The Society for Italian Historical Studies (SIHS), in affiliation with the American Historical Association, offers a prize of $400 for the Alan Reinerman Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript on the history of Italy of dissertation length. Since the object of the award is to encourage fresh interest in Italian history, the prize is offered for the first or second study in the field by a scholar who has received the Ph.D. since January 1 of the previous year. Only current members of the Society for Italian Historical Studies (SIHS) will be considered.
Only manuscripts that are judged worthy of scholarly publication will be considered. Acceptance of a study for publication during the period of competition will not disqualify it from consideration. Scholars and students regularly resident in the United States or in Canada are eligible for the award. The SIHS reserves the right to withhold the prize if no manuscript deemed worthy is submitted. Please do not send any recommendations.
The prize will be announced at the SIHS’s business meeting and the annual American Historical Association conference.
One PDF copy of the work, with a brief curriculum vitae, should be sent by email to each of the following committee members; they must be received no later than September 30 of the current year.
Award Committee
Stefania Tutino (Committee Chair)
History Department
University of California, Los Angeles
tutino@history.ucla.edu
Corinne Wieben
Department of History
University of Northern Colorado
Corinne.Wieben@unco.edu
Molly Tambor
Department of History
Long Island University
molly.tambor@liu.edu
A brief curriculum vita and the title of the entry should also be sent to the Executive Secretary, to whom all requests for further information should be addressed:
James Palmer
Executive Secretary / SIHS
History Department
Florida State University
japalmer@fsu.edu
This Year’s Recipients
Caroline Murphy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Waters and Welfare: Rivers, Infrastructure, and the Territorial Imagination in Grand Ducal Tuscany, 1549-1609”
Dr. Murphy’s dissertation examines the practical and intellectual work done by the Tuscan government to deal with the environmental, economic, and political challenges posed by flooding, using this as a new and exciting lens from which to examine early modern Florentine political economy and political culture. She analyzes how Tuscan leaders tried to organize and arrange space as a function of their political ambitions, and weaves together environmental history, history of architecture, history of technology, and political, social, and economic concerns.
(Honorable mention): Noelle Turtur, Columbia University, “Making Fascist Empire Work: Italian Enterprises, Labor, and Organized-Community in Occupied Ethiopia, 1896-1943.”
Dr. Turtur’s work examines the intertwining of state, settler, and local activity in the enterprises operating in Italian East Africa, which relied on various combinations of public, parastatal, and private resources, personnel, and capital. Her dissertation intervenes in important ways in the ongoing re-evaluation of empire in Italian historiography, adding to our growing reassessment of Italian empire as absolutely comparable to and informative of European imperial histories more generally, while allowing its specificities and individual agents to emerge in their own stories.
Past Recipients
- 2023 – Luca Martino Levi, Welfare by Decree: The Making of Italian Social- Insurance Legislation 1908-1920
- 2023 – Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore,The Reinvention of Theriac. Pharmacy, State, and the Market in Italy (1490-1640)
- 2022 – Tommaso Stefini, Commerce and Justice: Ottoman and Venetian Courts in Istanbul during the Seventeenth Century
- 2021 – Rachel Midura, Masters of the Post: Northern Italy and European Communications Networks, 1530-1730
- 2020 – Joel Pattison, Trade and Religious Boundaries in the Medieval Maghrib: Genoese Merchants, Their Products and Islamic Law; Luke Gramith, Liberation by Emigration: Italian Communists, the Cold War, and West-East Migration from Venezia Giulia, 1945-1949
- 2019 – Mackenzie Cooley, Animal Empires: The Perfection of Nature Between Europe and the Americas, 1492-1630
- 2018 – Kathryn Taylor, Orbis and Urbis: Ethnographic Thought in Early Modern Venice
- 2017 – Hannah Florence Marcus, Banned Books: Medicine, Readers and Censors in Early Modern Italy, 1559-1664
- 2016 – Hannah Barker, Egyptian and Italian Merchants in the Black Sea Slave Trade, 1260-1500;
- 2016 – Brian Brege, The Empire that Wasn’t: The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Empire, 1574-1609
- 2015 – Matthew Gaetano, Renaissance Thomism at the University of Padua, 1465-1583
- 2014 – Giuliana Chamedes, The Vatican and the Making of the Atlantic Order, 1920-1960
- 2013 – Andrew Berns, The Natural Philosophy of the Biblical World: Jewish and Christian Physicians in the Late Italian Renaissance
- 2011 – Caroline Hillard, An Alternate Antiquity: The Etruscans in Renaissance Florence and Rome
- 2009 – Elizabeth Bernhardt, Genevra Sforza and the Bentivoglio: Family, Politics and Reputation in Renaissance Bologna
- 2008 – Joshua Arthurs, “A Revolution in the Idea of Rome”: Excavating Modernity in Fascist Italy
- 2007 – Emily O’Brien, The Anatomy of an Apology: The War against Conciliarism
- 2006 – Paul A. Garfinkel, Criminal Law and Juridical Culture in Liberal and Fascist Italy
- 2005 – Francesca Trivellato, Trading Diasporas and Trading Networks in the Early Modern Period: A Sephardic Partnership of Livorno in the Mediterranean, Europe, and Portuguese India (ca. 1700-1750)
- 2004 – Anne Wingenter, Le veterane del dolore: Mothers and Widows of the “Fallen” in Fascist Italy
- 2002 – Mary Hewlett, Women, Sexual Abuse and Sodomy in Late Renaissance Lucca
- 2001 – Emyln Eisenach, Marriage, Concubinage and Marriage Dissolution in 16th Century Verona
- 2000 – David d’Andrea, Civic Christianity in 15th Century Treviso: The Confraternity and Hospital of Santa Maria dei Battuti
- 1999 – Stephen C. Soper, A Context for Rule: Associations, Public Life and Liberal Ideology of 19th Century Italy
- 1998 – Victoria M. Morse, A Complex Terrain: Church, Society and the Individual in the Works of Opicino de Canistris
- 1997 – Stanislao Pugliese, Socialist Heretic and Humanist: Carlo Roselli in Italy and in Exile
- 1996 – Weitse DeBoer, Sinews of Discipline
- 1993 – Silvana Patriarca, Number and the Nation: The Statistical Representation of Italy, 1820-1871
- 1992 – Marla S. Stone, The Politics of Cultural Production: The Exhibition in Fascist Italy, 1928-1942
- 1991 – Geoffrey A. Haywood, Sidney Sonnino and Liberal Italy, 1847-1901 and Paolo Squatriti, Water and Society in Late Antique and Early Italy
* This award was formerly called the Ezio Cappadocia Prize for Best Unpublished Manuscript