Ann M. Sperber Prize Judges

Amy Aronson

Dr. Aronson holds a BA from Princeton University and a PhD from Columbia University. Her latest book, Crystal Eastman: A Revolutionary Life (Oxford University Press), recovers the story of the twentieth-century feminist, labor lawyer, anti-war activist, and radical journalist who co-founded the National Woman’s Party and the International League for Peace and Freedom, is credited as the co-author of the Equal Rights Amendment, and engineered the founding of the ACLU. Aronson’s primary research area is media history with a focus on women and gender in journalism. Over the past several years, she pursued course work and a certificate program to open a new chapter in her research and teaching in climate journalism and sustainability communication. A scholar-practitioner, she was an editor at Working Woman and Ms., and her work has also appeared in such publications as Business Week, Global Journalist, Esquire UK, Working Mother, Diversity Journal, and the Boston Globe.

Joan D. Hedrick

She graduated from Vassar College in 1966 and received her PhD in American Civilization from Brown University in 1974. She is now Charles A. Dana Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she has taught since 1980 and where she founded the Women, Gender and Sexuality Program. Her first book was a critical study of Jack London entitled Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). Her Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life was published by Oxford University Press in 1994. The first full-­length biography of Stowe in over fifty years, it won a Christopher Award and the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Her most recent book is The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). She is currently working on a study of nineteenth ­century American women and the amplification of their voices through the holiness movement.

Beth Knobel

She is a professor teaching journalism in Fordham's Department of Communication and Media Studies. Before joining the Fordham faculty in 2007, she worked as a journalist in the United States and abroad, including seven years as Moscow Bureau Chief for CBS News. Her work for CBS News was honored with several major awards, including an Emmy. Dr. Knobel is the co-author with her CBS News colleague Mike Wallace of Heat and Light: Advice for the Next Generation of Journalists (Three Rivers Press/Random House 2010) and sole author of The Watchdog Still Barks: How Accountability Journalism Evolved for the Digital Age (Fordham University Press, 2018). She earned her undergraduate degree at Barnard College and her graduate degrees at Harvard.

John Matteson

He holds doctoral degrees from Harvard and Columbia Universities. He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for Eden's Outcasts (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007) and is the author of The Lives of Margaret Fuller, and the editor of The Annotated Little Women, also published by W.W. Norton. He is a distinguished professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

Alan Sperber

He is the representative of the Sperber family on the Sperber Prize Jury, being the son of the donor of the prize, Liselotte Sperber, and the brother of the late Ann M. Sperber. He is a board certified urologist who has written numerous articles that have appeared in medical journals. He has been an avid reader of biographies ever since Ann, who was seven years older, encouraged him at the age of 11 to read the biography of Benjamin Disraeli by Andre Maurois. He was frequently consulted by Ann in the course of her writing when medical issues needed to be clarified. He is proud to serve on the jury with the distinguished panel that has given the Sperber award over the past 15 years to only the best biographies and authors.

Alan Sperber with his mother Betty and his wife Betty on the occasion of his mother’s 102nd birthday, January 19th, 2014.)