S-USIH PRIZES
The Society for U.S. Intellectual History offers different prizes that promote and applaud the diversity of work that helps define our field. Each prize comes with distinct criteria and each will be awarded during the annual conference. For additional information or questions please contact: Raymond Haberski, Jr.
S-USIH ANNUAL BOOK PRIZE
The Society for U. S. Intellectual History presents an Annual Book Award for the best book in American intellectual history. The book should be a work of original scholarship. Books eligible for the award must be published in English within the calendar year directly prior to the year the prize will be awarded. Any member of the Society or publisher may nominate books for the award. The winner and finalists will be announced no later than three months before the prize is awarded; the winner will receive a $250.00 prize.
A copy of the nominated book must be sent to each of the book prize committee members. For information about the current book prize committee, please see the annual book prize page.
Past winners:
2021: Andrew Jewett, Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2020)
2020: Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (Princeton University Press, 2019). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Forrester here.
2019: Keith Woodhouse, The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism (Columbia University Press, 2018). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Woodhouse here.
2018: Eli Cook, The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life (Harvard University Press, 2017). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Cook here.
2017: Jan Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana (Mohr Siebeck, 2016). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Stievermann here.
2016 co-winners:
Sarah Bridger, Scientists at War: The Ethics of Cold War Weapons Research (Harvard University Press, 2015). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Bridger here.
Daniel Immerwahr, Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Development (Harvard University Press, 2015)
2015: Ruben Flores, Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Flores here.
2014: Ajay K. Mehrotra’s Making the Modern American Fiscal State: Law, Politics, and the Rise of Progressive Taxation, 1877-1929 (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Mehrotra here.
2013: Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Read our Spotlight interview with Dr. Ratner-Rosenhagen here.
THE DOROTHY ROSS PRIZE: S-USIH annual prize for best essay
The Society for U.S. Intellectual History offers the Dorothy Ross Prize, awarded annually for the best academic article in U.S. intellectual history published in the previous calendar year by an emerging scholar (defined as a graduate student or a scholar within 5 years of the PhD at the time of the article’s publication). The article can be published in any academic journal, and we expect submissions to come from a wide range of historical journals. In addition to being recognized at the annual conference, the Dorothy Ross Prize will also initially come with a cash award of $500.
Past winners:
2021: Asheesh Kapur Siddique, “The Archival Epistemology of Political Economy in the Early Modern British Atlantic,” published in the William & Mary Quarterly 3rd Ser., 77, No. 4 (Oct. 2020), 641-674
2020: Chris Suh, “‘America’s Gunpowder Women:’ Pearl S. Buck and the Struggle for American Feminism, 1937-1941,” Pacific Historical Review Vol. 88, No. 2 (Spring 2019), 175-207
2019: Eran Zelnik, “Yankees, Doodles, Fops, and Cuckolds: Compromised Manhood and Provincialism in the Revolutionary Period, 1740-1781,” Early American Studies (Summer, 2018), 514-544. Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Zelnik here.
2018: P. Mackenzie Bok, “To the Mountaintop Again: The Early Rawls and Post-Protestant Ethics in Postwar America,” Modern Intellectual History 14 (2017), 142-85
2017: Nick Witham, “Popular History, Postwar Liberalism and the Role of the Public Intellectual in Richard Hofstadter’s The America Political Tradition (1948),” The Historical Journal 59(4), 1133-1155.
2016: Michael G. Thompson, “Sherwood Eddy, the Missionary Enterprise, and the Rise of Christian Internationalism in the 1920s,” Modern Intellectual History 12:1 (April 2015), 65-93. Read our Spotlight/Insight interview with Dr. Thompson here.
For information on how to submit articles for this year’s Dorothy Ross Prize, please click here.
In bestowing this award, the Society is delighted to honor the work of Dorothy Ross, a pioneering historian of psychology and the origins of modern social science, as well as a prominent voice in diversifying our field. The Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emerita of History at Johns Hopkins University, Ross took special interest in working with emerging scholars, so the award aligns nicely with one of her primary interests. Along with several other professional positions, Ross currently sits on S-USIH’s Board of Advisors.
Those who would like to contribute funds to the new prize are encouraged to do so by specifying “The Dorothy Ross Award” from the Society’s DONATE page. All donations are tax-deductable.
S-USIH/JOHN DEWEY FOUNDATION BOOK PRIZE
The Society for U.S. Intellectual History announces a new prize, to be given triennially, for the best book in the History of American Philosophy, broadly conceived. Funded by a generous grant from the John Dewey Foundation, this prize will be named The John Dewey Prize, and will consist of a cash award of $500. The prize will be given every three years, beginning in 2018, for a book of original scholarship published in the previous three calendar years. We honor the legacy of the Dewey Foundation, and its commitment to the scholarly study of the work of Dewey and American philosophy, and look to support one aspect of that legacy: the commitment to the historical study of philosophy and formal thought.
SUSIH currently awards an annual book prize for the best work in American intellectual history, and will continue to do so. The Dewey Prize supplements the already existing book prize by recognizing the history of philosophy and formal argumentation as a distinct area of study within the broader domain of intellectual history. But, in the spirit of Dewey, the prize will also consider “philosophy” to refer to a broader domain than a narrow and technical definition of the discipline of philosophy might allow. The Society will appoint a committee of scholars and issue a call for nominations in the year preceding the granting of the award. The Society for U.S. Intellectual History thanks the Dewey Foundation and its officers for this generous bequest.
Previous winners:
2021: Andrew Jewett, Science Under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2020)
2017: John Kaag, American Philosophy: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)