2012 OAH Award and Prize Winners

The Organization of American Historians sponsors annual awards and prizes given in recognition of scholarly and professional achievements in the field of American history. Please join us in congratulating the following 2012 OAH award and prize winners. For a full descriptions of each winner, view the 2012 Award Ceremony Booklet.

2012 Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award
for an individual or individuals whose contributions have significantly enriched our understanding and appreciation of American history
Ira Berlin, University of Maryland, College Park

Frederick Jackson Turner Award
for an author’s first scholarly book dealing with some aspect of American history
David Sehat, Georgia State University. The Myth of American Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press)

Merle Curti Award
for the best books published in American intellectual and social history
Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History
Susan J. Pearson, Northwestern University. The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America (The University of Chicago Press)
Merle Curti Award Social History
Cindy Hahamovitch, College of William & Mary. No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton University Press)

James A. Rawley Prize
for a book dealing with the history of race relations in the United States
Cindy Hahamovitch, College of William & Mary. No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor (Princeton University Press)

Richard W. Leopold Prize
awarded every two years for the best book on foreign policy, military affairs, the historical activities of the federal government, or biography by a government historian
William A. Dobak, The United States Army Center of Military History (retired). Freedom by the Sword: The U.S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867 (The United States Army Center of Military History)

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
Nicole Etcheson, Ball State University. A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community (University Press of Kansas)

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
Darren Dochuk, Purdue University, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

Liberty Legacy Foundation Award
for the best book by a historian on the civil rights struggle from the beginnings of the nation to the present
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, University of Virginia. Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press)

Lawrence W. Levine Award
for the best book in American cultural history
Michael Willrich, Brandeis University. Pox: An American History (Penguin Group, USA)

Darlene Clark Hine Award
for the best book in African American women’s and gender history
Serena Mayeri, University of Pennsylvania Law School. Reasoning from Race: Feminism, Law, and the Civil Rights Revolution (Harvard University Press)

Lerner-Scott Prize
for the best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history
Katherine Turk, Indiana University Maurer School of Law (Spring 2012)/University of Texas at Dallas (Fall 2012) “Equality on Trial: Women and Work in the Age of Title VII” (University of Chicago dissertation)

Louis Pelzer Memorial Award
for the best essay in American history by a graduate student
Hidetaka Hirota, Boston College. “The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy” (scheduled to appear in the March 2013 Journal of American History)

Binkley-Stephenson Award
for the best scholarly article that appeared in the Journal of American History during the preceding calendar year
Kevin J. Mumford, University of Iowa. “The Trouble with Gay Rights: Race and the Politics of Sexual Orientation in Philadelphia, 1969–1982” (June 2011)

David Thelen Award
for the best article on American history published in a foreign language
Nathalie Caron, Université Paris-Est Créteil, and Naomi Wulf, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. “The American Enlightenment: Continuity and Renewal” (Transatlantica, Online Journal of American Studies)

Huggins-Quarles Award
for graduate students of color to assist them with expenses related to travel to research collections for the completion of the Ph.D. dissertation
Mekala S. Audain, Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “Southern Canaan: U.S. Fugitive Slaves in Mexico and the Expanding American Frontier, 1804–1865”

Tachau Teacher of the Year Award
for contributions made by precollegiate teachers to improve history education within the field of American history
Robert Good, Ladue Horton Watkins High School (St. Louis, Missouri)

Erik Barnouw Award
for outstanding programming in television or in documentary film, concerned with American history, the study of American history, and/or the promotion of history
Chad Freidrichs, Stephens College. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History Linda Hoaglund, Director and Producer. ANPO: Art x War

OAH-JAAS Short-Term Residencies
The OAH and the Japanese Association of American Studies, 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.
Scott Laderman, University of Minnesota, Duluth; and Danielle L. McGuire, Wayne State University

Germany Residency Program
Thanks to a generous grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the OAH is pleased to announce the inauguration of the Residency Program in American History–Germany (Germany Residency Program) at the University of Tübingen. The resident scholar will offer a seminar on a U.S. history topic of his or her design.
Bryant Simon, Temple University

OAH/Immigration and Ethnic History Society John Higham Travel Grants
for graduate students to be used toward costs of attending the OAH/IEHS Annual Meeting
Aaron Bryant, University of Maryland, College Park; and Cynthia Greenlee-Donnell, Duke University