Now Accepting Submissions

Deadline: May 15, 2025

Award Type

Award for Publications

Submit Nomination

The AHA Prize in American History is awarded for an outstanding work on any subject relating to United States history that is the author’s first book or scholarly equivalent. Originally called the John H. Dunning Prize, this biennial prize was first awarded in 1929, and has been awarded in odd-numbered years since 1991. The prize name was changed in 2023.

The current prize amount is $1,000.

The general rules for submission are:

  1. To be eligible for consideration, an entry must be of a scholarly historical nature and must be the author’s first book or scholarly equivalent. Research accuracy, originality, and literary merit are important factors.
  2. Only books bearing a copyright of 2023 or 2024 are eligible for the 2025 award.
  3. Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
  4. 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.
  5. No more than five titles from any one publisher may be submitted.
  6. One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “AHA Prize in American History 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: The competition will open in mid-March. 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.

Current Recipient

Kathryn Olivarius, Stanford University

Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom (Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press)

Necropolis is a book for our moment that will be read for years to come. With arresting prose, Kathryn Olivarius reveals how yellow fever survivors worked to naturalize not only epidemic disease but slavery itself in 19th-century New Orleans. Olivarius’s concept of “immunocapitalism” powerfully explains the complex dynamics of the Cotton Kingdom. Rarely does a book propose a novel theoretical framework that also considers the historically specific intersections of capitalism, race, health disparity, and inequality.