The SIHS Article Prize for Medieval and Early Modern Italian History will be awarded to the best English-language, peer-reviewed journal article made public (either in published form or on a “FirstView platform”) in the calendar year 2023 on Italian history broadly defined by an early career author. The time period for “Medieval-Early Modern” includes roughly from the fifth century to the Napoleonic Wars. Geographical scope and disciplinary methodology are defined in the broadest possible terms. Early career refers to anyone who is in the process of completing their PhD or anyone who was within 6 years of completion when the article was made public.
Only members of the Society of Italian Historical Studies (SIHS) will be considered (membership to SIHS for anyone without a tenure track job is $10/year, for tenure track faculty it is $30/year). The award will be presented at the annual SIHS meeting at the American Historical Association in January 2025; efforts to make the article open-access after the announcement of the win will also be made.
A digital version of the article should be submitted to the SIHS prize committee at SIHS.early.modern@gmail.com by July 1, 2024 with a one-page CV attached that indicates PhD status or date of completion. The prize consists of a $100 monetary reward, as well as a feature on the SIHS website including comments on why the article was selected and an interview with the author published on the SIHS website.
To Apply send to SIHS.early.modern@gmail.com:
- Digital (pdf) version of article in published or FirstView format
- One-page CV (pdf), indicating PhD status (if in progress or when it was completed)
Award Committee
Carrie Beneš (chair)
Professor of History
New College of Florida
benes@ncf.edu
Joshua Birk
Professor of History
Smith College
jcbirk@smith.edu
Nicholas Terpstra
Professor of History
University of Toronto
nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca
This Year’s Recipient – Winner: Catherine Ferrari
Catherine Ferrari, “The Widow, the Gambler, and the Unruly Witnesses: Witness Testimony and Political Agency in a Lawsuit in Early Modern Piedmont,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 53.4 (2022): 889–913
The year’s SIHS committee awards the prize for an outstanding article on medieval or early modern Italian history to Catherine Ferrari, for her article, “The Widow, the Gambler, and the Unruly Witnesses: Witness Testimony and Political Agency in a Lawsuit in Early Modern Piedmont,” Sixteenth-Century Journal4 (2022): 889–913. In this carefully reasoned and clearly written article, Ferrari uses the evidence of witness testimonies to re-center the study of law and lawsuits away from litigants and toward their witnesses: this refocusing has the salutary effect of emphasizing those witnesses’ own agency, reminding us that even legal records are constructed narratives, which litigants occasionally find themselves unable to control. Ferrari’s analysis of a single inheritance dispute in seventeenth-century Piedmont nuances our understanding of the transmission of property in patriarchal inheritance settings, while skillfully framing the legal squabbles and social connections of a single family within the broader context of the Savoy Civil War. Ferrari’s study will interest legal, economic, and political historians beyond the history of Savoy and seventeenth-century Italy.
Honorable Mention – Rachel Midura
Rachel Midura, “‘They Hide from Me, Like the Devil from the Cross’: Transalpine Postal Routes as Intelligence Work, 1555–1645,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association (2023): 303–27.
The committee awards an honorable mention to Rachel Midura for her article, “‘They Hide from Me, Like the Devil from the Cross’: Transalpine Postal Routes as Intelligence Work, 1555–1645,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association (2023): 303–27. Midura’s analysis of the seemingly-banal documentation of early modern postal routes between Italy and the Holy Roman Empire reveals how strategic battles over information security during the Thirty Years’ War affected military tactics and international relations on a broad scale. Midura’s lively account confirms that espionage, covert ops, and disinformation campaigns are not inventions of the modern day.
Past Recipients
- 2023 – Matteo Pompermaier, “Credit and Poverty in Early Modern Venice”
- 2023 – Melissa Vise, “Compositio: Horizons of Truth in the Decameron, the Notarial Register, and Civic Peace Pacts,”
- 2022 – Erin Maglaque, “Care Work and the Family in Catholic Reformation Tuscany”
- 2021 – Michael Martoccio, “The Art of Mercato: Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany”