Submissions Are Closed
Deadline: February 15, 2025
Award Type
Research Grant
The American Historical Association offers the Littleton-Griswold Research Grant for research in US legal history and in the general field of law and society, broadly defined. The funds for this program come from the earnings of the Littleton-Griswold Fund. These modest annual grants are intended to further research in progress and may be used for travel to a library or archive, for microfilms, photographs, or photocopying—a list of purposes that is meant to be merely illustrative, not exhaustive (other expenses, such as child care, can be included). Individual grants up to $1,000 will be awarded.
Eligibility
Only members of the Association are eligible to apply for AHA research grants. Grants are awarded each June and may be used anytime in the subsequent 15 months for expenses related to furthering research in progress. Preference will be given to advanced doctoral students, non-tenured faculty, and unaffiliated scholars, and to those with specific research needs, such as the completion of a project or of a discrete segment thereof.
Please note: Within a five-year period, no individual is eligible to receive more than a combined total of $1,500 from all AHA research grants.
Application Process
Log into your MY AHA account at historians.org/myaha and click “Available Application Forms” in the AHA Awards, Grants, and Jobs section. The deadline is February 15.
- Fill in the application form, which includes your contact information, the title of your work, and specific funding and budget information.
- Upload an Application Packet as a single PDF. Include the following documents:
- CV (up to 5 pages)
- Statement (up to 750 words) describing your project, including specific uses to which you will put the funds. If special skills, such as foreign language, paleography, or oral history are essential to the project, please indicate your level of proficiency
- Bibliography (1 page) of the most recent, relevant secondary works on the topic
- Letters of recommendation are NOT required.
Selection Process
A selection committee reviews applications each spring, and applicants will be notified of the committee’s decision by email in mid-May. Awards are distributed each June. Please, no phone calls.
Requirements
Successful applicants will be expected to complete a survey outlining how the funds were used and how they furthered the grantee’s research. Survey responses will be due in August of the year following the grant award. AHA financial support should be acknowledged in any publication resulting from this research.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
Past Recipients
2024
Annie Anderson, Carceral Politics in the Quaker City: Race, Sex, and Surveillance in Progressive-Era Philadelphia
John K. Bardes, Radical River: A Story of Slavery, Rebellion, and Police Power in the Mississippi Steamboat World
Christopher J. McNulty, Policing the Special Relationship: American Soldiers, British Civilians, and the Law, 1942-45
Ben Roy, Slaves, Aliens, and Uncivilized Enemies: The British Empire, Confederate Georgia, and Resident Alien Conscription during the Civil War
Kimberly G. White, Liminal Migrants: Undocumented West Indians’ Quests for Autonomy in Mid- to Late 20th-Century New York City
Dennis J. Wieboldt III, ‘A Radical Deviation from the Proper and Expected Course of American Law’: William Bentley Ball and the Transformation of Conservative Constitutionalism
2023
Morgan E. Barry, (Im)Possible Threats: Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Political Repression in the 20th-Century United States
Janna E. Haider, Legal Legibility of the Ghadar Party: Aspirations towards American Whiteness and Indian Independence in the Early 20th Century
Sarah R. Meiners, Asylum Archipelago: Migration in the Borders of Empire in the Pacific and Caribbean
Jonathan Quint, Indigenous-Imperial Legal Pluralism in the Old Northwest, 1790–1803
Matthew Zipf, The Division and the Inquiry: Civil Rights Lawyers in the Impeachment of Richard Nixon
2022
Clay Robert Ammentorp, The Suburban Prison: Carceral Policy and Suburban Sprawl at the California Institution for Men at Chino
Siobhan Barco, Women, Power, and the Legal News, 1830-1930
Bryant Etheridge, The Tragedy of Taft-Hartley: Interunion Rivalry, New Deal Labor Policy, and the Emergence of Postwar Conservatism
Yukako Otori, Disposable Subjects: Law and Child Migration to the United States, 1890s-1920s
Sarah Sadlier, Native American Legal Advocacy in the Courts of the Conqueror, 1967-2022
Madeline Williams, Challenging the Ableist State: Technologies of Blind Organizing and Welfare Statecraft through an Era of American Eugenics, 1850-1935
2021
Claire Cororaton, Emplotting Freedom: Agricultural Development, Public Land Laws, and Imperial Sovereignty on the Philippine Frontier, 1898-1941
Hardeep Dhillon, Indians on the Move: Law, Borders, and Freedoms at the Turn of the 20th Century
Hannah Hicks, Troubling Justice: Women on Trial in the American South, 1865-1900
Doris Morgan Rueda, Saving the Bad Kids, Caging Los Chicos Malos: Juvenile Justice and Racialized Surveillance in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1900-70
Filippo Maria Sposini, The Certification of Insanity: A Transnational History
2020
Cameron Black, Student-Athlete or University Employees: Debates between Student-Athletes, Work, and Workman’s Compensation, 1870-1950
Jonathon Booth, Dethroning Justice: Building Post-Emancipation Societies through Law in the Atlantic World
Alicia Mariel Gutierrez-Romine, Dr. Edna Griffin and the Long Civil Rights Movement in California
Leah Samples, See: The State, Science, and Sightlessness in New Deal America
Kathryn Anne Schumaker, Spare the Rod: A History of Corporal Punishment in American Public Schools
2019
Nicole Breault, The Night Watch of Early Boston: Law and Governance in Eighteenth-Century British America
Signe Peterson Fourmy, They Chose Death over Slavery: Enslaved Women and Infanticide in the Antebellum South
Aden Knaap, Judging the World: International Courts and the Origins of Global Governance, 1899-1945
2018
Esther Cyna, From Equity to Excellence? Shifting Strategies in School Finance Litigation and Education Policy in North Carolina, 1970s-90s
Koji Ito, Contested Imperial Waters: Disputes over Migratory Fish and the Origins of the Territorialization of the Bering Sea, 1925-52
Jane Manners, The Great New York Fire of 1835 and the Law and Politics of Disaster Relief in Jacksonian America
2017
Myisha Eatmon, Public Wrongs, Private Rights: Tort Law, Black Legal Culture, and Racial Violence During Jim Crow
Anne Gray Fischer, Arrestable Behavior: Women, Police Power, and the Making of Law-and-Order America, 1930-1980
Myra Houser, International Law and Solidarity in Frontline States
Brianna Nofil, Gender, Community Policing, and Crime Control in Late 20th Century America
2016
Amanda Kleintop, The Terms of Emancipation: Conflicts over the Value of Slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction
Jonathan Lande, Disciplining Freedom: Union Army Slave Rebels and Emancipation in the Civil War Courts-Martial
Maria Montalvo, All Could Be Sold: Making and Selling Enslaved People in the Antebellum South
2015
Brian Cuddy, Wider War: American Force in Vietnam, International Law, and the Transformation of Armed Conflict, 1961-77
Nancy Gallman, American Constitutions: Life, Liberty, and Property in Colonial East Florida
Allison Powers, Settlement Colonialism: Territory, Arbitration, and Compensation in American International Law, 1898-1948
2014
Kellen Funk, The Lawyers’ Code: The Transformation of Legal Practice in 19th-Century America
Sara Mayeux, A History of the Right to Counsel in America
Jameson Sweet, The Mixed-Blood Moment: Race, Land, and Law among Dakota Mixed-Bloods in the Nineteenth Century
2013
Sara Damiano, Gender, Law, and the Culture of Credit in New England, 1730-1790
Ryan Johnson, Enemies of the State: Knowing, Producing, and Policing Anarchism in the Making of the Modern American National Security State, 1901-21
Heather Lee, The Right to Enter: Chinese Restaurant Owners, U.S. Immigration Laws, and the Federal Courts, 1894-1945
Michael Schoeppner, The Moral Contagion of Liberty: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Quarantine in the Antebellum United States
Moira Gillis, The Evolution of the Colonial American Corporation under the Stuart and Hanoverian Crowns, 1606-1763
2012
Ananda Burra, From Mandates to Trusteeship: Forging a Right to Petition in International Law
Cynthia Greenlee, Daughters of the Nadir: Black Girls and Childhood on Trial in South Carolina Courts, 1885-1905
Melissa Hayes, Sex in the Witness Stand: Legal Culture, Community, and Out-of-Wedlock Sexual Governance in 19th-Century America
Derek Miller, Judicial Criticism: Theater and Music in Anglo-American Copyright Law, 1833-1911
2011
Oliver Bateman, Esq., Engines of Change, Hotbeds of Conflict: State Supreme Courts and the Pursuit of Educational Equity
Maroon David, III, Off the Land: The Homestead Act and the Politics of Dispossession
Allison Gorsuch, Before Dred Scott: Citizenship and Slavery in the Territorial Midwest
Heather Hawkins, Regulating the Family: Children, Families, and the State, 1820-1919
Grainne McEvoy, American Catholic Social Criticism and the Immigration Question in the Restriction Era, 1917-65
Chantel Rodriguez, The Politics of Health and Citizenship in the Railroad Bracero Program, 1942-47
Jeffrey Vernon, Esq., The Fertility Frontier: Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Boundaries of Legal Solutions
2010
Clara Altman, American Law from Across the Pacific: Statebuilding, the US, and the Philippines, 1898-1935
Thomas Bahde, The Life and Death of Gus Reed: Race and Justice in the World of a 19th-Century Thief
Aaron Cavin, Bordering the Metropolis: Race, Law, and Politics in the Silicon Valley, 1945-2000
Jeffrey Gonda, Home Front: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement
Doug Kiel, The Oneida Resurgence: Modern Indian Renewal in the Heart of America
2009
Helen J. Knowles, Rethinking the Abolitionists’ Constitution
Kristin Olbertson, Criminally Impolite: Speech Transgressions and Social Order in Provincial Massachusetts
Leah Weinryb Grohsgal, Reinventing Civil Liberties: Religious Groups, Organized Litigation, and the Rights Revolution
Kimberly Welch, Public Confrontations: Southern Subordinates and Local Legal Cultures in the Old South
2008
Jill Fraley, The War on Poverty: The Myth of Classless Society and the Block for Constitutional Change
Hidetaka Hirota, Nativism, Citzenship, and Civil Liberties: Immigration Control and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1846-78
Melissa Milewski, From Slave to Litigant: African Americans in Court in the Postwar South
2007
Lisa Blee, Framing Chief Leschi: Memory, Justice, and American Empire in Nisqually History, 1854-2004
Kathryn Burns-Howard, ‘No Vote, No Friends, No Hope’: Insanity and the Conditions of Citizenship
Sophia Lee, ‘Almost Revolutionary’: Labor Politics, Civil Rights Constitutionalism, and the Administrative State, 1935-78
Jonathan White, ‘To Aid Their Rebel Friends’: The Law of Treason in the North during the American Civil War
2006
Jennifer Armiger, The Women of Western Electric: Reconsidering Gender Discrimination, Civil Rights, and the Meaning of Equity in Post-1960s America
Ethan Blue, Hard Time in the New Deal: The Cultures of Punishment in Texas and California in the 1930s
Francesca Gamber, The Radical Heart: The Politics of Love in the Struggle for African-American Equality, 1833-2000
C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, A Seneca Sachem in the Indian Bureau: Ely S. Parker and the Unintended Consequences of Native-Centered Policy Reform
Linda Tvrdy, Constitutional Rights in a Common Law World: The Reconstruction of North Carolina’s Legal Order, 1863-83
2005
H. Robert Baker, The Rescue of Joshua Glover: Lawyers, Popular Constitutionalism, and the Fugitive Slave Law in Wisconsin
Brian Behnken, Fighting Their Own Battles: Blacks, Mexican Americans, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Texas, 1950-1975
Dominic DeBrincat, Yankee Jurisprudence: The Court and Legal Culture of New London County, Connecticut, 1660-1820
C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, Ely S. Parker and the State: ‘Legibility,’ Unintended Consequences, and the Evolution of Nineteenth Century Colonial Policy
Gabriel Loiacono, The People and the Poor: Ideas and Experiences of Poverty in Rhode Island, 1780-1935
J. Douglas Smith, An Unfinished Revolution: Reapportionment and the Quest for Democracy in 20th-Century America
Susan Spellman, Pure Faith: Grocers, Consumers, and the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, 1900-1920
Allison Tirres, American Law Comes to the Border: Law and Colonization on the Edge of the U.S.-Mexico Divide, 1848-1890
Jennifer Uhlmann, The ILD and the NAACP: Bitter Rivals in a Common Cause
2004
Willoughby Anderson, “Against the Peace and Dignity of the State of Alabama”: The 1977 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing Trial and the Remaking of Birmingham
Susan Bragg, Marketing the ‘Modern Negro’: Race, Gender, and NAACP Activism, 1909-1945
Gregory Dorr, Protection or Control?: Women’s Health, Sterilization Abuse, and Relf v. Weinberger
Lisa Ford, Subjects of Empire: Imperial Sovereignty and the Land and Bodies of Indigenous People
Lisa Lindquist-Dorr, Shinny Makers and Drinkers: Gender, Respectability, and the Enforcement of Prohibition in the Deep South
Kevin McCarthy, Fit Custodians: Gender, Race, and the Law in Lower-South Trial Courts, 1830-1925
James McGowan, Too Brave to Fight: American Conscientious Objectors and the War for Democracy, 1917-1920
Lisa Ramos, George I. Sanchez and the ‘Class Apart’ Theory: The Politics of Mexican-American Citizenship
Heather Thompson, Attica: Race, Rebellion and the Rise of Law and Order America
2003
Kathleen Brosnan, A Contested Vintage: Law, Land, and Labor in California’s Wine Culture
Brett Gadsden, ‘All We Wanted was a Bus for the Colored’: The Desegregation of Public Education in Delaware
Daniel Hamilton, The Limits of Sovereignty: Legislative Confiscation in the Union and Confederac
Laura Mihailoff, Protecting Our Children: A History of the California Youth Authority and Juvenile Delinquency, 1938-1978
George Milne, Today We Are Walking as Slaves: the Evolution of French and Indian Relations, 1650-1740
Rebecca Rix, Gender and Reconstitution: The Family and Individual Basis of Democracy Contested, 1880-1932
Sharon Romeo, Reconstructing Race, Gender and Citizenship in St. Louis: The Politics of Unlawful Sex in the Era of Emancipation, 1861-1877
Donna Schuele, From Californio to Anglo Hands: The Role of Probate in Nineteenth-Century California Land Transfer
2002
Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and American Citizenship before Stonewall
Martha Jones, Constructing ‘Rights’ and ‘Respect’: African Americans in the Legal Culture of Baltimore’s Middle Ground, 1820-1860
Jason Martinek, Mightier than the Sword: Working-Class Reading, Educational Politics, and Socialists’ Printed Culture of Dissent, 1884-1917
Ajay Mehrotra, The Emergence of the Modern American Fiscal State: The Political Economy of U.S Tax Policy, 1880-1930
William Nancarrow, Vox Populi: Democracy and the Progressive Era Judiciary
Jeanne Petit, The Men and Women We Want: Gender, Citizenship, and Immigration Restriction Debates, 1896-1929
Michael Ross, The Legal Obstruction of Reconstruction in the Deep South
Christopher Schmidt, Postwar Liberalism and the Origins of Brown v. Board of Education
Diana Williams, ‘They Call it Marriage’: Interracial Families in Post-Emancipation Louisiana
Ann Woodward, Between Growth and Entitlement: Fiscal Conservatism, Postwar Tax Policy, and the Politics of ‘Pay-as-you-Go’
2001
Carlos Aguirre, Tinterillos and Leguleyos: Towards a History of Legal Intermediaries in Modern Peru
K. Walter Hickel, Disability, Law, and Social Citizenship in America: Evidence from War Risk Insurance Case Files, 1920-1940
Christian McMillen
Stephen Mihm, The Alchemists: Counterfeiters and Counterfeits, 1837-1877
Gary Murrell, Biography of Herbert Aptheker
Matthew Raffety, The Republic Afloat: Work, Manhood, and ‘Liberty’ in 19th-Century Mutinies
Brett Shadle, ‘Girl Cases:’ Runaway Wives, Eloped Daughters, and Abducted Women in Gusiiland, Kenya, c. 1890-1965
Rickie Solinger, The First Welfare Case: Civil Rights and Welfare Rights in Selma, Alabama
John Sweet, The Troubled Childhood of Jim Crow: Deference, Democracy, and the Emergence of the American North
2000
Charles Bethel, Business Origins of the Modern First Amendment
Christopher Capozzola, Legislating Loyalty: Citizenship and Obligation in American Law, 1917-1925
Lisa Cardyn, Engendering Traumatic Experience: Legal, Medical, and Psychological Conceptions of Sexual Trauma in American Culture, 1865-1950
Elizabeth Hillman, Cold War Crime and American Military Culture: Courts-Martial in the U.S. Military, 1950-1975
Linda Janke, Prisoners of War: Gender, Venereal Disease, and Incarceration during World War I
Paul Kemeny, The Protestant Establishment, Modernity, and Cultural Pluralism: The New England Watch and Ward Society and the Transformation of Moral Reform Activities, 1878-1930
Jill Silos, ‘Everybody Get Together’: The Counterculture and Public Space, 1964-1970
1999
Louis Anthes, Law and the Ways of Strangers: A History of Legal Representation in Immigrant New York, 1870-1930
Eliza Clark, Building a Woman’s House: Responses to Domestic Violence in the Northeastern United States, 1830-1860
Christopher Corley, Paternal Authority, Legal Practice, and State Building in Early Modern France, 1477-1750
Sara Dubow, Ourselves Unborn: Fetal Meanings in Modern America
Richard Hantzmon, Fur, Fin, and Feather: Hunting and Fishing Regulation and the Legal Origins of American Conservation, 1607-1900
Alexander Haskell, Defending Good Names: Authority, Identity, and the Politics of Reputation in Colonial Virginia, 1670-1770
Mark Miller, Ambiguous Tribalism: Unrecognized Tribes and the State
Mary Mitchell, Raising Freedom’s Child: Race, Politics, and the Lives of Black Children in 19th-Century Louisiana
Robert Perkinson, Prisoner Activism in the Cradle of Modern American Punishment
John Witt, Accident and Design: Workmen’s Compensation and the Making of American Personal Injury Law, 1870-1930
1998
Elizabeth Borgwardt, In Their Own Image: Law, Ideas, and Conceptual Change in American Diplomacy, 1944-1947
Dawn Flood, Hard to Prove: Victims in Chicago Rape Cases, 1926-1966
Elaine Parsons, Slaves to the Bottle: Drink in Legal Discourse
John Logan, Defining Industrial Citizenship: The State and Workers’ Rights in the U.S. and Canada, 1933-1961
Ellen Pearson, American Transformations of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1769-1830
Dana Rabin, The Criminal Self and Legal Responsibility in England, 1660-1800
Susan Wyly-Jones, The Impact of Abolitionist Postal and Petition Campaigns on Society, Law, and Politics in the U.S. South, 1835-44
1997
Susanna Blumenthal
Jacob Cogan
Kathleen Cummings
Bruce Eelman
Cheryl Hicks
Derek Krissoff
Michael Millender
Elizabeth Rosen
1995
Matthew Babcock
Kathleen Brosnan
Andrew Cohen
Mara Dodge
Daniel Hulsebosch
Felicia Kornbluh
Karen Murphy
Stephen Robertson
Jo Ann Woodsum
1994
Sharon Block, Coerced Sex in British America, 1700-1820
Tracy Fessenden, Invisible Colors, Thin Disguises: Supernaturalism and Racial Policy in Victorian America
Ann Fidler, Surveying the Nineteenth-Century Legal Landscape: Law and Society in Small Ohio Communities, 1830-80
Leslie Harris, Creating the African American Working Class: Black and White Workers, Abolitionists and Reformers in New York City, 1785-1863
Robert Johnston, The Local Roots of Muller v. Oregon and the Social Bases of the Modern American Welfare State
Scott Sandage, Freeing the Slaves: Bankruptcy Law and the Coming of the Civil War
Bruce Smith, Petty Crime and the Law in London and New York City, 1785-1860
David Tegeder, Peonage in the Lower South: Cultural and Economic Change in the Florida, Georgia, and Alabama Timber Industry, 1900-40