Helen & Howard R. Marraro Prize
The Marraro Prize is one of three annual awards for the best book on Italian history, Italian cultural history, or Italo-American cultural relations established by Howard R. Marraro (b. 1897), a historian of Italian culture. Marraro made bequests to the American Historical Association, the American Catholic Historical Association, and the Society for Italian Historical Studies to allow each association to award a prize. The American Historical Association administers the competition for all three awards.
The current prize amount is $1,000. See the list of past recipients.
The general rules for submission are:
- Entries must be published in English by historians whose usual residence is in North America.
- 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.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Marraro 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.
2023 Marraro Prize
Diana Garvin, University of Oregon
Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women’s Food Work (Univ. of Toronto Press)
Diana Garvin’s study employs an innovative array of largely untapped sources, including from material culture and company archives. Ranging from the tabletop to the fields, from the kitchen to the factory, and from the molecular to the macroscopic, fascist alimentary initiatives relied on women as cooks, workers, entrepreneurs, and mothers. Complicating state-centric understandings of fascism, Garvin illuminates the central roles played by both female and nonstate actors in the food work demanded by the regime.