Tower Bridge and Old Sacramento Waterfront. Source: Visit Sacramento
The OAH sponsors and co-sponsors dozens of awards, grants, and fellowships annually. Here are the 2018 winners, announced at the Annual Meeting awards ceremony.
Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award for an individual or individuals whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history.
Linda K. Kerber, Emerita, University of Iowa
Friend of History Award recognizes an institution or organization, or an individual working primarily outside college or university settings, for outstanding support of historical research, the public presentation of American history, or the work of the OAH.
The Civil War Trust, civilwar.org
Frederick Jackson Turner Award for a first scholarly book dealing with some aspect of American history.
Brian McCammack, Lake Forest College, Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago (Harvard University Press)
Honorable Mention
Courtney Fullilove, Wesleyan University, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (The University of Chicago Press)
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Cornell University, Getting Tough: Welfare and Imprisonment in 1970s America (Princeton University Press)
Merle Curti Intellectual History Award for the best book published in American intellectual history.
Brittney C. Cooper, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (University of Illinois Press)
Merle Curti Social History Award for the best book published in American social history.
Tiya Miles, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (The New Press)
Richard W. Leopold Prize for the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, historical activities of the federal government, documentary histories, or biography written by a U.S. government historian or federal contract historian.
Richard S. Faulkner, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier in World War I (University Press of Kansas)
Avery O. Craven Award for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction, with the exception of works of purely military history.
Edward L. Ayers, University of Richmond, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America (W. W. Norton & Company)
James A. Rawley Prize for the best book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States.
Kelly Lytle Hernández, University of California, Los Angeles, City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771–1965 (University of North Carolina Press)
Tiya Miles, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (The New Press)
Ellis W. Hawley Prize for the best book-length historical study of the political economy, politics, or institutions of the United States, in its domestic or international affairs, from the Civil War to the present.
Richard White, Stanford University, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896 (Oxford University Press)
Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for the best book on the civil rights struggle from the beginnings of the nation to the present.
Ula Yvette Taylor, University of California, Berkeley, The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam (University of North Carolina Press)
Lawrence W. Levine Award for the best book in American cultural history.
Cary Cordova, University of Texas at Austin, The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco (University of Pennsylvania Press)
Darlene Clark Hine Award for the best book in African American women’s and gender history.
Deirdre Cooper Owens, Queens College, CUNY, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology (University of Georgia Press)
Honorable Mention
Ashley D. Farmer, Boston University, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era (University of North Carolina Press)
David Montgomery Award for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history, with cosponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA).
Lane Windham, Georgetown University, Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide (University of North Carolina Press)
Mary Nickliss Prize in U.S. Women’s and/or Gender History for the most original book in U.S. women’s and/or gender history.
Tera W. Hunter, Princeton University, Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Harvard University Press)
Honorable Mention
C. Riley Snorton, Cornell University / University of Southern California, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (University of Minnesota Press)
Lerner-Scott Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history.
Alexandra J. Finley, Mississippi State University, “Blood Money: Sex, Family, and Finance in the Antebellum Slave Trade” [College of William & Mary dissertation, with advisers Scott Nelson (chair), Cindy Hahamovitch, Hannah Rosen, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.]
Louis Pelzer Memorial Award for the best essay in American history by a graduate student.
Anne Gray Fischer, Brown University, “‘Land of the White Hunter’: Legal Liberalism and the Racial Politics of Morals Enforcement in Midcentury Los Angeles.”
Binkley-Stephenson Award for the best article that appeared in the Journal of American History during the preceding calendar year.
Robert Lee, Harvard University, “Accounting for Conquest: The Price of the Louisiana Purchase of Indian Country” (March 2017)
Huggins-Quarles Award for graduate students of color to assist them with expenses related to travel to research collections for the completion of the PhD dissertation.
Nakia D. Parker, University of Texas at Austin, “Trails of Tears and Freedom: Slavery, Migration, and Emancipation in the Indian Territory Borderlands, 1830–1907”
John D’Emilio LGBTQ History Dissertation Award for the best PhD dissertation in U.S. LGBTQ history.
Chelsea Del Rio, CUNY–LaGuardia Community College, “ ‘That Women Could Matter’ : Building Lesbian Feminism in California, 1955–1982”
John Higham Research Fellowship for graduate students writing doctoral dissertations for a PhD in American history.
Katherine Carper, Boston College, “The Business of Migration, 1830–1880”
Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Teacher of the Year Award for contributions made by precollegiate teachers to improve history education within the field of American history.
Christopher W. Stanley, Ponaganset High School, North Scituate, Rhode Island
Erik Barnouw Award for outstanding programming on television, or in documentary film, concerned with American history, the study of American history, and/or the promotion of American history.
The Vietnam War, a co-production of Florentine Films and WETA, Washington, D.C.; Directors: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick; Producers: Sarah Botstein, Lynn Novick, and Ken Burns.
Stanton-Horton Award for Excellence in National Park Service History recognizes excellence in historical projects for, by, and with the National Park Service and is intended to honor projects, parks, or programs that make the NPS a leader in promoting public understanding of and engagement with American history.
Museum Management Program, Treasured Landscapes: National Park Service Art Collections Tell America’s Stories (book, online exhibit, lesson plans).
OAH/JAAS Japan Residencies Program
The OAH and the Japanese Association for American Studies (JAAS), with the generous support of the Japan–United States Friendship Commission, select two U.S. historians to spend two weeks at Japanese universities giving lectures, seminars, advising students and researchers interested in the American past, and joining in the collegiality of the host institution. It is part of an exchange program that also brings Japanese graduate students who are studying in the United States to the OAH Annual Meeting.
U.S. historians
Katherine Benton-Cohen, Georgetown University, Chuo University
Bethel Saler, Haverford College, Fukuoka University
Japanese graduate students
Keiko Fukunishi, University of Hawai’i
Minami Nishioka, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Masayoshi Yamada, University of California, Los Angeles
Germany Residency Program
Thanks to a generous grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the OAH is pleased to continue the Germany Residency Program in American history at the University of Tübingen. The resident scholar will offer a seminar on a U.S. history topic of his or her design.
Peter Cole, Western Illinois University
China Residencies Program
Thanks to a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, the Organization of American Historians and the American History Research Association of China (AHRAC) are pleased to continue the exchange program between the two organizations.
Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University, Zhejiang University
Julie Greene, University of Maryland, College Park, Sichuan University
Natalia Molina, University of California, San Diego, Wuhan University
Three Chinese scholars received funding to attend this year’s OAH Annual Meeting and spend time in residence at a U.S. university following the meeting.
Shen Hou, Renmin University of China, hosted by Stanford University
Du Hua, Wuhan University, hosted by Boston University
Gao Yanjie, Xiamen University, hosted by the University of Maryland, College Park
Samuel and Marion Merrill Graduate Student Travel Grants help sponsor the travel-related costs of graduate students who are confirmed as participants on the OAH conference program and who incur expenses traveling to the annual meeting.
Eddie Bonilla, Michigan State University
Jonathan Lande, Tougaloo College and Brown University
Jody Noll, Georgia State University
Nakia D. Parker, University of Texas at Austin
Sarah E. Patterson, Florida State University
OAH Presidents’ Travel Fund for Emerging Historians provides travel stipends for up to five graduate students and recent PhDs in history (no more than four years from date of degree) whose papers or panels/sessions have been accepted by the OAH Program Committee for inclusion on the annual meeting program.
Julia Bowes, Rutgers University
Annelise Heinz, University of Texas at Dallas
Mariona Lloret, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Sarah Miller-Davenport, University of Sheffield
Marc Reyes, University of Connecticut
For more on the OAH 2018 Annual Meeting, check out our previews of panels and daily event highlights.
