Congratulations to these UNC Press titles who were American Historical Association 2021 Prize Winners!

The AHA offers annual prizes honoring exceptional books, distinguished teaching and mentoring in the classroom, public history, and other historical projects. Since 1896, the Association has conferred over 1,000 awards. This year’s finalists were selected from a field of over 1,400 entries by nearly 150 dedicated prize committee members. The names, publications, and projects of those who received these awards are a catalog of the best work produced in the historical discipline.

View the full announcement of winners here.


THE WOMEN’S FIGHT: THE CIVIL WAR’S BATTLE FOR HOME, FREEDOM, AND NATION

(From our Littlefield History of the Civil War Era series)

BY THAVOLIA GLYMPH

Glymph creates a new narrative about women in the war—across race, class, and regional boundaries—by challenging the battlefield/home front divide. . . . This book is a vital contribution to the scholarship on the Civil War because it does not merely illuminate the experiences of diverse groups of women; it also uses that evidence to transform our understanding of the Civil War (and perhaps war) itself.

The Annals of Iowa

Winner of Albert J. Beveridge Award & Joan Kelly Memorial Prize

UNCONTROLLABLE BLACKNESS: AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN AND CRIMINALITY IN JIM CROW NEW YORK

(From our Justice, Power, and Politics series)

BY DOUGLAS J. FLOWE

An incisive blend of tenderness and candor, Uncontrollable Blackness charts black men’s crimes and exploits in late nineteenth-century New York City. Using court records, prison files, and an array of investigative reports, Douglas J. Flowe forwards an evocative study of race, masculinity, and violence that is critical to addressing the legacy of African American men entangled in the U.S. legal system.

Kali Nicole Gross, author of Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love

Winner of Littleton-Griswold Prize

MINING LANGUAGE: RACIAL THINKING, INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE, AND COLONIAL METALLURGY IN THE EARLY MODERN IBERIAN WORLD

(Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press)

BY ALISON MARGARET BIGELOW

Allison Bigelow approaches mining as a vernacular science, and, in doing so, she has written an innovative, original history of the Atlantic world that centers Native America and the African diaspora. This important book, as erudite as it is methodologically creative, forces us to think in new ways about the relationship between colonialism, epistemology, and race.

Marcy Norton, University of Pennsylvania

Winner of James A. Rawley Prize