At its 85th annual meeting, held in conjunction with the AHA's 119th annual meeting, the American Catholic Historical Association awarded its John Gilmary Shea Prize to Michael B. Gross, associate professor of history at East Carolina State University, for his book, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2004). The judging committee's citation read, "Gross has read all the pertinent archival sources for this trenchant, revisionist study of nineteenth-century German liberalism and the Kulturkampf. His sensitivity to such varied, often neglected aspects of the topic as the role of women in the community and the impact of Catholic missions on German Protestantism, is a refreshing expansion of focus.

Gross received his BA from Chicago University, his MA from Columbia University, and his PhD from Brown University. He joined East Carolina State University in 1997. He is currently working on a book to be titled "The Nun in the Dungeon: Sensationalism, Catholicism, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany."

The association conferred its Howard R. Marraro Prize on Samantha Kelly, assistant professor of history at Rutgers University. She was honored for her book, The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309–1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship (Brill, 2003).