Department Prizes

[For fellowships and awards given to graduate students from outside the History Department, please visit here.]

Each year, the History Department recognizes outstanding graduate students with four awards:

George Romani Prize

This award is given for the best research paper by a First Year Graduate Student. The current amount of this award is $2500.00, which may be split into two awards of $1250.00 each.

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence

This award is given to most outstanding seminar leader and the most outstanding section leader. Awards are given to the highest CTEC (Course and Teacher Evaluation) scorer. The amount of each award is $300.00.

T.W. Heyck Prize

This award, first given in 2008, is for outstanding graduate research in British or Irish History. The current amount of this award is $1000.00.

Harold Perkin Prize

This award is given for the best dissertation of the year. The current amount of this award is $3500.00, which may be split into two awards of $1750.00 each.

 

Past Winners

2011-12

George Romani Prize: Blake Smith, "Diplomacy and its Forms of Knowledge: Anquetil-Duperron, the Balance of Power, and India in the French Global Imaginary, 1778-1803" (Sarah Maza).

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: D'Weston Haywood & Rebecca Marchiel
- section leader: Adam Plaiss & Marlous van Waijenburg

T.W. Heyck Prize: Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson, "British Non-elite Culture in India: Sexuality and Race in the Cantonment, 1858-1914” (Alexandra Owen).

Harold Perkin Prize: Will Cavert, "Producing Pollution: Coal, Smoke and Society in London, 1550-1750" (Ed Muir).

 

2010-11

George Romani Prize: Kyle Burke, "Crossroads of Conservatism: The Manion Forum and the Making of the Transnational Right in the 1960s" (Michael Sherry).

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Teri Chettiar
- section leader: Alex Fontana

T.W. Heyck Prize: Darcy Hughes Heuring, "Health and the Politics of ‘Improvement’ in British Colonial Jamaica, 1914-1945” (Alexandra Owen).

Harold Perkin Prize: Jason Johnson, "Dividing Mödlareuth: The Incorporation of Half a German Village into the GDR Regime, 1945-1989" (Peter Hayes), & Meghan Roberts, "Cradle of Enlightenment: Gens de Lettres, Family Life, and Knowledge-Making in Eighteenth-Century France" (Sarah Maza).

 

2009-10

George Romani Prize: Juri Bottura, "Which Rural Nation? Alberto Torres, Oliveira Vianna, and the Ideal of An Agricultural Brazil in the Early 20th Century," & Adam Plaiss, "The Creation of the American Road/Map System: the Flight Between Public and Private Highways, 1917-1926."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Britt Petersen
- section leader: James Zarsadiaz

T.W. Heyck Prize: William Cavert, "A Right to Clean Air? Coal Smoke, Property, and Nuisance Law in early modern London" and “Toward the Fossil-fueled Economy: Coal, the State, and Society in early modern London” (Ed Muir and Peter Hayes)

Harold Perkin Prize: Gergely Baics, "Feeding Gotham: A Social History of Urban Provisioning, 1780-1860" (Joel Mokyr and Josef Barton), & Elizabeth Casteen, "The Making of a Neapolitan She-Wolf: Gender, Sexuality, and Soverignty and the Reputation of Johanna I of Naples" (Robert Lerner).

2008-09

George Romani Prize: Melissa Vise, "Witnessing Inquisition: Laywomen In Bologna, 1299," & Rachel Taylor, "Porters, Soldiers and Bandits: Male Labour and Aspiration in Unyamwezi c.1840-1893."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Stefanie Bator
- section leader: Andrew Warne

T.W. Heyck Prize: Jane Silloway Smith, "English Catholics and the Forging of the British Nation, 1778-1829" (Bill Heyck)

Harold Perkin Prize: Suzanne LaVere, "Out of the Cloister: Scholastic Exegesis of the Song of Songs, 1100-1340" (Robert Lerner), & Kathryn M. de Luna, "Collecting Food, Cultivating Persons: Wild Resource Use in Central African Political Culture, c. 1000 B.C.E. to c. 1900 C.E." (David Schoenbrun).

2007-08

George Romani Prize: Michael Martoccio, "Negotiated Dominion: The Construction of the Laurentian Territorial State," & Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor, "The Race Tax: Black Chicago’s Fight for Homeownership."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: David Sellers Smith
- section leader: Jason Johnson

T.W. Heyck Prize: Teri Chettiar, "Making Mental Health: Mental Illness and the Emergence of Britain’s Therapeutic Society, 1918-1955" (Alex Owen).

Harold Perkin Prize: Michael Green, "Black Yanks in America's Pacific: Race and the Making of a Military Empire, 1945-1953" (Michael Sherry), & Michael McCoyer, "Darkness of a Different Color: Mexicans and Racial Formation in Greater Chicago, 1916-1960" (Henry Binford).

2006-07

George Romani Prize: Robert Harkins, "Protestant Conformity and Nicholas Grimald's: The Imitation of Cicero in Reformation England." Additionally, honorable mentions were accorded to Alison McGevna, "Stool Pigeon or Savvy Leader?: The Relationship Between Roy Wilkins and the F.B.I. in the 1960s," and Andrew Warne, "The Children of Abraham: Southern Baptists, Judeo-Christianity, and the Evangelical Turn to Philo-Semitism and Pro-Israel Politics."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Erin-Marie Legacey & Ronnie Grinberg
- section leader: Meghann Pytka & Andreana Prichard

Harold Perkin Prize: Erik Gellman, "'Death blow to Jim Crow': The National Negro Congress, 1936-1947" (Nancy MacLean), & Nicholas Baker, "From a civic world to a court society: Culture, class, and politics in Renaissance Florence, 1480-1550" (Ed Muir).

2005-06

George Romani Prize: Fernando Carbajal, "'We Do not Profess to Being Angels...': The T.W.O. Youth Project, the Chicago Red squad, and the End of the War on Poverty."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Tobin Shearer & David Smith
- section leader: Shawn Clybor & Shannon Grady

Harold Perkin Prize: Sarah Ross, "The Birth of Feminism: Woman as Intellect in Renaissance Italy and England" (Ed Muir).

2004-05

George Romani Prize: Courtney Kneupper, "A Case of Mistaken Identity: Rethinking Heresy in Metz in the Fourteenth Century," & Strother Roberts, "Indians, Inuit, and Race: Racialized Differentiation among the Populations Surrounding Hudson’s Bay in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries." Additionally an honorable mention was accorded to Lonnie Robbins, "The Rhetoric of Wit as a Social Mediator in Tudor England."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Erik Gellman & Michael Pelletier
- section leader: Britt Petersen & Tobin Shearer

Harold Perkin Prize: Neil Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal gaze: Ganda Clans and the Construction of an African Metahistory" (David Schoenbrun), & Guy Ortolano, "The 'Two Cultures' Controversy: Radicals, Technocrats, and the Crisis of Postwar Liberalism" (Bill Heyck).

2003-04

George Romani Prize: Gergely Baics, "From Catherine Market to the Cellars: Black Public Dancing in Early 19th-Century New York City," & Darcy Heuring, "'All Tainted As They Are:' Wet Nurses, Fallen Women, and Infanticide in Victorian Britain, 1858-1872."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Michael Pelletier
- section leader: Deborah Cane & Amy Whipple

2002-03

George Romani Prize: Elise Lipkowitz, "Matters of Family, Matters of State: A Cultural History of Inoculation in France, 1754-1774," & Eric Taylor, "Rebel Limbs and Obligations: Disabled Confederates and the Politics of Memory in Early Reconstruction North Carolina."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Erik Gellman
- section leader: Michael Pelletier

2001-02

George Romani Prize: Sarah Ross, "Her Father's Daughter: Women's Renaissance Through the Father."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Christopher Hodson
- section leader: Carole Emberton & Michael Guenther

2000-01

George Romani Prize: Jarod Roll, "Gideon's Band: From Socialism to Vigilantism in Southeast Missouri, 1907-1916."

Lacey Baldwin Smith Prize for Teaching Excellence
- seminar leader: Sarah Fenton
- section leader: Sean Field