Publication Date

October 5, 2015

Perspectives Section

Perspectives Daily

The American Historical Association is pleased to announce the winners of its 2015 prizes, to be awarded at the 130th annual meeting in Atlanta, January 7–10, 2016. The ceremony will be held on Thursday, January 7 in the Hilton Atlanta’s Grand Ballroom D at 7:30 p.m. immediately following the meeting’s welcome 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 almost 1,500 entries by nearly 100 dedicated prize committee members. The names, publications, and projects of those who received these awards are a catalogue 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 Prize in European history from 1815 through the 20th century

Emily J. Levine (Univ. of North Carolina at Greensboro), Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2013)

The George Louis Beer Prize in European international history since 1895

Frederick Cooper (New York Univ.), Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton Univ. Press, 2014)

The Jerry Bentley Prize in world history

Adam Clulow (Monash Univ.), The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia Univ. Press, 2014)

The Albert J. Beveridge Award on the history of the United States, Latin America, or Canada, from 1492 to the present

Elizabeth A. Fenn (Univ. of Colorado Boulder), Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People (Hill & Wang, 2014)

Greg Grandin (New York Univ.), The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (Metropolitan Books, 2014)

The James Henry Breasted Prize in any field of history prior to CE 1000

Nicolas Tackett (Univ. of California, Berkeley), The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (Harvard University Asia Center, 2014)

The Raymond J. Cunningham Prize for the best article published in a history department journal written by an undergraduate student

Michael Welker (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, BA 2014), Faculty Sponsor: James L. Leloudis (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), “Nothing without a Demand: Black Power and Student Activism on North Carolina College Campuses, 1967–1973,” Traces: The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History (Spring 2014)

The John H. Dunning Prize offered biennially in US history

Kate Brown (Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County), Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013)

The John K. Fairbank Prize for East Asian history since 1800

Rian Thum (Loyola Univ. New Orleans), The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History (Harvard Univ. Press, 2014)

The Morris D. Forkosch Prize in the field of British, British Imperial, or British Commonwealth history since 1485

Gregory E. O’Malley (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 ((Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2014))

The Leo Gershoy Award in the fields of 17th- and 18th-century western European history

John C. Rule (Ohio State Univ.) and Ben S. Trotter (Columbus State Community Coll.), A World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State (McGill-Queens Univ. Press, 2014)

The William and Edwyna Gilbert Award for the best article on teaching history

Peter Burkholder (Fairleigh Dickinson Univ.), “A Content Means to a Critical Thinking End: Group Quizzing in History Surveys,” The History Teacher 47, no. 4 (August 2014): 551–78

The J. Franklin Jameson Award offered biennially for the editing of primary sources

Emily Levine (independent scholar), Witness: A Húŋkpapȟa Historian’s Strong-Heart Song of the Lakotas (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2013)

David Luscombe (Univ. of Sheffield), The Letter Collection of Peter Abelard and Heloise (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013)

The Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean history

Ada Ferrer (New York Univ.), Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014)

The Joan Kelly Memorial Prize for women’s history and/or feminist theory

Susan S. Lanser (Brandeis Univ.), The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565–1830 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2014)

The Martin A. Klein Prize  in African history

Frederick Cooper (New York Univ.), Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton Univ. Press, 2014)

The Littleton-Griswold Prize in US law and society, broadly defined

Cornelia H. Dayton (Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs) and Sharon V. Salinger (Univ. of California, Irvine), Robert Love’s Warnings: Searching for Strangers in Colonial Boston (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

The J. Russell Major Prize for French history

Michael Kwass (Johns Hopkins Univ.), Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground (Harvard Univ. Press, 2014)

The Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian history or Italian-American relations

David I. Kertzer (Brown Univ.), The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (Random House, 2014)

The George L. Mosse Prize in the intellectual and cultural history of Europe since 1500

Ekaterina Pravilova (Princeton Univ.), A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Imperial Russia (Princeton Univ. Press, 2014)

The John E. O’Connor Film Award for outstanding interpretations of history through film

Dramatic Feature: 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen, director; Brad Pitt, producer (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2013)

Documentary: The Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels, Tony Buba, director; Marcus Rediker, producer (Univ. of Pittsburgh, 2014)

The James A. Rawley Prize for the integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century

Ada Ferrer (New York Univ.), Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014)

Gregory E. O’Malley (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2014)

The John F. Richards Prize for South Asian history

Richard M. Eaton (Univ. of Arizona) and Phillip B. Wagoner (Wesleyan Univ.), Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300–1600 (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014)

The Dorothy Rosenberg Prize in the history of the Jewish diaspora

Libby Garland (Kingsborough Community Coll., City Univ. of New York), After They Closed the Gates: Jewish Illegal Immigration to the United States, 1921–1965 (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2014)

The Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History to a freely available new media project

The First Days Project, South Asian American Digital Archive

The Wesley-Logan Prize in African diaspora history

Ada Ferrer (New York Univ.), Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2014)

Awards for Scholarly and Professional Distinction

The Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award for outstanding postsecondary history teaching

Kimberley Mangun (Univ. of Utah)

The Beveridge Family Teaching Prize for distinguished K–12 history teaching

Kevin A. Wagner (Carlisle Area School District, Carlisle, PA)

Equity Awards for individuals and institutions that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historic profession

Individual Award: Víctor Macías-González (Univ. of Wisconsin, LaCrosse)

Institutional Award: Jacqueline Looney, on behalf of Duke University Graduate School

The Herbert Feis Award for distinguished contributions to public history

Pamela M. Henson (Smithsonian Institution Archives)

The Nancy Lyman Roelker Mentorship Award for teachers of history who taught, guided, and inspired their students in a way that changed their lives

Brian Balogh (Univ. of Virginia)

The Honorary Foreign Member for a foreign scholar who is distinguished in his or her field and who has “notably aided the work of American historians”

Natsuki Aruga (Saitama Univ., Japan)

The Award for Scholarly Distinction to senior historians for lifetime achievement

Ira Berlin (Univ. of Maryland, College Park)

Asuncion Lavrin (Arizona State Univ.)

This post first appeared on AHA Today.

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Dana Schaffer
Dana Schaffer

American Historical Association