Presidents Book Award
A $1000 prize is awarded annually for a meritorious first work by an early-career scholar. Entrants are judged on scholarly significance, interdisciplinary reach, and methodological innovativeness within monographs analyzing past structures and events and change over time. Books with a copyright date of the previous year that are published within eight years of the author’s Ph.D. are eligible for consideration.
Please note: the 2023 award committees are still being formed. Please check back periodically for updates.
Award Committee (in process)
- Jeffrey Beemer (SSHA, Executive Director)
President’s Book Award
Social Science History Association
176 Savery Rd
Searsport, ME 04974
jbeemer@ssha.org
Past Winners
| Year | Author | Institution | Title | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | James Poskett | University of Warwick | Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920 | ||
| 2019 | Seth Archer | Utah State University | Sharks upon the Land: Colonialism, Indigenous Health, and Culture in Hawai’i, 1778–1855 | ||
| 2018 | Keri Leigh Merritt | Independent Scholar | Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South | ||
| 2018 | Taisu Zhang | Yale | The Laws and Economics of Confucianism: Kinship and Property in Preindustrial China and England | ||
| 2017 | William Rankin | Yale | After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century | ||
| 2016 | Jonathan Wyrtzen | Yale | Making Morocco: Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity | ||
| 2015 | Aaron Panofsky | University of Chicago | Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics | ||
| 2014 | Vanessa Ogle | University of Pennsylvania | Contesting Time: The Global Struggle for Uniformity and Its Unintended Consequences, 1870s-1950s | ||
| 2013 | Yiching Wu | University of Toronto | The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis | ||
| 2012 | Lisa Stampniktzky | Harvard | Disciplining Terror-How Experts Invented Terrorism | ||
| 2011 | Elizabeth Popp Berman | Berkeley | Creating the Market University | ||
| 2010 | Ho-fung Hung | Johns Hopkins | Protests with Chinese Characteristics | ||
| 2009 | Greta Krippner | Michigan | Capitalizing on Crisis | ||
| 2008 | Anthony Chen | Northwestern | The Fifth Freedom | ||
| 2007 | Brodwyn Fischer | University of Chicago | For our Poverty of Rights | ||
| 2007 | Issac Martin | Berkeley | In Defense of Privilege | ||
| 2006 | Sarah Igo | Vanderbilt | The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens and the Making of a Mass Public | ||
| 2005 | Joseph Gerteis | Minnesota | Class and the Color Line | ||
| 2004 | Steven Pfaff | Washington | Fight or Flight? Exit Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany | ||
| 2003 | Geoff Cunfer | University of Saskatchewan | On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment | ||
| 2002 | Robert D. Johnson | Yale | The Radical Middle Class | ||
| 2001 | Stephen M. Striffler | University of Arkansas | In the Shadow of State and Capital | ||
| 2000 | Mark S. Weiner | Yale | Americans Without Law | ||
| 1999 | Daniel Lord Smail | Fordham | Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille | ||
| 1998 | Robert Freeland | Stanford | The Struggle for Control of the Modern Corporation | ||
| 1997 | Robert Lieberman | Columbia | Shifting the Color Line | ||
| 1996 | Thomas Sugrue | University of Pennsylvania | The Origins of the Urban Crisis | ||
| 1995 | Leslie J. Reagan | University of Illinois | When Abortion Was a Crime | ||
| 1994 | Mary E. Odem | Emory | Delinquent Daughters | ||
| 1993 | Mauro F. Guillen | MIT | Models of Management | ||
| 1992 | Stewart Tolnay | Albany | Festival of Violence | ||
| 1991 | no award given | ||||
| 1990 | Richard Maddox | Augustana College | El Castillo | ||
| 1989 | no award given | ||||
| 1988 | Gary A. Abraham | St. Bonaventure | Max Weber and the Jewish Question |
Announcements
2023 Annual Conference submissions now open
SSHA is now accepting paper and session submissions for the 2023 Annual Conference. Please visit our submission portal ssha2023.ssha.org to submit a paper or session proposal by March 1, 2023.
Submission Portal
Standard of Living
Essays on Economics, History, and Religion
in Honor of John E. Murray
Please read about a new anthology that honors the life and work of American economist John E. Murray, a long-time member of and dear friend to the Social Science History Association.
In Honor of John E. Murray
SSHA Call for Papers
49th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association
Washington DC, USA, November 16-19, 2023
Submission Deadline: March 1, 2023