Awards / Book Awards and Prizes

Lawrence W. Levine Award

Recognizing the best book in American cultural history.


Overview

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1, 2023

The Lawrence W. Levine Award is given annually by the Organization of American Historians to the author of the best book in American cultural history. Lawrence W. Levine was president of the OAH from 1992–1993.


Requirements

Each entry must be published during the period January 1, 2023 through December 31, 2023.

Submission Process

One copy of each entry, clearly labeled “2024 Lawrence W. Levine Award Entry,” must be mailed directly to the committee members listed below. Each committee member must receive all submissions postmarked by October 1, 2023.

Bound page proofs may be used for books to be published after October 1, 2023 and before January 1, 2024. If a bound page proof is submitted, a bound copy of the book must be sent to each committee member postmarked no later than January 7, 2024.

If a book carries a copyright date that is different from the publication date, but the actual publication date falls during the correct timeframe making it eligible, please include a letter of explanation from the publisher with each copy of the book sent to the committee members.

Please mail submissions to the committee members listed below: 

Erik Seeman, Chair
98 Monroe Drive
Williamsville, NY 14221
Email to provide title(s) you will submit for consideration so the committee can verify that all books have been received: [email protected]

Cindy Ott
Email for mailing address: [email protected]

John Troutman
National Museum of American History
14th and Constitution Ave., NW
NMAH 4212, MRC 616
Washington, DC 20013-7012

Katrina Phillips
168 Hamilton Hills
Independence, MN 55359

Laura Serna
Email for mailing address: [email protected]

Past Winners

2023

James Zarsadiaz, University of San Francisco. Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A. (University of California Press) 

2022

Tiya Alicia Miles, Harvard University, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake (Random House)

2021

Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright Publishing Corporation, W.W. Norton & Company)

2020

Erik R. Seeman, University at Buffalo, Speaking with the Dead in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press)

2019

Monica Muñoz Martinez,Brown University, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Harvard University Press)

2018

Cary Cordova, University of Texas at Austin, The Heart of the Mission: Latino Art and Politics in San Francisco (University of Pennsylvania Press)

2017

John W. Troutman, University of Louisiana, Lafayette/National Museum of American History, Kīkā Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music (University of North Carolina Press)

2016

Benjamin Looker, Saint Louis University, A Nation of Neighborhoods: Imagining Cities, Communities, and Democracy in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press)

2015

Allyson Hobbs, Stanford University, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Harvard University Press)

2014

Shawn Michelle Smith, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, At the Edge of Sight: Photography and the Unseen (Duke University Press)

Honorable Mention: Teresa Barnett, UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research, Sacred Relics: Pieces of the Past in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Chicago Press)

2013

Adria L. Imada, University of California, San Diego, Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire (Duke University Press)

2012

Michael Willrich, Brandeis University, Pox: An American History (Penguin Group, USA)

2011

Heather Murray, University of Ottawa, Not in this Family: Gays and the Meaning of Kinship in Postwar North America (University of Pennsylvania Press)

2010

Kathleen M. Brown, University of Pennsylvania, Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America (Yale University Press)

2009

Peggy Pascoe, University of Oregon, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford University Press)

2008

Daniel R. Mandell, Truman State University, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780–1880 (The Johns Hopkins University Press)