The Jameson Award was established in 1974 for outstanding achievement in the editing of historical sources. First offered in 1980 and awarded every five years, the AHA Council made the decision in 2007 to change the frequency of the award to biennial.
The award is honorific.
The general rules for submission are:
- To be eligible for consideration, works must be of a scholarly, historical nature; review/journal editing is ineligible. Works with a copyright of 2023 or 2024 are eligible for the 2025 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 “Jameson Award 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, 2025, to be eligible for the 2025 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2025 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2026 AHA annual meeting in Chicago.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
J. Franklin Jameson
The prize honors J. Franklin Jameson, a founding member of the Association, its president in 1907, longtime managing editor of the American Historical Review, and an influential proponent of historical study.
Past Recipients
Current Recipient
Kevin Terraciano, University of California, Los Angeles
Codex Sierra: A Nahuatl-Mixtec Book of Accounts from Colonial Mexico (Univ. of Oklahoma Press)
Codex Sierra is a beautiful critical edition of a 16th-century account book written in the Nahuatl alphabet. Kevin Terraciano employs impressive, specialized skill to make this text available to English speakers—transcribing, translating, annotating, and reproducing in vibrant color one of the earliest known texts of a Native language. By detailing production and consumption in Santa Catalina Texupan, Terraciano illuminates the material culture of religion, politics, and daily life among Indigenous peoples within the Spanish Empire.