Mitigation, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act: The Bear Butte Example Winter 1999, Vol. 19/No. 1 |
| 1998 | Blake Gumprecht Giants on the Plains: Grain Elevators and the Making of Enid, Oklahoma Fall 1998, Vol. 18/No. 4 |
| 1997 | Linea Sundstrom The Sacred Black Hills: An Ethnohistorical Review 1997 Vol. 17/No. 3/4 |
| 1996 | Gerald Zahavi Who's Going to Dance with Somebody Who Calls You a Mainstreeter': Communism, Culture, and Community in Sheridan County, Montana, 1918-1934 Fall 1996, Vol. 16/No. 4 |
| 1995 | Frederick C. Luebke The Progressive Context of the Nebraska Capitol: The Collaboration of Goodhue and Tack Fall 1995, Vol. 15/No. 4 |
| 1994 | David Murphy Jeijich Antonie: Czechs, The Land, Cather and the Pavelka Farmstead Spring 1994, Vol. 12/No. 2 |
| 1993 | Russel L. Barsh An American Heart of Darkness: The 1913 Expedition for American Indian Citizenship Spring 1993, Vol. 13/No. 2 |
| 1992 | Betsy Downey Battered Pioneers: Jules Sandoz and the Physical Abuse of Wives on the American Frontier Winter 1992, Vol. 12/No. 1 |
| 1991 | Joseph V. Hickey 'Pap' Singleton's Dunlap Colony: Relief Agencies and the Failure of a Black Settlement in Eastern Kansas Winter 1991, Vol. 11/No. 1 |
| 1990 | Janet E. Schulte 'Proving Up and Moving Up': Jewish Homesteading Activity in North Dakota, 1900-1920 Fall 1990, Vol. 10/No. 1 |
| 1989 | Nancy Tystad Koupal The Wonderful Wizard of the West: L. Frank Baum in South Dakota Fall 1989, Vol. 9/No. 4 |
| 1988 | Carolyn Garrett Pool Reservation Policy and the Economic Position of Wichita Women Summer 1988, Vol. 8/No. 3 |