Award for Scholarly Distinction Recipients
In 1984 the Council of the American Historical Association established an award entitled the Award for Scholarly Distinction. The awards go to senior historians of the highest distinction who have spent the bulk of their professional careers in the United States.
2022
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard Univ.
Michael A. Gomez, New York Univ.
Geoffrey Parker, Ohio State Univ.
2022
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Rutgers, The State Univ. of New Jersey
Joe W. Trotter, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
Judith E. Tucker, Georgetown Univ.
2021
Darlene Clark Hine, Michigan State Univ. and Northwestern Univ.
Teofilo Ruiz, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Peter N. Stearns, George Mason Univ.
2020
David Levering Lewis, New York Univ.
Leslie P. Peirce, New York Univ.
David Warren Sabean, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
2019
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Evelyn S. Rawski, Univ. of Pittsburgh
2018
Martin Jay, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Charles Maier, Harvard Univ.
Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton Univ.
2017
Richard Dunn, Univ. of Pennsylvania
John Merriman, Yale Univ.
2016
Alice Kessler-Harris, Columbia Univ.
Colin Palmer, Princeton Univ.
2015
Ira Berlin, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Asuncion Lavrin, Arizona State Univ.
2014
Keith Baker, Stanford Univ.
Susan Mann, Univ. of California, Davis
Jan Vansina, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
2013
John Dower, Massachusetts Inst. of Technology
Patricia Ebrey, Univ. of Washington
Walter LaFeber, Cornell Univ.
2012
Alfred Crosby, Univ. of Texas at Austin
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Univ. of Chicago and Univ. of Sydney
Donald Worster, Univ. of Kansas
2011
Donald Kelley, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
2010
Susan Naquin, East Asian studies, Princeton Univ.
Peter Stansky, Frances and Charles Field Prof., Stanford Univ.
2009
Leon Litwack, America, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Saul Friedlander, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
2008
Joseph Harris, Howard Univ.
Michael Kammen, Cornell Univ.
Joan Scott, Inst. for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ.
2007
Martin Duberman, Distinguished Prof. emeritus, Lehman Coll. and Graduate Center, CUNY
Jack Greene, Andrew W. Mellon Prof. emeritus, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Anne Scott, W. K. Boyd Prof. emerita, Duke Univ.
2006
David Davis, Yale Univ.
Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick
Fritz Stern, Columbia Univ.
2005
Lawrence Levine, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Nancy Siraisi, Hunter Coll., CUNY
David Underdown, Yale Univ.
2004
John Pocock, Harry C. Black Prof. emeritus, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., City Univ. of New York
2003
Thomas Clark, Univ. of Kentucky
Peter Gay, Yale Univ.
Wallace MacCaffrey, Harvard Univ.
2002
Elizabeth Eisenstein, Univ. of Michigan
John Higham, American cultural and political, Johns Hopkins Univ.
Richard McCormick, American political, Rutgers Univ.
2001
Nikki Keddie, Middle East social/intellectual/gender, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Ernest May, American foreign policy, Harvard Univ.
Robert Remini, early America and Andrew Jackson, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago
2000
Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Empire, Yale Univ.
Arno Mayer, modern Europe, Princeton Univ.
1999
Earl Pomeroy, US West, Univ. of Oregon
Eugen Weber, modern France, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Gerhard Weinberg, Germany, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
1998
Tulio Halperin-Donghi, post-18th-century Latin America and Argentina, Univ. of California, Berkeley
Robert Paxton, modern France, Columbia Univ.
1997
Alfred Chandler, Jr., American economic and business, Harvard Univ.
August Meier, African American, Kent State Univ.
Benjamin Schwartz, China, Harvard Univ.
1996
H. Stuart Hughes, modern European intellectual, Univ. of California, San Diego
George Mosse, Europe, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Barbara Stein, Latin America and Brazil, Princeton Univ.
Stanley Stein, Latin America and Brazil, Princeton Univ.
1995
Lawrence Stone, Tudor Stuart England social/comparative, Princeton Univ.
1994
George Kennan, US diplomatic, Inst. for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ.
H. Leon Prather, Sr., US South and African American, Tennessee State Univ.
Nicholas Riasanovsky, Russia, Univ. of California, Berkeley
1993
Brian Tierney, medieval, Cornell Univ.
Emma Thornbrough, African American, Butler Univ.
1992
George Woolfolk, African American, Prairie View A&M Coll.
1991
Gerhart Ladner, medieval art and church, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Gerda Lerner, 19th-century American social and women, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
Carl Schorske, modern Europe, Princeton Univ.
Chester Starr, Jr., ancient, Univ. of Michigan
Merze Tate, US diplomatic and international, Howard Univ.
1990
Nettie Benson, Latin America/Mexico, Univ. of Texas, Austin
Margaret Judson, British constitutional, Douglass Coll., Rutgers Univ.
Kenneth Setton, medieval and Renaissance, Inst. for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ.
1989
Paul Kristeller, Renaissance, Columbia Univ.
Caroline Robbins, English political and constitutional, Bryn Mawr Coll.
Kenneth Stampp, Civil War and Reconstruction, Univ. of California, Berkeley
1988
Helen Edmonds, African American, North Carolina Central Univ.
Edwin Reischauer, Japan, Harvard Univ.
Sylvia Thrupp Strayer, medieval England/Europe, Univ. of Michigan
1987
Angie Debo, Native American, independent scholar
John Hall, Tokugawa Period Japan, Yale Univ.
Benjamin Quarles, African American and anti-slavery movement, Morgan State Univ.
1986
Woodrow Borah, Latin America and colonial Mexico, Univ. of California, Berkeley
1985
Felix Gilbert, Europe and history of political ideas, Inst. for Advanced Study, Princeton Univ.
Edmund Morgan, America, Yale Univ.
2023 Awards for Scholarly Distinction
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Harvard University
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, a pioneering and distinguished scholar of African American women’s history, is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, where she has served as chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the first African American to chair the Department of History. Higginbotham is the author of the groundbreaking and prizewinning book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. The publication of Righteous Discontent marked a critical turning point in the field of African American women’s history and its theorization and has had a defining influence on generations of scholars.
Michael A. Gomez, New York University
A pioneer in linking the histories of Africa, the Islamic world, and the Americas, Michael A. Gomez has demonstrated uncommon breadth and originality over the course of his stellar career. Each of Gomez’s five books has made critical interventions in fields as widely diverse as medieval Africa, Black Islam in the Americas, early African America, and the worldwide African diaspora. His most well-known book, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1998), examines the evolution of politics, culture, and race in North America to around 1830. More than any other work before or since, Gomez’s text offers an eloquent and convincing history that centers the African past in the distinct context of North America. The book remains a foundational work in African diaspora history, a fulcrum that connects scholarship on African life and culture in the American South to ongoing debates about the making and practice of diaspora.
Geoffrey Parker, Ohio State University
Prolific does not fully describe Geoffrey Parker’s remarkable scholarship that has resulted in more than 40 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. What characterizes Parker’s achievement is his ability to solve puzzles: to take bits of information from seemingly different spheres, to recognize patterns, and to make a coherent case to explain why things happened or failed to happen in the past. The most remarkable of the many puzzles he has solved can be found in his massive study, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, which analyzes the climatically induced crisis that caused the premature death of around one-third of the human population.