AHA announces 2018 prize winners!
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the winners of its 2018 prizes, to be awarded at the 133rd annual meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on January 3–6, 2019. The ceremony will be held on Thursday, January 3, in the Palmer House Hilton’s State Ballroom at 7:00 p.m., immediately following the meeting’s opening reception.
The AHA offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects. Since 1896, the Association has conferred over a thousand awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,500 entries by nearly 150 dedicated prize committee members. The names, publications, and projects of those who received these awards are a catalog of the best work produced in the historical discipline. Please join us at the ceremony in January to honor this year’s recipients.
Awards for Publications
The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for an author’s first book in European history from ancient times to 1815
Hussein Fancy (Univ. of Michigan) for The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon(Univ. of Chicago Press, 2016)
The George Louis Beer Prize in European international history since 1895
Corey Ross (Univ. of Birmingham) for Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017)
The Jerry Bentley Prize in world history
Erika Rappaport (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) for A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017)
The Albert J. Beveridge Award on the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada, from 1492 to the present
Camilla Townsend (Rutgers Univ.) for Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016)
The Paul Birdsall Prize for a major book on European military and strategic history since 1870
Tarak Barkawi (London School of Economics) for Soldiers of Empire: Indian and British Armies in World War II (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017)
The James Henry Breasted Prize in any field of history prior to CE 1000
Jeremy Hartnett (Wabash Coll.) for The Roman Street: Urban Life and Society in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017)
The Albert B. Corey Prize for the best book dealing with the history of Canadian-American relations or the history of both countries
Ann M. Little (Colorado State Univ.) for The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright (Yale Univ. Press, 2016)
The Raymond J. Cunningham Prize for the best article published in a history department journal written by an undergraduate student
Heath Rojas (Stanford Univ., BA 2018), faculty advisor: Keith M. Baker (Stanford Univ.), for “A Model of Revolutionary Regicide: The Role of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Trial of King Louis XVI,” Herodotus (Spring 2018)
The John K. Fairbank Prize for East Asian history since 1800
Thomas S. Mullaney (Stanford Univ.) for The Chinese Typewriter: A History (MIT Press, 2017)
The Morris D. Forkosch Prize in the field of British, British imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485
Paul Ocobock (Univ. of Notre Dame) for An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya (Ohio Univ. Press, 2017)
The Leo Gershoy Award in the fields of 17th- and 18th-century western European history
James Delbourgo (Rutgers Univ.) for Collecting the World: Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum (Belknap Press, 2017)
The William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the best article in a journal, magazine, or other serial on teaching history
Leah Shopkow (Indiana Univ.) for “How Many Sources Do I Need,” The History Teacher 50, no. 2 (February 2017)
The Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean history
Lisa Sousa (Occidental Coll.) for The Woman Who Turned into a Jaguar, and Other Narratives of Native Women in Archives of Colonial Mexico (Stanford Univ. Press, 2017)
The Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for women’s history and/or feminist theory
Tera W. Hunter (Princeton Univ.) for Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Belknap Press, 2017)
The Martin A. Klein Prize in African history
Kenda Mutongi (Williams Coll.) for Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017)
The Littleton-Griswold Prize in US law and society, broadly defined
Tera W. Hunter (Princeton Univ.) for Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Belknap Press, 2017)
The J. Russell Major Prize for French history
Peter Sahlins (Univ. of California, Berkeley) for 1668: The Year of the Animal in France (Zone Books, 2017)
The Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian history or Italian-American relations
Axel Körner (Univ. Coll. London) for America in Italy: The United States in the Political Thought and Imagination of the Risorgimento, 1763–1865 (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017)
The George L. Mosse Prize in the intellectual and cultural history of Europe since 1500
Yuri Slezkine (Univ. of California, Berkeley) for The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton Univ. Press, 2017)
The John E. O’Connor Film Award for outstanding interpretations of history through film
Documentary: Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, Tracy Heather Strain, director; Tracy Heather Strain and Randall MacLowry, producers (Lorraine Hansberry Documentary Project, LLC, 2017)
The Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the history of journalism
Julia Guarneri (Univ. of Cambridge) for Newsprint Metropolis: City Papers and the Making of Modern Americans (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017)
The Premio del Rey for a distinguished book in English in the field of early Spanish history
Michelle Armstrong-Partida (Univ. of Texas at El Paso) for Defiant Priests: Domestic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya (Cornell Univ. Press, 2017)
The James A. Rawley Prize for the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century
Padraic X. Scanlan (London School of Economics) for Freedom’s Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolution(Yale Univ. Press, 2017)
The John F. Richards Prize for South Asian history
Faiz Ahmed (Brown Univ.) for Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires (Harvard Univ. Press, 2017)
The James Harvey Robinson Prize for the teaching aid that has made the most outstanding contribution to the teaching and learning of history in any field for public or educational purposes
Bethany Jay (Salem State Univ.) and Cynthia Lynn Lyerly (Boston Coll.), editors, for Understanding and Teaching American Slavery (Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2016)
The Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the history of the Jewish diaspora
Andrew Sloin (Baruch Coll.) for The Jewish Revolution in Belorussia: Economy, Race, and Bolshevik Power (Indiana Univ. Press, 2017)
The Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History to a freely available new media project
Adam Clulow (Monash Univ.) and Tom Chandler (Monash Univ.) for Virtual Angkor
The Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history
Monique A. Bedasse (Washington Univ. in St. Louis) for Jah Kingdom: Rastafarians, Tanzania, and Pan-Africanism in the Age of Decolonization (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2017)
The Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award for outstanding postsecondary history teaching
Catherine Denial (Knox Coll.)
The Beveridge Family Teaching Prize for distinguished K–12 history teaching
California Department of Education and the California History-Social Science Project (Univ. of California, Davis)
Equity Awards for individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession
Tiffany Packer (Florida A&M Univ.)
The Herbert Feis Award for distinguished contributions to public history
Joan Neuberger (Univ. of Texas at Austin)
The Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for teachers of history who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (Univ. of Texas at Austin)
The Honorary Foreign Member for a foreign scholar who is distinguished in his or her field and who has “notably aided the work of American historians”
Betty Wood (Girton Coll., Univ. of Cambridge)
The Award for Scholarly Distinction to senior historians for lifetime achievement
Martin E. Jay (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Charles S. Maier (Harvard Univ.)
Nell Irvin Painter (Princeton Univ.)