Members Making News: 2023 Archive

  • AHA Member Interviewed on NPR Morning Edition about Tensions between Members of Congress (November 2023)

    Nov 22, 2023 - 

    AHA member Joanne Freeman (Yale Univ.) was interviewed by A Martínez on NPR’s Morning Edition about “recent altercations between lawmakers in Congress.” Freeman spoke about the history of physical violence in Congress and the importance of learning from the past.

  • AHA Member Wins 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction (November 2023)

    Nov 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Ned Blackhawk (Yale Univ.), who has been awarded the 2023 National Book Award for nonfiction for his book, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of US History. The National Book Awards are awarded annually to “celebrate the best literature published in the United States, expand its audience, and ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.”

  • AHA Member Featured in Texas Tribune Article on DEI Efforts at Rice University (November 2023)

    Nov 16, 2023 - 

    AHA member Alexander X. Byrd (Rice Univ.) was featured in a Texas Tribune article by Kate McGee about the work of Rice University’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office, of which he is the vice provost, among the backlash against DEI efforts from Texas lawmakers.

  • Former Jameson Fellow’s Book Published (November 2023)

    Nov 16, 2023 - 

    AHA member and former J. Franklin Jameson Fellow Frank J. Cirillo has announced the publication of his book, The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union, part of Louisiana State University Press‘s “Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World” series. Cirillo explores the history of the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War, arguing that abolitionists’ actions help explain how the Union war achieved both so much and so little regarding racial justice for African Americans.

  • American Historical Review Article by AHA Member Wins 2023 Arrington-Prucha Prize (November 2023)

    Nov 16, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Gili Kliger (Harvard Univ.), whose September 2022 American Historical Review article, “Translating God on the Borders of Sovereignty,” has been awarded the Western Historical Association’s (WHA) 2023 Arrington-Prucha Prize. This prize is awarded annually by the WHA for the best essay of the year on religious history in the West.

  • AHA Member Named President at Monticello (October 2023)

    Oct 19, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Jane Kamensky, who was recently appointed as the new president at Monticello by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. She is currently the Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History and the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director of the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and will assume her new role in January 2024.

  • AHA Member Co-Authors Book on US Reactions to the Moscow Show Trials (October 2023)

    Oct 10, 2023 - 

    AHA member Jeanie M. Welch’s (Univ. of North Carolina, Charlotte) book, co-authored with Kelly J. Evans (Eastern Washington Univ.), Witnessing Stalin's Justice: The United States and the Moscow Show Trials was published in September 2023 by Bloomsbury Academic. The book uses contemporaneous sources to chronicle US reactions to Stalin's trials of leading Bolsheviks during the 1930s. It highlights the varied reactions to the trials from official US government officials, the press, and political groups.

  • AHA Members Awarded NEH Grants (August 2023)

    Aug 18, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to the 25 AHA members who were awarded NEH grants as part of the $41.3 million for humanities projects across the country announced by the NEH on August 15. “These 280 new grant awards underscore the wide range of exemplary, fascinating, and impactful humanities work that scholars, practitioners, and institutions are conducting in all corners of the country,” said NEH chair Shelly C. Lowe.

  • AHA Member Awarded 2023 Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize for American Historical Review Article (June 2023)

    Jun 27, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Emilie Connolly (Brandeis Univ.), who was awarded the 2023 Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize for her article “Fiduciary Colonialism: Annuities and Native Dispossession in the Early United States,” which was published in the March 2022 issue of the American Historical Review. The Bernath Scholarly Article Prize is awarded annually by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations “to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by junior scholars in the field of diplomatic relations.”

  • AHA Member Awarded 2023 ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship (June 2023)

    Jun 26, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Nicole Navarro (Univ. of Michigan), who was awarded a 2023 ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship and appointed as a research associate at the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. The Leading Edge fellowships “support recent PhDs in the humanities and interpretive social sciences as they work with social justice organizations in communities across the United States.”

  • AHA President-Elect and Members Awarded Long-Term Huntington Fellowships (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA president-elect Thavolia Glymph (Duke Univ.) and members Hilary Buxton (Kenyon Coll.), Gordon H. Chang (Stanford Univ.), Peter C. Mancall (Univ. of Southern California), Bernadette J. Pérez (Univ. of California, Berkeley), and Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Harvard Univ.), who were awarded long-term fellowships by The Huntington as part of the 2023–24 fellow class.

  • AHA Members Named 2023 Newcombe Fellows (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Kelsey Elizabeth Henry (Yale Univ.), Erica Lally (Georgetown Univ.), Aparajita Majumdar (Cornell Univ.), and Daniela Traldi (Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York), who were named Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellows for 2023 by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The Newcombe Fellowship is “the largest and most prestigious award for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences addressing questions of ethical and religious values in interesting, original, or significant ways.”

  • AHA Member Awarded 2022 New Deal Book Award (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Victoria W. Wolcott (Univ. of Buffalo), who was recently awarded the Living New Deal’s 2022 New Deal Book Award for her book Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, as well as to AHA members Kenneth J. Bindas (Kent State Univ.), Matthew F. Delmont (Dartmouth Coll.), and Gene Zubovich (Univ. at Buffalo, State Univ. of New York), who were nominated for the award. Established in 2021, the New Deal Book Award is awarded annually “to recognize and encourage nonfiction works about the New Deal era.”

  • AHA Member Awarded 2022 New Deal Book Award (May 2023)AHA Member Named 2023 Berlin Prize Fellow (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Mariana P. Candido (Emory Univ.), who has been named one of the 2023 Berlin Prize Fellows by the American Academy in Berlin. The Berlin Prizes are “awarded annually to US-based scholars, writers, composers, and artists who represent the highest standards of excellence in their fields, from the humanities and social sciences to journalism, public policy, fiction, the visual arts, and music composition.”

  • AHA Members Awarded 2023 ACLS Project Development Grants (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Adam Lee Cilli (Univ. of Pittsburgh, Greensburg), Larissa Kopytoff (Univ. of South Florida, St. Petersburg), Judith Mansilla (Florida International Univ.), and Diana M. Moore (John Jay Coll., City Univ. of New York), who were selected as recipients of 2023 ACLS Project Development Grants. These grants “are designed to support scholars in teaching-intensive roles whose research agendas can make important advancements in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.”

  • AHA Member Awarded 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Biography (May 2023)

    May 17, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Beverly Gage (Yale Univ.), who was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for her book, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, as well as to historian Jefferson Cowie (Vanderbilt Univ.), who was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in History for his book, Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.

  • AHA Member Receives National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies 2023 Scholar Award (May 2023)

    May 05, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Cynthia E. Orozco (Eastern New Mexico Univ., Ruidoso), who recently received the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) 2023 Scholar Award, a lifetime achievement award based on her scholarship, leadership, and teaching. Orozco has been a leading advocate for Chicana studies and was a founder of NACCS' Chicana Caucus.

  • AHA Members Named 2023 Radcliffe Fellows (May 2023)

    May 05, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Tiffany Nicole Florvil (Univ. of New Mexico), Melani McAlister (George Washington Univ.), and Tiya A. Miles (Harvard Univ.), as well as the other historians named 2023 Radcliffe Fellows. Fellowships at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute are awarded to “exceptional scientists, writers, scholars, public intellectuals, practitioners, and artists whose work is making a difference in their professional fields and in the larger world.”

  • AHA Member Receives 2023 RFK Book Award (May 2023)

    May 05, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member and AHA Pacific Coast Branch president Peniel Joseph (Univ. of Texas, Austin) who has been selected as the winner of the 2023 RFK Book Award for The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century. This award, given annually by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, “highlights exemplary work that explores issues of human rights, social justice, and the power of individual action. It is one of the few awards in its field determined by peers.”

  • AHA Vice President Named President of Howard University (May 2023)

    May 03, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA Research Division vice president Ben Vinson III, who has been selected to serve as Howard University’s 18th president. Vinson is currently provost at Case Western Reserve University; he will replace current Howard president Wayne A.I. Frederick on September 1, 2023.

  • AHA Members Awarded 2023 NEH Grants (April 2023)

    Apr 27, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to the 25 AHA members who were recently awarded grants by the National Endowment for Humanities. The grants were awarded “to support exemplary education, preservation, media, research, and infrastructure projects that expand resources for Americans, support humanities programs and opportunities for underserved students and communities, and deepen our understanding of our history, culture, and society.”

  • AHA Members Awarded 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships (April 2023)

    Apr 26, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Alfredo Luis Escudero Villanueva (Florida International Univ.), Elsa Lora (Harvard Univ.), Michele D. Pflug (Univ. of Oregon), Destry Sibley (Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York), Margie Tang-Oxley (Univ. of Minnesota, Twin Cities), and Travis Wright (Indiana Univ.), along with other historians who were awarded 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships.

  • AHA Member Named 2023 Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellow in China Studies (April 2023)

    Apr 26, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Chelsea Zi Wang (Claremont McKenna Coll.) and the other historians who were named 2023 Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellows in China Studies. Fellowships were awarded with consideration to the “quality and intensity of the project’s focus on topics related to China” as well as applicants’ “understanding of the contemporary academic and research environment in China.”

  • AHA Members Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences (April 2023)

    Apr 26, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to Jean M. Allman (Washington Univ. in St Louis), Marcia Chatelain (Georgetown Univ.), Jelani Cobb (Columbia Univ.), Nelson N. Lichtenstein (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara), and Tiya A. Miles (Harvard Univ.), as well as the other historians who were inducted as members of the 2023 class of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

  • AHA Member Named AACC 2023 Faculty Member of the Year (April 2023)

    Apr 18, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Amy Powers (Waubonsee Community Coll.), who was named the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) 2023 Faculty Member of the Year. Powers is actively involved in “History Gateways,” a joint initiative from the AHA and the Gardner Institutethat aims to evaluate and revise introductory college-level history courses to better serve students from all backgrounds and align more effectively with the future needs of a complex society. The Faculty Member of the Year Award is one of the AACC’s annual awards that recognize “individuals who have excelled in their fields and who have given back to their communities.”

  • AHA Members Named 2023 Guggenheim Fellows (April 2023)

    Apr 12, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Bridget Alsdorf (Princeton Univ.), Orit Bashkin (Univ. of Chicago), Roland Betancourt (Univ. of California, Irvine), Jennifer Graber (Univ. of Texas, Austin), David Greenberg (Rutgers Univ.), and Amy B. Stanley (Northwestern Univ. and chair, AHA24 Program Committee chair), along with the other historians named to the 2023 class of Guggenheim Fellows. The Guggenheim Fellowships are awarded to “mid-career individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors.”

  • AHA Members Named 2023 ACLS Fellows (April 2023)

    Apr 07, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Hilary Buxton (Kenyon Coll.), Sarah Carson (Dartmouth Coll.), Sandy F. Chang (Univ. of Florida), Sam Holley-Kline (Univ. of Maryland, Coll. Park), Isadora Moura Mota (Princeton Univ.), and Pamela N. Walker (Texas A&M Univ., San Antonio), along with the other historians who were named as members of the 2023 ACLS Fellowship class. The 2023 ACLS fellowships were awarded to untenured scholars to support “outstanding scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.”

  • AHA Member and AHA Lewis Award Recipient Awarded National Humanities Medals by President Biden (March 2023)

    Mar 31, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Earl Lewis (Univ. of Michigan) and Bryan Stevenson (Equal Justice Initiative), recipient of the 2022 AHA John Lewis Award for Public Service to the Discipline of History, who were awarded 2021 National Humanities Medals by President Joseph R. Biden in a ceremony at the White House on March 22, 2023. National Humanities Medals are given to organizations or individuals “whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the human experience, broadened citizens’ engagement with history or literature, or helped preserve and expand Americans’ access to cultural resources.”

  • AHA Member Named One of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year (March 2023)

    Mar 31, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Monica Muñoz Martinez (Univ. of Texas at Austin), who was named one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year for 2023. The Women of the Year project“honors local and national heroines who make a positive impact in their communities every day.” Martinez was selected for her dedication to making the history of anti-Mexican violence on the US-Mexico border publicly accessible.

  • AHA Members Appointed to Commission by President Biden (March 2023)

    Mar 17, 2023 - 

    AHA members Risa Goluboff (Univ. of Virginia) and Martha Jones (Johns Hopkins Univ.) have been appointed to the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise by President Joe Biden. The committee, which is comprised of the Librarian of Congress and four additional members appointed by the president, is charged with “documenting and disseminating the history of the United States Supreme Court.”

  • AHA Members Awarded 2023 Bancroft Prizes (March 2023)

    Mar 14, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Beverly Gage (Yale Univ.) and John Wood Sweet (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), as well as Kelly Lytle Hernández (Univ. of California, Los Angeles), who have been named as the winners of the 2023 Bancroft Prizes. The Bancroft Prizes, awarded annually by Columbia University, are judged by a panel of distinguished historians “in terms of scope, significance, depth of research, and richness of interpretation that they present in the areas of American history and diplomacy.”

  • AHA Members Awarded Dan David Prize (March 2023)

    Mar 03, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA members Adam Clulow (Univ. of Texas, Austin) and Krista Goff (Univ. of Miami) as well as the seven other historians who have been named as recipients of the 2023 Dan David Prize. The Dan David Prize “recognizes outstanding scholarship that illuminates the past and seeks to anchor public discourse in a deeper understanding of history.”

  • AHA Member Interviewed by NPR about Vladimir Putin’s Speech to Russian Citizens (February 2023)

    Feb 27, 2023 - 

    AHA member Sergey Radchenko (Johns Hopkins Univ.) was interviewed by Steve Inskeep on NPR’s Morning Report about how Russian president Vladimir Putin's speech from February 21 would be received by Russian citizens. Radchenko was a panelist on the AHA’s webinar, Russia and Ukraine: History Behind the Headlines, in March 2022.

  • AHA Member Named Fellow of the International Council on Archives (February 2023)

    Feb 02, 2023 - 

    AHA member and former Professional Division vice president Trudy Huskamp Peterson was named a fellow of the International Council on Archives (ICA) at its annual meeting in Rome. The International Council on Archives is an international association created in 1948 to promote the development of archives. It holds advisory status to UNESCO in the field of archives and documentary heritage; its membership includes governmental and nongovernmental archives in 199 countries. The ICA Fellows award honors members and others in the international archives community who have given distinguished service to the ICA or to the cause of archives at the international level. 

  • AHA Member Tara A. Chadwick Wins CoGenerate Innovation Fellowship (January 2023)

    Jan 31, 2023 - 

    AHA member Tara A. Chadwick has been selected by CoGenerate (formerly Encore.org) as one of 15 Gen2Gen Social Innovation Fellows, a group of the nation’s most talented innovators. Chadwick was selected from a field of more than 120 applicants. Her winning entry, #PapalotlProject, brings elders and children together to share knowledge about healthy living through art, agricultural science, and history.

  • Former AHA President Publishes Boston Globe Op-Ed on Boston City Council’s New Slavery Reparations Commission (January 2023)

    Jan 25, 2023 - 

    Former AHA president Jacqueline Jones (Univ. of Texas at Austin) published an op-ed in the Boston Globe about the issues facing the Boston City Council’s new slavery reparations commission, as well as the commission’s “unique opportunity to study the city’s complicated Black history.” “In exploring the issue of reparations,” Jones writes, “the commission must highlight the devastating human toll that flowed from unjust and discriminatory workplaces.”

  • AHA Member Publishes Washington Post Article Comparing FTX to Historical Financial Scandal (January 2023)

    Jan 25, 2023 - 

    AHA member Amy M. Froide (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County) has published an article in the Washington Post comparing the scandal surrounding cryptocurrency exchange FTX to the collapse of the Charitable Corporation, “a financial scandal that rocked 18th-century London.” The Charitable Corporation scandal, Froide writes, “is an early example of the type of corporate mismanagement and embezzlement that still rears its head with surprising frequency and exemplifies a historical pattern where regulation and oversight are always far behind financial innovation.”

  • AHA Member Awarded Hans Rosenberg Book Prize in Central European History (January 2023)

    Jan 13, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Georg B. Michels (Univ. of California, Riverside), who has been awarded the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize for his monograph The Habsburg Empire Under Siege: Ottoman Expansion and Hungarian Revolt in the Age of Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü (1661–76) (McGill-Queens Univ. Press, 2021). The prize is awarded annually by the Central European History Society to the best book on central European history by a North American scholar.

  • AHA Members Awarded NEH Grants (January 2023)

    Jan 13, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to the 26 AHA members who have been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of a $28.1 million NEH initiative helping fund 204 humanities projects across the country. These grants “support innovative projects that use emerging digital tools and technologies to further humanities research and increase the accessibility of public programs, cultural and archival materials, and educational resources for large audiences.”

  • AHA Member Awarded VENI Grant by Dutch Research Council (January 2023)

    Jan 13, 2023 - 

    Congratulations to AHA member Peyman Jafari (International Inst. of Social History and Coll. of William & Mary), who has been awarded a VENI grant of 280,000€ by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for his project Oil Frontiers in the British and Dutch Empires: Land, Labour and Environment in the Making of an Imperial Oil Regime, 1890-1940. VENI grants, part of the NWO Talent Programme, allow researchers who have recently obtained their PhD to conduct independent research and develop their ideas for a period of three years.

  • Exhibitions Curated by AHA Member Featured in Forbes Article about the History of Money and Cryptocurrency (January 2023)

    Jan 11, 2023 - 

    Museum exhibitions at the National Museum of American History curated by AHA member Ellen Feingold (Smithsonian Inst.) were featured in a Forbes article about what the history of money can teach us about cryptocurrency. Feingold co-curated one of these exhibitions, Really Big Money, with AHA director of research and publications Sarah Weicksel, Abby Pfisterer (Wisconsin Historical Society), and Orlando R. Serrano Jr. (Smithsonian Inst.). They wrote about the process of creating this history exhibition for children for Perspectives on History.