AHA Announces 2021 Prize Winners
The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the winners of its 2021 prizes, to be awarded at the AHA’s 135th annual meeting, which will take place in New Orleans from January 6–9, 2022.
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 1,000 awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,400 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.
AWARDS FOR PUBLICATIONS
The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize for an author’s first book in European history from 1815 through the 20th century
Stefan J. Link (Dartmouth Coll.) for Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order (Princeton Univ. Press, 2020)
The George Louis Beer Prize in European international history since 1895
Francine Hirsch (Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison) for Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020)
The Jerry Bentley Prize in world history
Chris Otter (Ohio State Univ.) for Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2020)
The Albert J. Beveridge Award in the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada, from 1492 to the present
Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) for The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020)
The James Henry Breasted Prize in any field of history prior to CE 1000
Simon Martin (Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum) for Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020)
The Raymond J. Cunningham Prize for the best article published in a journal written by an undergraduate student
Ann Tran (Univ. of Southern California) for "A Bloody Solidarity: Nguyen Thai Binh and the Vietnamese Antiwar Movement in the Long Sixties," The Boller Review 5 (2020)
Faculty adviser: Kara Dixon Vuic (Texas Christian Univ.)
The John H. Dunning Prize for an author's first or second book in US history
Bathsheba Demuth (Brown Univ.) for Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton, 2019)
The John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian history since 1800
Eric Schluessel (George Washington Univ.) for Land of Strangers: The Civilizing Project in Qing Central Asia (Columbia Univ. Press, 2020)
The Morris D. Forkosch Prize in the field of British, British imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485
Jeffrey R. Collins (Queen's Univ., Can.) for In the Shadow of Leviathan: John Locke and the Politics of Conscience (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020)
The Leo Gershoy Award in 17th- and 18th-century western European history
Susan North (Victoria and Albert Museum) for Sweet & Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford Univ. Press, 2020)
The William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the best article in a journal, magazine, or other serial on teaching history
Jill E. Kelly (Southern Methodist Univ.) and Omar Badsha (South African History Online) for "Teaching South African History in the Digital Age: Collaboration, Pedagogy, and Popularizing History," History in Africa 47 (2020)
The Clarence H. Haring Prize in Latin American history by a Latin American author
Laura Fahrenkrog Cianelli (Univ. Adolfo Ibáñez) for Los "indios cantores" del Paraguay: Prácticas musicales y dinámicas de movilidad en Asunción colonial (siglos XVI–XVIII) (Sb editorial, 2020)
The J. Franklin Jameson Award for outstanding achievement in the editing of historical primary sources
Hani Khafipour (Univ. of Southern California) for The Empires of the Near East and India: Source Studies of the Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal Literate Communities (Columbia Univ. Press, 2019)
The Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean history
Larissa Brewer-García (Univ. of Chicago) for Beyond Babel: Translations of Blackness in Colonial Peru and New Granada (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2020)
The Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in women’s history and/or feminist theory
Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) for The Women's Fight: The Civil War's Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020)
The Martin A. Klein Prize in African history
Jacob Dlamini (Princeton Univ.) for Safari Nation: A Social History of the Kruger National Park (Ohio Univ. Press, 2020)
The Waldo G. Leland Prize for the most outstanding reference tool in the field of history
Thomas Spear (Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison), ed., for The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Historiography: Methods and Sources (Oxford Univ. Press, 2019)
The Littleton-Griswold Prize in US law and society, broadly defined
Douglas J. Flowe (Washington Univ. in St. Louis) for Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020)
The J. Russell Major Prize in French history
Nimisha Barton (Univ. of California, Irvine) for Reproductive Citizens: Gender, Immigration, and the State in Modern France (Cornell Univ. Press, 2020)
The Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian history or Italian-American relations
Victoria de Grazia (Columbia Univ.) for The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini's Italy (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2020)
The George L. Mosse Prize in the intellectual and cultural history of Europe since 1500
Magda Teter (Fordham Univ.) for Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Harvard Univ. Press, 2020)
The John E. O’Connor Film Award for outstanding interpretations of history through film
Documentary: CURED, Patrick Sammon and Bennett Singer, producers and directors (Story Center Films, 2020)
The Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the history of journalism
Vanessa Freije (Univ. of Washington-Seattle) for Citizens of Scandal: Journalism, Secrecy, and the Politics of Reckoning in Mexico (Duke Univ. Press, 2020)
The James A. Rawley Prize for the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century
Allison Margaret Bigelow (Univ. of Virginia) for Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World (Omohundro Inst. of Early American History and Culture and Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2020)
The John F. Richards Prize in South Asian history
Nira Wickramasinghe (Leiden Univ.) for Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka (Columbia Univ. Press, 2020)
The Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the history of the Jewish diaspora
Devi Mays (Univ. of Michigan) for Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford Univ. Press, 2020)
The Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History to a freely available new media project
Robert Lee (Univ. of Cambridge), Tristan Ahtone (Grist), Margaret Pearce (Studio 1:1), Kalen Goodluck, Geoff McGhee, and Cody Leff for “Land-Grab Universities” (High Country News, 2020)
The Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history
Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins Univ.) for Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
AWARDS FOR SCHOLARLY AND PROFESSIONAL DISTINCTION
The Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award for outstanding postsecondary history teaching
April Masten (Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York)
The Beveridge Family Teaching Prize for distinguished K-12 history teaching
Joseph Schmidt (New York City Dept. of Education)
Equity Awards for individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession
Individual: Crystal Sanders (Penn State Univ.)
Institutional: Northeastern State University, Department of History
The Herbert Feis Award for distinguished contributions to public history
Theodore J. Karamanski (Loyola Univ. Chicago)
The John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice to recognize a historian for leadership and sustained engagement at the intersection of historical work and social justice
Mary Frances Berry (Univ. of Pennsylvania)
The John Lewis Award for Public Service to the Discipline of History to recognize individuals outside the ranks of professional historians who have made a significant contribution to the study, teaching, and public understanding of history, in the interest of social justice
Sam Pollard (New York Univ.)
The Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for teachers of history who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives
Herrick Eaton Chapman (New York Univ.)
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”
Mahesh Rangarajan (Krea Univ., India)
The Award for Scholarly Distinction to senior historians for lifetime achievement
Darlene Clark Hine (Michigan State Univ. and Northwestern Univ.)
Teofilo Ruiz (Univ. of California, Los Angeles)
Peter N. Stearns (George Mason Univ.)