Berks Conference Annual Book Prize Winners
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
In Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said, Lucia Carminati explores migration, labor, and power in the developing city of Port Said during the construction of the Suez Canal. Port Said as a physical and fixed place is made more capacious by Carminati's nuanced assessment of the complex population of migrant laborers who converged on, and created, a city site to construct (what would become) a globally significant shipping canal. Seeking Bread deftly plays on the canal's intended function as a conduit for the mobility of goods while skillfully addressing the mobility of migratory labor. Carminati incorporates multiple aspects of the canal's building, arguing mostly that a deeper examination of the laborers who constructed the canal reveal the complexity of mobility, of identities of migrant labor in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, of the formation of a city/community by migrants, and how laborers sought agency in a struggle over power with elites. The history of the Suez Canal and the development of a port city and its government are present in this work, but labor remains at the center. Most obvious is Carminati's astute use of migrant stories as sources, in addition to conventional memoirs, travel guides, and newspapers. This work is a valuable and timely contribution to the field of the Middle East, the economic impetus behind urbanization, and importantly, global migration.
Honorable Mention
In Merchants of Virtue, Divya Cherian has made a monumental contribution to historical knowledge of Hindu-ness and Hindu consciousness. Using 17th -18th century records from Marwar, under Rathor rule, Cherian traces how the state and an emergent merchant class used and reconfigured caste to consolidate social and political power. Marwar, a regional center, was part of global changes in oceanic trade, capital markets, and the circulation of goods during the early modern period. As an economic force, Marwar merchants tied their role as money lenders to the needs of the ruling elite and consolidated upper caste conditions and standing. The depth of research and nuance of argument are gifts that Cherian deploys to show how the fluidity of everyday custom got harnessed to rigid practices that further inscribed Hinduism in the colonial period and Hindu nationalism in anti-colonial struggle. Cherian brings clarity and authority to her work. The committee particularly commends the author for the contributions to the field and the myriad ways the book asks us to rethink how, when, why, and from what the body politic emerges as well as from which individual bodies, in what spaces, bear the biggest burdens.
It should be noted that the book available to all through the University of California Press open source program, and available at https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.139
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Elizabeth O'Brien has written a brilliant book that centers Mexican women as historical actors across a long temporal sweep from 1770-1940. Based on a variety of sources, from the theses of medical students to newspaper articles, she tells the story of women who experienced surgical procedures. Rich empirical data reveals the depth of her quantitative research, which is elegantly presented with rich analysis. This history could have been the story of doctors as agents of the state given the sources, but it's not, or it could also have been about religious actors, but reading against the grain we are presented a well fleshed out history of the deep entanglements between medicine, religion, and state in dictating women's reproductive destinies in Mexico. Surgery and Salvation is crafted in the best traditions of transnational feminist history, where the author leans on interdisciplinary scholarship and comparative analysis to capture competing histories of reproduction, as it intersects with politics and histories of race, class, gender, religion, and nation. O'Brien's book is a timely intervention in the contentious debates on reproductive rights, while masterfully sidestepping potential pitfalls of anachronism. We see the book adding much to our appreciation of competing global reproductive histories, encouraging readers to imagine multiple possibilities for the future.
Honorable Mention
Ricci's work is an important contribution to the history of feminism(s) in Montreal from the 1960s to the 1990s. Writing against the "exclusion narrative," which centers the older white English and French-speaking communities in the city, her work provides a true comparative framework to better understand the complex history of feminist activism among often understudied minority groups in Quebec. Examining the ways in which distinct political projects shaped each community's approach to feminism, Contercurrents offers a well-developed study of the differing priorities, hopes, and struggles of the area's French-Canadian, Italian, Kanien'kehá:ka, African, and Haitian women. Using newsletters, conference proceedings, newspapers, oral histories, personal archives, and community-based archives, the book grapples with an extremely complex socio-cultural and political history. It draws from an extensive historiography, developing arguments that engage with scholars writing on French and English Canadian, American, Indigenous, immigration, transnational, colonial, and global South history. Altogether, Ricci's work has depth and nuance, and compels us to rethink well-known concepts, such as feminism, radicalism, and nationalism, and what they truly meant to the women who practiced them.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Christina Ramos explores mental illness and care in Mexico City's Hospital of Saint Hippolytus, challenging assumptions about institutional control during the Age of Enlightenment. This groundbreaking work examines how colonial authorities, medical practitioners, and patients themselves navigated concepts of madness, treatment, and social order in New Spain. Ramos demonstrates how the hospital served not just as a site of confinement, but as a complex institution where indigenous healing practices, European medical theories, and colonial power dynamics intersected. The study reveals how patients and their families actively participated in treatment decisions, challenging traditional narratives about institutional authority and patient agency in colonial medical settings.
Honorable Mention
Kathryn Olivarius examines yellow fever epidemics, race, and power dynamics in antebellum New Orleans, revealing how disease shaped economic and social hierarchies in the cotton kingdom. This innovative study shows how immunity from yellow fever became a form of biological capital that determined one's place in society, with profound implications for understanding how disease, capitalism, and racial formation intersected in the nineteenth-century South.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Brooke M. Bauer explores how Catawba women played a central role in maintaining their nation's identity and survival during three centuries of profound change. This groundbreaking study examines how Indigenous women navigated colonialism, slavery, and territorial dispossession while preserving cultural practices and political autonomy. Bauer demonstrates how Catawba women's diplomatic, economic, and cultural leadership was essential to their people's persistence as a sovereign nation, challenging traditional narratives that marginalize women's contributions to Indigenous resistance and nation-building.
Honorable Mention
Christine Taitano DeLisle examines how CHamoru women in Guam navigated US colonial policies that sought to transform their reproductive practices and gender roles. This innovative study reveals how colonial authorities used medical and educational interventions to reshape Indigenous motherhood while CHamoru women developed strategies of resistance to maintain their cultural autonomy and family structures.
Honorable Mention
Sarah Mellors Rodriguez provides a comprehensive analysis of reproductive policies and practices in modern China, examining how state control over fertility intersected with women's lived experiences. This timely study traces the evolution of reproductive technologies and policies from the Republican period through the present, revealing how Chinese women navigated state intervention in their most intimate decisions while shaping the very policies meant to control them.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Shahla Hussain, Kashmir in the Aftermath of Partition (Cambridge University Press)
Shahla Hussain offers one of the first comprehensive historical accounts of post-Partition society and politics in Kashmir. This groundbreaking study examines how ordinary Kashmiris navigated the traumatic aftermath of 1947, exploring the complex interplay between state formation, communal violence, and local resistance. Hussain challenges dominant narratives about Kashmir by centering the experiences of refugees, women, and marginalized communities, revealing how they shaped the region's political landscape in ways that continue to resonate today. The work provides crucial insights into how partition violence transformed social relations and political identities in this contested region.
Honorable Mention
Alaina E. Roberts explores the complex relationships between African Americans and Native Americans in Indian Territory, revealing how Black freedpeople navigated citizenship, belonging, and freedom in Indigenous spaces. This innovative study challenges traditional narratives of westward expansion by examining how African Americans found opportunities for autonomy and community-building on Native lands, while also confronting the tensions that arose from competing claims to belonging and sovereignty.
Honorable Mention
Corinna Zeltsman examines the political culture of printing in nineteenth-century Mexico, revealing how printers, publishers, and readers shaped democratic discourse and national identity. This study demonstrates how the material practices of print production intersected with political movements, showing how ordinary people participated in creating the public sphere through their engagement with printed texts and the printing trade itself.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Sara T. Damiano explores the gendered politics of credit and legal practices in eighteenth-century New England, revealing how women navigated complex financial networks and legal constraints to build economic independence. This innovative study examines how women used formal and informal credit systems to establish businesses, support families, and accumulate property, challenging traditional narratives about women's economic exclusion in colonial America. Damiano demonstrates how women's financial activities shaped urban commercial development and legal precedents, showing their central role in creating the foundations of American capitalism.
Honorable Mention
Suzanne Kahn examines how feminist divorce reformers fought for women's economic citizenship during the rise of neoliberalism. This timely study reveals how Second Wave feminists worked to transform divorce law and policy, seeking to secure women's financial independence and challenge the gendered assumptions underlying marriage and family law. Kahn shows how these efforts both advanced and were constrained by the broader political economic shifts of the late twentieth century.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Co-Winners
Gina A. Tam, Dialect and Nationalism in China, 1860-1960 (Cambridge University Press)
Gina A. Tam examines the complex relationship between language, identity, and nationalism in modern China, revealing how dialect politics shaped Chinese national consciousness. This innovative study demonstrates how local linguistic practices both supported and challenged state-building efforts, showing how ordinary people used language to negotiate their relationship with emerging national identities. Tam's work provides crucial insights into how cultural diversity and national unity coexisted and conflicted in modern China.
Alice L. Baumgartner tells the remarkable story of enslaved people who escaped to Mexico, revealing a largely unknown geography of freedom that challenges traditional narratives of the Underground Railroad. This groundbreaking study examines how Mexico's abolition of slavery created a refuge for freedom seekers and how their experiences influenced American politics and diplomacy. Baumgartner demonstrates how these transnational movements of enslaved people shaped both Mexican and American understandings of freedom, citizenship, and national identity.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Jessica Marie Johnson explores the experiences of Black women across the Atlantic world, revealing how they navigated intimacy, sexuality, and freedom under conditions of enslavement and colonialism. This groundbreaking study examines how Black women used their bodies, relationships, and communities as sites of resistance and self-determination. Johnson demonstrates how these women created networks of care and survival that challenged colonial and slavery systems, showing their central role in shaping Atlantic world cultures and politics.
Runner-up
Erika Denise Edwards examines how Black women navigated legal systems and racial hierarchies in Argentina, revealing their crucial role in shaping the country's transition to a "white" republic. This innovative study shows how Afro-Argentine women used legal strategies to claim citizenship rights and economic opportunities while confronting efforts to erase their presence from national narratives. Edwards demonstrates how these women's legal activism both challenged and reinforced racial boundaries in modern Argentina.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Sarah A. Seo examines how automobiles transformed American concepts of freedom, privacy, and police power. This innovative study reveals how the rise of car culture created new forms of surveillance and social control, as traffic stops became a primary point of contact between citizens and law enforcement. Seo demonstrates how the automobile both expanded and constrained American freedom, showing how technological change reshaped the relationship between individuals and the state in unexpected ways.
Finalist
Amy C. Offner traces the rise and fall of developmentalist economic policies across the Americas, revealing how experts, policymakers, and citizens debated the proper role of government in economic development. This comparative study shows how ideas about state intervention circulated between the United States and Latin America, challenging traditional narratives about the origins of neoliberalism and the welfare state.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Lauren Jae Gutterman explores the hidden history of married women who experienced romantic and sexual relationships with other women in mid-twentieth-century America. This groundbreaking study reveals how these women navigated the tensions between heterosexual marriage and same-sex desire, showing how they created spaces for intimacy and community within the constraints of heteronormative society. Gutterman demonstrates how these relationships challenged and reinforced conventional understandings of marriage, sexuality, and women's roles.
Finalist
Katie L. Jarvis examines how working women in revolutionary France used marketplace politics to claim citizenship rights and economic opportunities. This innovative study shows how women vendors, traders, and consumers participated in revolutionary political culture, challenging traditional boundaries between public and private spheres. Jarvis demonstrates how these women's economic activities became forms of political participation that shaped revolutionary ideologies and practices.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Christine M. DeLucia offers a revolutionary rewriting of King Philip's War (1675-1676), centering Algonquian peoples' understanding of memory, loss, and historical narrative. This groundbreaking study moves beyond traditional military history to examine how Indigenous communities experienced, remembered, and transmitted knowledge about this devastating conflict. DeLucia demonstrates how places themselves hold memory, showing how landscapes, sacred sites, and geographic features served as repositories of Indigenous historical consciousness. The work challenges colonial and settler narratives by privileging Native perspectives and demonstrating how Indigenous peoples maintained their own historical traditions despite centuries of colonization. Memory Lands reveals the ongoing presence of Indigenous history in New England, showing how the violence of King Philip's War continues to shape contemporary landscapes and communities.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Keisha N. Blain explores the largely untold story of Black nationalist women's activism, demonstrating how they challenged white supremacy and advocated for full citizenship and human rights on a global scale. This groundbreaking study reveals how women like Amy Ashwood Garvey, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, and Ethel Collins developed transnational networks that connected struggles for liberation across the African diaspora. Blain shows how these women articulated sophisticated political visions that combined anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and gender equality, often in tension with male-dominated organizations. The book demonstrates how Black nationalist women's activism shaped international conversations about decolonization, civil rights, and women's liberation, revealing their central role in twentieth-century freedom movements. Set the World on Fire challenges traditional narratives that marginalize women's contributions to Black nationalist politics, showing how they developed innovative strategies for resistance and community building.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
S. Debora Kang explores how officials from the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service formulated and implemented policies at the US-Mexico border, demonstrating the historical process of militarizing this border. This groundbreaking study reveals how immigration law was not simply created in Washington D.C. and then applied at the border, but rather how border enforcement shaped and created immigration policy itself. Using sources that include both local and national perspectives as well as oral histories, Kang shows how INS officials, local communities, and migrants themselves participated in the ongoing construction of immigration law and border enforcement practices. The work provides crucial insights into how immigration policy evolved on the southwestern border, revealing the complex negotiations between federal authority, local interests, and human mobility that continue to shape American immigration policy today.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Sasha Turner focuses on enslaved women in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Jamaica, examining how abolitionists viewed enslaved women's bodies as "reproductive laborers" while highlighting enslaved women's resistance to external control of reproduction. This field-changing book demonstrates how enslaved women navigated the competing demands of planters, abolitionists, and colonial authorities who all sought to control their reproductive capacities for different political and economic purposes. Turner reveals how these women developed strategies to maintain agency over their own bodies, pregnancies, and children despite the constraints of slavery. The work has profound implications for understanding the intersections of race, sexuality, and childbirth in the Atlantic world, showing how reproductive politics were central to the functioning and ultimate abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Anya Zilberstein explores how colonial Americans understood and attempted to manipulate climate and weather patterns, revealing the deep historical roots of human-environment relationships that continue to shape contemporary climate politics. This innovative study examines how colonists believed they could "improve" American climates through deforestation, agriculture, and settlement, demonstrating how ideas about environmental change were central to colonial expansion and identity formation. Zilberstein shows how colonists drew on European theories about climate and temperance while developing distinctly American approaches to environmental management. The work reveals how early Americans' confidence in their ability to control nature laid the groundwork for later environmental attitudes and policies, providing crucial historical context for understanding modern climate change debates and human-environment interactions.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Marisa J. Fuentes offers a paradigm-shifting approach to studying enslaved women in eighteenth-century Barbados, highlighting her innovative archival research and analysis of the production and survival of knowledge about enslaved women. This groundbreaking study confronts the challenge of writing about people whose lives were systematically erased from the historical record, developing new methodological approaches for understanding how violence shaped both enslaved women's experiences and the archives that purport to document them. Fuentes demonstrates how colonial archives themselves participated in the violence of slavery by rendering enslaved women as objects rather than subjects, while simultaneously revealing how these women maintained agency and resistance despite brutal conditions. The work provides crucial insights into how historians can ethically and effectively recover the experiences of marginalized people whose stories have been distorted or silenced by oppressive systems.
Finalists
Zara Anishanslin uses a single portrait and silk dress to illuminate the complex networks of trade, labor, and cultural exchange that connected London, Philadelphia, and the wider Atlantic world in the eighteenth century. This innovative study demonstrates how material objects can serve as gateways to understanding larger historical processes, revealing the global connections embedded in seemingly local stories.
Emily K. Hobson explores the complex relationships between LGBTQ activists and the broader Left in the United States from the 1960s through the 1980s, revealing how gay and lesbian activists both challenged and worked within progressive political movements. This study demonstrates how sexuality politics intersected with other liberation struggles, showing the tensions and solidarities that shaped American radical politics.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Vanessa Ogle, The Global Transformation of Time, 1870-1950 (Harvard University Press)
Vanessa Ogle provides a transnational examination of how time was understood, managed, marked, and recorded across the world during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This groundbreaking study reveals how the standardization of time became a crucial element of modern state formation, economic development, and global connectivity. Ogle demonstrates how the establishment of standard time zones, the adoption of Greenwich Mean Time, and the synchronization of clocks around the world were not merely technical achievements but deeply political processes that reflected and reinforced imperial power, national sovereignty, and cultural identity. The work shows how different societies negotiated between local temporal traditions and global time standards, revealing the complex ways that modernity was experienced and contested around the world.
Finalists
Sanya Aiyar, Indians in Kenya: The Politics of Diaspora (Harvard University Press)
Sanya Aiyar examines the complex political position of South Asian communities in colonial and postcolonial Kenya, revealing how Indians navigated between competing claims of belonging and loyalty in the context of decolonization and nation-building.
Ruramisai Charumbira explores how Zimbabweans used historical narratives and collective memory to imagine and construct national identity, showing how competing visions of the past shaped struggles over political legitimacy and cultural belonging.
Dana Simmons examines how French scientists, policymakers, and social reformers attempted to define and measure human needs, revealing how scientific knowledge intersected with political debates about welfare, labor, and social responsibility in modern France.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Talitha L. LeFlouria provides a pathbreaking study that examines African American women's experiences in the penal system from Reconstruction through the 1930s, highlighting their labor, the violence they endured, and their strategies of resistance. This groundbreaking work reveals how Black women's imprisonment was central to the South's economic recovery after the Civil War, showing how convict leasing systems exploited their labor while subjecting them to sexual violence and brutal working conditions. LeFlouria demonstrates how these women developed networks of survival and resistance within and beyond prison walls, challenging narratives that render them as passive victims. The study provides crucial insights into how race, gender, and class intersected in the post-emancipation South, revealing the continuities between slavery and mass incarceration that continue to shape American criminal justice systems.
Finalists
Sara Fieldston, Raising the World: Child Welfare in the American Century (Harvard University Press)
Sara Fieldston explores how American child welfare experts promoted their approaches internationally, revealing how domestic reform movements intersected with U.S. foreign policy and cultural imperialism during the twentieth century.
Olivia Weisser examines how early modern English people understood the relationship between physical illness and emotional distress, revealing how gender shaped medical theory and practice in ways that continue to influence contemporary healthcare.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Tatiana Seijas, Asian Slaves in Colonial Mexico: from Chinos to Indians (Cambridge University Press)
Tatiana Seijas reveals the largely unknown history of Asian slavery in colonial Mexico, examining how thousands of people from China, Japan, the Philippines, and other parts of Asia were enslaved and transported to New Spain through the Manila-Acapulco galleon trade. This groundbreaking study demonstrates how these Asian slaves, known as "chinos," navigated complex legal and social systems to gain freedom and social mobility, often by claiming Indigenous identity. Seijas shows how Asian slaves played crucial roles in Mexico's colonial economy while developing strategies for survival and advancement that challenged Spanish colonial categories of race and status. The work reveals the global dimensions of slavery in the Americas, showing how the Pacific slave trade connected Mexico to broader networks of coerced labor and cultural exchange that extended across the Spanish empire.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Susanah Shaw Romney explores the intimate networks of family, friendship, and business that connected New Netherland to the broader Atlantic world, revealing how personal relationships shaped colonial politics and economic development. This innovative study examines how Dutch colonists maintained ties with family and associates in the Netherlands, the Caribbean, and other colonial settlements, showing how these connections influenced everything from trade relationships to marriage patterns to political alliances. Romney demonstrates how women played crucial roles in maintaining these networks through correspondence, kinship ties, and economic partnerships, challenging traditional narratives that emphasize formal political and commercial institutions. The work provides new insights into how intimate relationships and personal networks were fundamental to colonial society and Atlantic world connections.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Teresa Barnett explores how Americans in the nineteenth century collected, preserved, and displayed historical artifacts, revealing how the veneration of material objects shaped national identity and historical consciousness. This innovative study examines how relics from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and other significant events became sacred objects that Americans used to connect with their past and define their national character. Barnett demonstrates how the collection and display of historical artifacts became a form of secular pilgrimage, showing how ordinary Americans participated in creating national memory through their engagement with material culture. The work reveals how the nineteenth-century cult of relics reflected broader anxieties about historical continuity, national identity, and the meaning of the American past in an era of rapid social and economic change.
First Book (Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Camille Robcis examines how French intellectuals, policymakers, and legal experts used anthropological and psychoanalytic theories to define and regulate family relationships in twentieth-century France. This groundbreaking study reveals how ideas about kinship, incest, and family structure became central to debates about French national identity, social order, and moral authority. Robcis demonstrates how anthropologists like Claude Lévi-Strauss and psychoanalysts like Jacques Lacan influenced French law and policy, showing how scientific theories about human nature and social organization shaped everything from marriage law to adoption practices to debates about homosexuality. The work provides crucial insights into how modern states use expert knowledge to regulate intimate relationships and how scientific discourses about the family reflect broader anxieties about social change and cultural identity.
First Book (Non-Women/Gender/Sexuality)
Françoise N. Hamlin examines the civil rights movement in Clarksdale, Mississippi, revealing how African Americans in the Mississippi Delta developed sophisticated strategies for challenging white supremacy in one of the most oppressive regions of the Jim Crow South. This groundbreaking study demonstrates how local activists built on wartime experiences and economic opportunities to create sustained challenges to segregation and disenfranchisement. Hamlin shows how Clarksdale's unique position as a transportation hub and cultural center made it a crucial site for civil rights organizing, while also revealing the particular challenges that Delta activists faced due to the region's economic dependence on plantation agriculture. The work provides crucial insights into how the civil rights movement operated at the grassroots level, showing how local communities created the foundation for the more visible protests and legal victories of the 1960s.