The Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize in the History of Journalism is awarded annually to the author of the most outstanding book published in English on any aspect of the history of journalism, concerning any area of the world, and any period.
Books that focus on the recent past should have a significant historical component. Books that deal with journalism in relation to other forms of mass communication are eligible for consideration. The current prize amount is $1,000.
The general rules for submission are:
- Books with a copyright of 2023 are eligible for the 2024 award.
- Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Publishers may submit as many entries as they wish. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted. Once you fill out the form you will receive an email with the committee’s contact information.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Palmegiano Prize Entry.” Print copies preferred unless otherwise indicated. If only e-copy is available, please contact review committee members beforehand to arrange submission format.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2024, to be eligible for the 2024 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2024 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2025 AHA annual meeting in New York.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
Eugenia Palmegiano
Eugenia Palmegiano (1939–2024) was professor emerita of history at Saint Peter's College. She specialized in bibliographies on the Victorian era. Her books include Crime in Victorian Britain: An Annotated Bibliography from Nineteenth-Century British Magazines (1993); The British Empire in the Victorian Press, 1832–1867 (1987); and Women and British Periodicals, 1832–1867: A Bibliography (1976).
Past Recipients
Current Recipient
Janet Afary, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Kamran Afary, California State University, Los Angeles
Mollā Nasreddin: The Making of a Modern Trickster, 1906–1911 (Edinburgh Univ. Press)
This is a pathbreaking study of the tenuous existence in the early 20th century of the extraordinary anticolonial, cosmopolitan, and feminist periodical Mollā Nasreddin, influential across the ethnically diverse South Caucasus region, that aimed to reform Islam with modernist critiques of clerical authority and political corruption. The magnificently illustrated study culminates two decades of multilingual research by the authors in Baku, Tiflis, Munich, Moscow, and Tehran, with scholars and translators in Europe and the South Caucasus.