Members Making News: 2020 Archive

AHA Members Receive NEH Grants (December 2020)

Dec 18, 2020 -

Congratulations to the 37 AHA members who have been named as recipients of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ newest round of grants. The NEH has announced that it will award $32.8 million in grants for 213 humanities projects nationwide.

AHA Former President Recounts Career (December 2020)

Dec 14, 2020 -

Former AHA president and life member Linda K. Kerber (Univ. of Iowa) recounted her career for The Gazette. In addition to serving as AHA president in 2006, Kerber has also won both the Littleton-Griswold Prize for the best book in US legal history and the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for the best book in women’s history.

AHA Member Wins 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize (December 2020)

Dec 10, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Sophie White (Univ. of Notre Dame), who has won the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. Voices of the Enslaved also won the AHA’s 2020 James A. Rawley Prize.

AHA Member Wins Cundill History Prize (December 2020)

Dec 09, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Camilla Townsend (Rutgers Univ.), whose book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs was recently awarded the Cundill History Prize. McGill University awards the prize annually to recognize “the best history writing in English.”

AHA Members Win First IFRWH Blom-Offen Prize (December 2020)

Dec 09, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA members Katherine Marino (Univ. of California, Los Angeles) and Jocelyn Olcott (Duke Univ.), who were recently awarded the inaugural Ida Blom-Karen Offen Prize in Transnational Women’s and Gender History by the International Federation for Research in Women’s History. The prize is named for Norwegian historian Ida Blom (1931-2016) and for AHA member Karen Offen (independent scholar).

AHA Member Writes One of The Economist’s Books of the Year (December 2020)

Dec 04, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Amy B. Stanley (Northwestern Univ.), whose book Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World was named as one of The Economist’s Books of the Year.

AHA Member Wins Harriet Tubman Prize (November 2020)

Nov 25, 2020 -

Congratulations to Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (Univ. of California, Berkeley), whose book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South was recently awarded the 2020 Harriet Tubman Prize from the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The award is given to the best nonfiction book published in the United States on the slave trade, slavery, and anti-slavery in the Atlantic world.

AHA Member Appointed to Library of Congress Task Force (November 2020)

Nov 18, 2020 -

AHA member Katherine Rye Jewell (Fitchburg State Univ.) was recently appointed co-chair of the College and Community Radio Caucus of the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force. The task force’s mission includes supporting researchers and activists who preserve radio history, developing an online archive of radio collections, and protecting and preserving endangered collections.

AHA Member Publishes New Book (November 2020)

Nov 17, 2020 -

AHA member Ana Lucia Araujo (Howard Univ.) recently published a new book, Slavery in the Age of Memory, with Bloomsbury Publishing. “Exploring notions of history, collective memory, cultural memory, public memory, official memory, and public history,” the book “explains how ordinary citizens, social groups, governments and institutions engage with the past of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.”

AHA Member Featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (November 2020)

Nov 09, 2020 -

AHA member Geraldo L. Cadava (Northwestern Univ.) recently appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Cadava discussed identity politics, why some Hispanic voters tend to vote Republican, and what Democrats get wrong about Hispanic voters.

AHA Member Wins Award for Article in American Historical Review (November 2020)

Nov 03, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Françoise N. Hamlin (Brown Univ.), whose article “Historians and Ethics: Finding Anne Moody,” published in the April 2020 issue of the American Historical Review, has won the 2020 Letitia Woods Brown Article Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians.

AHA Member Publishes New Book (October 2020)

Oct 23, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Leela Prasad (Duke Univ.) who recently published her book The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytelling in Colonial India with Cornell University Press.

AHA Member Featured on Podcast (October 2020)

Oct 22, 2020 -

AHA member Terrance Rucker (Office of the Historian, US House of Representatives) recently appeared as a guest on the podcast Ben Franklin’s World to discuss the first federal elections of 1788-90. This is the second in a four-part series about voting in the early Republic.

AHA Member Receives Gutenberg Teaching Award (October 2020)

Oct 21, 2020 -

AHA member Mills Kelly (George Mason Univ.) was recently awarded the 2019 Gutenberg Teaching Award by the Gutenberg Teaching Council at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. The Gutenberg Teaching Award is an annual prize awarded to those “who have made a significant contribution to the development of academic teaching.”

AHA Member Named as 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalist (October 2020)

Oct 14, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (Univ. of California, Berkeley), whose book They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South was recently named as one of the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Finalists, an annual award of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

AHA Member Writes Piece in the Virginian-Pilot (October 2020)

Oct 13, 2020 -

AHA member E. M. Rose has recently published an opinion piece, “History Shows the Overblown Value of Political Image” in the Virginian-Pilot. Rose discusses how the history of the first governor of Virginia, Lord Delaware, might indicate how political image can override reality, and asserts that “the lessons of Lord Delaware are more relevant than ever today. They suggest that a firm hand is important only in an immediate crisis. For long term institutional support, capitalist enterprise and the democratic debate it enables produce lasting results.”

AHA Member Named as Finalist for National Book Award (October 2020)

Oct 08, 2020 -

AHA member Claudio Saunt (Univ. of Georgia) has been named as a finalist for the National Book Award for Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. The winner of the National Book Award will be announced in November.

AHA Member Named as FDR Presidential Library Trustee (September 2020)

Sep 29, 2020 -

AHA member Adam Weisler (Scarsdale High School) recently became a library trustee of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. The trustees are charged with “ensuring FDR's legacy is preserved and accessible to the public for generations to come.”

AHA Members Present at National Book Festival (September 2020)

Sep 25, 2020 -

The National Book Festival’s History and Biography Stage features nine historians, including several AHA members, for their author Q&As. The festival is being held virtually this year on Saturday and Sunday, September 26 and 27, 9 a.m. ET with an additional day of children’s and teen programs on Friday, September 25 at 9 a.m. ET. According to the festival website, the 20th annual Library of Congress National Book Festival “celebrates American Ingenuity online,” and interested attendees can register or view the presentations on YouTube.

AHA Member Receives Berlin Prize Fellowship Award (September 2020)

Sep 24, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Allison Blakely (Boston Univ.) who recently received the Berlin Prize Fellowship Award for his project “The African Diaspora in Modern Europe: An Interpretive History.” The prize includes a semester-long residential fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.

AHA Members Named as COVID-19 Rapid-Response Grantees (September 2020)

Sep 18, 2020 -

AHA members Erika Lee (Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities) and Allyson Poska (Univ. of Mary Washington) received Rapid-Response Grants on Covid-19 and the Social Sciences awarded by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). The grants support “innovative and ethically informed projects using remote methods on key issues impacted by COVID-19,” according to the SSRC.

AHA Member Receives Fulbright (September 2020)

Sep 08, 2020 -

AHA member Sergei Zhuk (Ball State Univ.) was recently awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award. He will lecture at Guangzhou University of Foreign Studies in the People’s Republic of China as part of a project called “Teaching Chinese Students of American Colonial History and Cultural Cold War in Comparative Historical Perspective.”

AHA Member Receives Highest Harvard Faculty Honor (August 2020)

Aug 14, 2020 -

AHA member Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard Univ.) was recently named University Professor, Harvard's highest faculty honor. Among Gordon-Reed’s other honors are a Pulitzer Prize in History, the National Book Award for Nonfiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Of Gordon-Reed, the university president says “[she] has changed how people think about America.” Watch Annette Gordon-Reed in the recent AHA webinar, Erasing History or Making History? Race, Racism, and the American Memorial Landscape.

AHA Member Receives Research Award (July 2020)

Jul 30, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Rev. Steven Avella (Marquette Univ.), who was recently awarded the 2020 Haggerty Research Award. This is Marquette University's highest honor for research, and is awarded in recognition of scholarly distinction.

AHA Member Wins Book Prize (July 2020)

Jul 23, 2020 -

Lydia Barnett (Northwestern Univ.) won the 2019 Morris D. Forkosch Prize awarded by the Journal of the History of Ideas for her book, After the Flood: Imagining the Global Environment in Early Modern Europe. The prize is awarded for the best first book in intellectual history.

AHA Member Receives Teaching Award (July 2020)

Jul 21, 2020 -

AHA member Edward Slavishak (Susquehanna Univ.) was recently awarded the John C. Horn Award for Distinguished Scholarship and Creative Activity. Slavishak was recognized for his exceptional record of scholarship and his excellence in teaching.

AHA Member Wins Book Prize (July 2020)

Jul 21, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Eric K. Washington (Columbia Univ.), whose book Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal was recently awarded the 2020 Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in New York History.

AHA Members Awarded Stanford Fellowships (July 2020)

Jul 16, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA members Keith Baker (Stanford Univ.), Elizabeth Jacob (Stanford Univ.), Matthew Wormer (Stanford Univ.), and Adrien Zakar (Stanford Univ.), who were named 2020-21 Stanford Humanities Center fellows. The center seeks to create an intellectual community for scholars to exchange academic ideas.

AHA Member Wins Lifetime Achievement Award (June 2020)

Jul 01, 2020 -

AHA member Alan I Marcus (Mississippi State Univ.) recently won the Gladys L. Baker Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Agricultural History Society. This award recognizes Marcus for his professional influence on the AHS throughout his 36-year membership.

AHA Member Named Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow (June 2020)

Jun 25, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Nichole Nelson (Yale Univ.), who was recently named as one of 22 Mellon/ACLS Public Fellows. The program, sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, prioritizes placing recent PhDs in civic and nonprofit organizations. Fellows are chosen for projects that contribute to community-based initiatives.

Former AHA President Appointed Dean at Fordham (June 2020)

Jun 25, 2020 -

Former AHA president Tyler Stovall (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz) was recently appointed as the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Fordham University. Stovall served as AHA president in 2017 and as dean of the Humanities Division at UC Santa Cruz before accepting this position, which he officially assumes in July 2020.

AHA Member Wins Francis Parkman Prize (June 2020)

Jun 15, 2020 -

AHA member Charles King (Georgetown Univ.) was recently awarded the Francis Parkman Prize by the Society of American Historians for his book Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century. This prize is awarded for literary and scholarly achievement.

AHA Council Member Elected to Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools (June 2020)

Jun 05, 2020 -

AHA Council member Reginald K. Ellis Jr. (Florida A&M Univ.) has recently been elected to serve as secretary of the Council of Historically Black Graduate Schools. The council recently celebrated its 50-year anniversary.

AHA Member Wins Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize (May 2020)

May 27, 2020 -

AHA member Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison) has been awarded the Western Association of Women Historians' 2020 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize for her book Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2019). The Keller-Sierra Prize is given annually to the best monograph in the field of history published by a WAWH member.

AHA Member Accepts New Tenure-Track Position (May 2020)

May 27, 2020 -

AHA member Beau Gaitors (Winston-Salem State Univ.) has accepted a new tenure-track position in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville starting August 2020.

AHA Member Receives ACLS and Newberry Fellowships (May 2020)

May 27, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Christine Adams (St. Mary's Coll. of Maryland), who was recently awarded fellowships from the American Council on Learned Societies (ACLS) and the Newberry Library. Both of these fellowships support outstanding scholars conducting innovative and ground-breaking research in their fields.

AHA Members Named among ACLS Fellows (May 2020)

May 27, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA members Christine M. Adams (St. Mary's Coll. of Maryland), Simon E. Balto (Univ. of Iowa), Susanna Elm (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Natasha Lightfoot (Columbia Univ.), Ryan Moran (Univ. of Utah), Douglas Northrop (Univ. of Michigan), Jennifer L. Palmer (Univ. of Georgia), Anne Ruderman (London School of Economics), Nicole Sackley (Univ. of Richmond), and Samira Sheikh (Vanderbilt Univ.), who were all named as 2020 American Council of Learned Societies Fellows. These prestigious fellowships are awarded to scholars conducting influential research in the humanities and social sciences.

AHA Member Publishes Articles on Post-pandemic Planning and #MeToo (May 2020)

May 15, 2020 -

AHA member Rachel Wheeler (Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ., Indianapolis) recently published an article in Inside Higher Ed on post-pandemic planning and a piece on the fallout of academic #MeToo in Women in Higher Ed.

AHA Members Win ACLS Project Development Grants (May 2020)

May 14, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA members Jaclyn Sumner (Presbyterian Coll.) and Louie Dean Valencia-García (Texas State Univ.), who were among the 15 awardees selected for the American Council of Learned Societies' Project Development Grants program. These grants are awarded to university faculty whose proposed research projects have the potential to advance significantly their areas of study in the humanities.

AHA Members Announced as Mellon/ACLS Fellows (May 2020)

May 14, 2020 -

Four AHA members were recently named as 2020 Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellows by the American Council of Learned Societies, including AHA Council member Shannon T. Bontrager (Georgia Highlands Coll., Cartersville). Congratulations to Shannon and to Emily Brooks (Graduate Center, CUNY), Karen R. Miller (La Guardia Comm. Coll., CUNY), and William A. Morgan (Lone Star Coll., Montgomery). These fellowships recognize humanities faculty who teach at two-year institutions and their indispensable contributions to scholarship, teaching, and their communities.

AHA Member Wins Lester J. Cappon Award (May 2020)

May 13, 2020 -

AHA member Rachel Wheeler (Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ. Indianapolis) has won the Lester J. Cappon Award for the best article published in 2019 in the William and Mary Quarterly for her co-authored article, "Singing Box 331: Re-Sounding Eighteenth-Century Mohican Hymns from the Moravian Archives." The Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture awards this prize annually.

AHA Member Hosts PBS Special Segment (May 2020)

May 13, 2020 -

Today, states plan to reopen even as the coronavirus crisis continues to grow. This impulse has a history: it's what many towns did during the flu pandemic of 1918. In this special documentary short, AHA member Ed Ayers, host of the PBS series The Future of America's Past, offers a snapshot view of Richmond, Virginia's experience with the 1918 flu. The special segment was released Friday, May 8, via PBS and NPR.

AHA Member Awarded ASECS Gottschalk Prize (May 2020)

May 12, 2020 -

AHA member Katie Jarvis (Univ. of Notre Dame) has been awarded the 2020 Louis A. Gottschalk Prize for her book Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France (Oxford Univ. Press, 2019). The Gottschalk Prize is given annually to the best scholarly book on an 18th-century subject in any discipline.

AHA Member Receives Carnegie Fellowship (May 2020)

May 12, 2020 -

AHA member Bathsheba Demuth (Brown Univ.) is the recipient of one of 22 prestigious Andrew Carnegie Fellowships. The Andrew Carnegie Fellowship Program provides one of the most generous research stipends of its kind, and rewards a select few scholars whose research in the humanities is original, impactful, and addresses important issues in society.

AHA Member Awarded Humanities Grant from NEH (May 2020)

May 12, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA member Jennifer Speed (Univ. of Dayton), who was awarded a Humanities Connections Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a project on Paul Laurence Dunbar. These grants are awarded to support the preservation of collections, exhibitions in the humanities, and other scholarly research.

AHA Member Wins Pulitzer Prize in History (May 2020)

May 05, 2020 -

AHA member W. Caleb McDaniel (Rice Univ.) has won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (Oxford Univ. Press). McDaniel's book was noted as "a masterfully researched meditation on reparations based on the remarkable story of a 19th century woman who survived kidnapping and re-enslavement to sue her captor."

AHA Members among 2020 SAH Fellows (May 2020)

May 01, 2020 -

The Society of American Historians recently elected its 2020 fellows. Eight members of the AHA were among the honorees. Congratulations to Carol Anderson (Emory Univ.), Gordon H. Chang (Stanford Univ.), Ariela J. Gross (Univ. of Southern California), Ari Kelman (Univ. of California, Davis), Kevin M. Kruse (Princeton Univ.), Mae M. Ngai (Columbia Univ.), Valerie Paley (New-York Historical Society), and Kim Phillips-Fein (New York Univ.).

AHA Members Elected to 2020 Class of the Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 2020)

Apr 24, 2020 -

Congratulations to AHA members Tomiko Brown-Nagin (Harvard Univ.), Michael Kazin (Georgetown Univ.), Erika Lee (Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities), Alondra Nelson (Institute for Advanced Study), Eve M. Troutt Powell (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Craig Steven Wilder (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology), and Louise Young (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison), who were recently elected to the 2020 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. These members are among the 276 exceptionally accomplished artists, scholars, scientists, and leaders to be honored by the Academy and engaged in advancing the public good.

AHA Members Named 2020 ACLS-Mellon Fellows (April 2020)

Apr 24, 2020 -

AHA members Jennifer L. Anderson (State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook), Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor), and Treva B. Lindsey (Ohio State Univ., Columbus) have been named 2020 Mellon/ACLS Scholars and Society Fellows. The fellowships, funded through the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, reward outstanding scholars dedicated to the public good by supporting twelve projects that demonstrate the dynamic role humanistic scholarship plays beyond academic settings.

AHA Member Holloway Appointed President of Rutgers University

Jan 30, 2020 -

Jonathan Holloway, AHA member and provost of Northwestern University, has been appointed the 21st president of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Following appointments at Northwestern University and Yale University, Holloway will begin serving as president of the university on July 1, 2020.

In This Section

Members Making News: 2020 Archive