Overview
The Binkley-Stephenson Award is given annually by the Organization of American Historians for the best article that appeared in the Journal of American History during the preceding calendar year. It is named for former OAH presidents and JAH editors, William C. Binkley (1944–1946 president; 1956–1963 editor) and Wendell H. Stephenson (1957–1958 president; 1946–1953 editor).
Eligible recipients must have published an article in the JAH in March, June, September, and December of the previous calendar year.
The recipient of the award is chosen by the Binkley-Stephenson Award Committee and awarded at the annual OAH Conference on American History.
Ji-Yeon Yuh, Northwestern University (Committee Chair)
Peter Martínez, Tarrant County College-Northeast Campus
Traci Parker, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
2023
Seema Sohi, University of Colorado Boulder. “Barred Zones, Rising Tides, and Radical Struggles: The Antiradical and Anti-Asian Dimensions of the 1917 Immigration Act” 2022
Jane Dinwoodie, University College London, “Evading Indian Removal in the American South” (June 2021)
2021
Kornel Chang, Rutgers University–Newark, “Independence without Liberation: Democratization as Decolonization Management in U.S.-Occupied Korea, 1945–1948” (June 2020)
2020
Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Cornell University, “For Labor and Democracy: The Farm Security Administration’s Competing Visions for Farm Workers’ Socioeconomic Reform and Civil Rights in the 1940s” (September 2019)
2019
Thomas B. Robertson, U.S. Education Foundation (Fulbright Nepal), “DDT and the Cold War Jungle: American Environmental and Social Engineering in the Rapti Valley of Nepal” (March 2018)
2018
Robert Lee, Harvard University, “Accounting for Conquest: The Price of the Louisiana Purchase of Indian Country” (March 2017)
2017
Yael A. Sternhell, Tel Aviv University, “The Afterlives of a Confederate Archive: Civil War Documents and the Making of Sectional Reconciliation” (March 2016)
2016
Benjamin A. Coates, Wake Forest University, “Securing Hegemony through Law: Venezuela, the U.S. Asphalt Trust, and the Uses of International Law, 1904–1909” (September 2015)
2015
James D. Rice, State University of New York at Plattsburgh, “Bacon’s Rebellion in Indian Country” (December 2014)
2014
Sarah E. Cornell, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and Free African Americans in Mexico, 1833–1857” (September 2013)
2013
Matthew Avery Sutton, Washington State University, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of the Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in a Global Age” (March 2012)
2012
Kevin J. Mumford, University of Iowa, “The Trouble with Gay Rights: Race and the Politics of Sexual Orientation in Philadelphia, 1969–1982” (June 2011)
2011
Bernhard Rieger, University College London, “From People’s Car to New Beetle: The Transatlantic Journeys of the Volkswagen Beetle” (June 2010)
2010
Volker Janssen, California State University Fullerton, “When the ‘Jungle’ Met the Forest: Public Work, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California” (December 2009)
2009
Tami J. Friedman, Brock University, “Exploiting the North-South Differential: Corporate Power, Southern Politics and the Decline of Organized Labor after World War II” (September 2008)
2008
Kate Masur, Northwestern University, “‘A Rare Phenomenon of Philological Vegetation’: The Word ‘Contraband’ and the Meanings of Emancipation in the United States” (March 2007)
2007
Laura McEnaney, Whittier College, “Nightmares on Elm Street: Demobilizing in Chicago, 1945–1953” (JAH, March 2006)
2006
Jamie J. Fader, Michael B. Katz, and Mark J. Stern, University of Pennsylvania, “The New African American Inequality” (JAH, June 2005)
2005
Jason Opal, Colby College, “Exciting Emulation: Academies and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1780s–820s” (JAH, September 2004)
2004
Gail Radford, State University of New York, Buffalo, “From Municipal Socialism to Public Authorities: Institutional Factors in the Shaping of American Public Enterprise ” (JAH, December 2003)
2003
Michael J. Klarman, University of Virginia, “Is the Supreme Court Sometimes Irrelevant? Race and the Southern Justice System in the 1940s” (JAH, June 2002)
2002
Jeanette Keith, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, “The Politics of Southern Draft Resistance, 1917–918,” (JAH, March 2001)
2001
Elizabeth A. Fenn, George Washington University, “Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst” (JAH, March 2000)
2000
Mary Hershberger, Capital University, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle Against Indian Removal in the 1830s,”(JAH, June, 1999)
1999
Charles Capper, “A Little Beyond: The Problem of the Transcendentalist Movement in American History,” (JAH, September, 1998)
1998
Glenn C. Altschuler, Jean Harvey Baker, Norma Basch, Stuart M. Blumin, Harry L. Watson, “Political Engagement and Disengagement in Antebellum America,” (JAH, December, 1997)
1997
Michael Bellesiles, “The Origins of Gun Culture in the United States, 1760–1865,” (JAH, September, 1996)
1996
Elizabeth B. Clark, “‘The Sacred Rights of the Weak’: Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America,” (JAH, September, 1995)
1995
Lynn Y. Weiner, “Reconstructing Motherhood: The La Leche League in Postwar America,” (JAH, March, 1994)
1994
Peter Way, “Evil Humors and Ardent Spirits: The Rough Culture of Canal Construction Laborers,” (JAH, March, 1993)
1993
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Dis-covering the Subject of the ‘Great Constitutional Discussion,’ 1786–1789,” (JAH, December, 1992)
1992
Daniel Walker Howe, “The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North During the Second Party System,” (March, 1991)
Nancy MacLean, “The Leo Frank Case Reconsidered: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Making of Reactionary Populism,” (December, 1991)
1991
W. Jeffrey Bolster, “‘To Feel Like a Man’: Black Seamen in the Northern States, 1800–1860,” (March, 1990)
1990
Peter H. Argersinger, “The Value of the Vote: Political Representation in the Gilded Age,” (June, 1989)
1989
Richard Oestreicher, “Urban Working-Class Political Behavior and Theories of American Electoral Politics, 1870–940,” (March, 1988)
Shane White, “‘We Dwell in Safety and Pursue Our Honest Callings’: Free Blacks in New York City, 1783–1810,” (September, 1988)
1988
Ellen Carol DuBois, “Working Women, Class Relations, and Suffrage Militance: Harriot Stanton Blatch and the New York Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894–1909,” (June, 1987)
1987
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “Disorderly Women: Gender and Labor Militancy in the Appalachian South,” (September, 1986)
1986
Jo Ann Manfra and Robert R. Dykstra, “Serial Marriage and the Origins of the Black Stepfamily: The Rowanty Evidence,” (June, 1985)
1985
Frank Ninkovich, “The Rockefeller Foundation, China, and Cultural Change,” (March, 1984)
1984
Peter Kolchin, “Reevaluating the Antebellum Slave Community: A Comparative Perspective,” (December, 1983)
1983
Joyce Appleby, “Commercial Farming and the Agrarian Myth,” (March, 1982)
1982
Stanley E. Hilton, “The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War, 1945–1960: End of the Special Relationship,” (December, 1981)
1981
Nelson Lichtenstein, “Auto Workers Militancy and The Structure of Factory Life 1937–1955,” (September, 1980)
1980
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, “Apathy and Death in Early Jamestown” (June, 1979)
1979
Athan Theoharis, “The Truman Administration and the Decline of Civil Liberties,” (March, 1978)
1978
Burton I. Kaufman, “Mideast Multinational Oil, U.S. Foreign Policy and Antitrust, the 1950s,” (March, 1977)
1977
Brian L. Villa, “The U.S. Army, Unconditional Surrender and the Potsdam Proclamation,” (June, 1976)
1976
Richard Allen Gerber, “The Liberal Republican,” (June, 1975)
1975
Albro Martin, “The Troubled Subject of Railroad Regulation in the Gilded Age—A Reappraisal,” (September, 1974)
1974
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Charles Rosenberg, “The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Woman and her Role in Nineteenth-Century America,” (September, 1973)
1973
Richard H. Kohn, “The Washington Administration’s Decision to Crush the Whiskey Rebellion,” (December, 1972)
1972
Clifford W. Trow, “Woodrow Wilson and the Mexican Interventionist Movement of 1919,” (June, 1971)
1971
Edwin A. Weinstein, “Woodrow Wilson’s Neurological Illness,” (September, 1970)
1970
David P. Thelen, “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” (September, 1969)
1969
Paul S. Holbo, “The Convergence of Moods and Cuban-Bond ‘Conspiracy’ of 1898” (June, 1968)
1968
Alan Jones, “Tom M. Cooley and Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism, a Reconsideration,” (March, 1967) Allen Weinstein, “Was There a Crime in 1873? The Case of the Demonetized Dollar,” (September, 1967)
1967
John P. Campbell, “Taft, Roosevelt, and Arbitration Treaties of 1911,” (September, 1966)