The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the winners of its 2019 prizes, to be awarded at the 134th annual meeting in New York City on January 3–6, 2020. The ceremony will be held on Friday, January 3, in the Sheraton New York’s Metropolitan Ballroom East at 7:00 p.m., immediately following the meeting’s opening reception.
The AHA offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects. Since 1896, the Association has conferred over a thousand awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,400 entries by nearly 150 dedicated prize committee members. The names, publications, and projects of those who received these awards are a catalog of the best work produced in the historical discipline. Please join us at the ceremony in January to honor this year’s recipients.
Awards for Publications
The Herbert Baxter Adams Prizefor an author’s first book in European history from 1815 through the 20th century
Mar Hicks (Illinois Inst. of Technology) for Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing (MIT Press, 2018)
The George Louis Beer Prizein European international history since 1895
Quinn Slobodian (Wellesley Coll.) for Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard Univ. Press, 2018)
The Jerry Bentley Prizein world history
Priya Satia (Stanford Univ.) for Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Penguin Press and Stanford Univ. Press, 2018)
The Albert J. Beveridge Awardon the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada, from 1492 to the present
Nan Enstad (Univ. of Wisconsin–Madison) for Cigarettes, Inc.: An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2018)
The James Henry Breasted Prizein any field of history prior to CE 1000
Jack Tannous (Princeton Univ.) for The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers (Princeton Univ. Press, 2018)
The Raymond J. Cunningham Prizefor the best article published in a history department journal written by an undergraduate student
Lena Giger (Stanford Univ., BA 2019) for “The Right to Participate and the Right to Compete: Stanford Women’s Athletics, 1956–1995,” Herodotus (Spring 2019); faculty advisor: Estelle Freedman (Stanford Univ.)
The John H. Dunning Prizefor the most outstanding book in US history
Christina Snyder (Penn State Univ.) for Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017)
The John K. Fairbank Prizefor East Asian history since 1800
Chris Courtney (Durham Univ.) for The Nature of Disaster in China: The 1931 Yangzi River Flood (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
The Morris D. Forkosch Prizein the field of British, British imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485
Robert Saunders (Queen Mary Univ. of London) for Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
The Leo Gershoy Awardin the fields of 17th- and 18th-century western European history
Hugh Cagle (Univ. of Utah) for Assembling the Tropics: Science and Medicine in Portugal’s Empire, 1450–1700 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
The William and Edwyna Gilbert Awardfor the best article in a journal, magazine, or other serial on teaching history
Sam Wineburg (Stanford Univ.), Mark Smith (Stanford History Education Group), and Joel Breakstone (Stanford Univ.), for “What Is Learned in College History Classes?” Journal of American History 104 (March 2018)
The J. Franklin Jameson Awardfor the outstanding achievement in the editing of historical primary sources
Bettine Birge (Univ. of Southern California) for Marriage and the Law in the Age of Khubilai Khan: Cases from the Yuan dianzhang (Harvard Univ. Press, 2017)
The Friedrich Katz Prizein Latin American and Caribbean history
Michel Gobat (Univ. of Pittsburgh) for Empire by Invitation: William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central America (Harvard Univ. Press, 2018)
The Joan Kelly Memorial Prizefor women’s history and/or feminist theory
Nicole E. Barnes (Duke Univ.) for Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937–1945 (Univ. of California Press, 2018)
The Martin A. Klein Prizein African history
Michael A. Gomez (New York Univ.) for African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton Univ. Press, 2018)
The Littleton-Griswold Prizein US law and society, broadly defined
Martha S. Jones (Johns Hopkins Univ.) for Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
The J. Russell Major Prizefor French history
Venus Bivar (Washington Univ. in St. Louis) for Organic Resistance: The Struggle over Industrial Farming in Postwar France (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2018)
The Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prizein Italian history or Italian-American relations
Helena Katalin Szépe (Univ. of South Florida) for Venice Illuminated: Power and Painting in Renaissance Manuscripts (Yale Univ. Press, 2018)
The George L. Mosse Prizein the intellectual and cultural history of Europe since 1500
Guy Beiner (Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev) for Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford Univ. Press, 2018)
The John E. O’Connor Film Awardfor outstanding interpretations of history through film
Documentary: Bisbee ’17, Robert Greene, director and editor; Douglas Tirola, Susan Bedusa, Bennett Elliott, producers (4th Row Films, 2018)
Dramatic Feature: Colette, Wash Westmoreland, director; Elizabeth Karlsen, Pamela Koffler, Michel Litvak, Christine Vachon, producers (Killer Content, Number 9 Films, 2018)
The Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prizein the history of journalism
Phoebe Musandu (Georgetown Univ., Qatar) for Pressing Interests: The Agenda and Influence of a Colonial East African Newspaper Sector (McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 2018)
The James A. Rawley Prizefor the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century
Elena A. Schneider (Univ. of California, Berkeley) for The Occupation of Havana: War, Trade, and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2018)
The John F. Richards Prizefor South Asian history
Sebastian R. Prange (Univ. of British Columbia) for Monsoon Islam: Trade and Faith on the Medieval Malabar Coast (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
The Dorothy Rosenberg Prizein the history of the Jewish diaspora
James Loeffler (Univ. of Virginia) for Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale Univ. Press, 2018)
The Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital Historyto a freely available new media project
Robert K. Nelson, Justin Madron, Nathaniel Ayers, and Edward Ayers (Digital Scholarship Lab, Univ. of Richmond) for American Panorama: An Atlas of United States History
The Wesley-Logan Prizein African diaspora history
Yuko Miki (Fordham Univ.) for Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2018)
Awards for Scholarly and Professional Distinction
The Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Awardfor outstanding postsecondary history teaching
Trevor Getz (San Francisco State Univ.)
The Beveridge Family Teaching Prizefor distinguished K–12 history teaching
John Hopper (Granada Public Schools, CO)
Equity Awardsfor individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession
Individual: Calvin White Jr. (Univ. of Arkansas)
Institution: Howard University, Department of History,
The Herbert Feis Awardfor distinguished contributions to public history
Sonia Hernandez (Texas A&M Univ.), Trinidad Gonzales (South Texas Coll.), John Morán González (Univ. of Texas at Austin), Benjamin Johnson (Loyola Univ. of Chicago), and Monica Muñoz Martinez (Brown Univ.) for the Refusing to Forget project
The Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Awardfor teachers of history who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives
Stephen Sullivan (Sacred Heart Academy, Hempstead, NY)
The Honorary Foreign Memberfor a foreign scholar who is distinguished in his or her field and who has “notably aided the work of American historians”
Ramachandra Guha, India
The Award for Scholarly Distinctionto senior historians for lifetime achievement
Mary Elizabeth Berry (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Evelyn S. Rawski (Univ. of Pittsburgh)
Devon Reich is operations and marketing assistant at the AHA.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Attribution must provide author name, article title, Perspectives on History, date of publication, and a link to this page. This license applies only to the article, not to text or images used here by permission.
