Marraro Prize - American Catholic Historical Association

The Helen & Howard R.
Marraro Prize in Italian History

The Marraro Prize at a Glance

Please be sure to consult the submission rules and the rest of the information on this page for the full award requirements.

What it is:

The Marraro Prize honors a book or article on Italian or Italo-American history or relations.

What works are eligible:

Any book or article on Italian history, Italian cultural history, or Italo-American cultural relations with a 2024 imprint date.

Awarded:

Annually

Purse:

$1,500

Winner announced:

October 2025

Submission instructions:

Complete the online form and have three hard-copy versions of your work available for postal mailing.

Submission will be accepted beginning mid-March 2025.
Deadline is May 15, 2025

About the Marraro Prize

The Helen & Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History is given annually to the author of a book that is judged by a committee of experts to be the most distinguished work dealing with Italian history or Italo-American history or relations that has been published in a preceding twelve-month period. It is named in memory of Howard R. Marraro (1879-1972), a Columbia University professor and the author of more than a dozen books on Italian literature, history, and culture.

In his last will Professor Marraro bequeathed to the Association a sum to be invested as a fund, the income from which would be awarded each year as a prize. The present amount of the prize is $1500.

Submission Rules

The general rules for submission are:

Entries must be published in English by historians whose usual residence is in North America.
Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Publishers may submit as many entries as they wish. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Marraro Prize Entry.” Print copies preferred unless otherwise indicated. If only e-copy is available, please contact review committee members beforehand to arrange submission format.

Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2024, to be eligible for the 2024 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2024 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2025 AHA annual meeting in New York.

If you have questions, please contact the prize administrator.

Past Winners

Year	Awardee	Book	Publisher	Buy
2024	Dr. James Hankins	Political Meritocracy in Renaissance Italy: The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena	Harvard University Press	Buy
2023	Ivano Dal Prete	On the Edge of Eternity: The Antiquity of the Earth in Medieval and Early Modern Europe	Oxford University Press	Buy
2022	Margaret Meserve	Papal Bull: Print, Politics, and Propaganda in Renaissance Rome	Johns Hopkins University Press	Buy
2021	Hannah Marcus	Forbidden Knowledge: Medicine, Science and Censorship in Early Modern Italy	University of Chicago Press	Buy
2020	Giuliana Chamedes	A Twentieth-Century Crusade: The Vatican’s Battle to Remake Christian Europe	Harvard University Press	Buy
2019	Pamela O. Long	Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome	University of Chicago Press	Buy
2018	Paul F. Grendler	The Jesuits and Italian Universities, 1548-1773	Catholic University of America Press	Buy
2017	John Howe	Before the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium	Cornell University Press
2016	Andrew D. Berns	The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy	Cambridge University Press	Buy
2015	Nino Zchomelidse	Art, Ritual, and Civic Identity in Medieval Southern Italy	The Pennsylvania State University Press	Buy
2014	Daniel Stolzenberg	Egyptian Oedipus: Athanasius Kircher and the Secrets of Antiquity	The University of Chicago Press	Buy
2013	Areli Marina	The Italian Piazza Transformed: Parma in the Communal Age	The Pennsylvania State University Press	Buy
2012	Anne Jacobson Schutte	By Force and Fear: Taking and Breaking	Cornell University Press
2011	Stefania Tutino	Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian	Oxford University Press
2010	Sharon T. Strocchia	Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence	Johns Hopkins University Press	Buy
2009	Mark I. Choate	Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad	Harvard University Press	Buy
2008	Carol Leroy Lansing	Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes	Cornell University Press
2007	Gerald McKevitt	Brokers of Culture: Italian Jesuits in the American West, 1848–1919	Stanford University Press	Buy
2006	Lance Gabriel Lazar	Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy	University of Toronto Press
2005	Augustine Thompson, O.P.	Cities of God: The Religion of Italian Communes, 1125–1325	Penn State University Press	Buy
2004	Samantha Kelly	The New Solomon: Robert of Naples (1309–1343) and Fourteenth-Century Kingship	Brill	Buy
2003	Johanna H. Drell	Kingship and Conquest: Family Strategies in the Principality of Salerno during the Norman Period, 1077–1194	Cornell University Press
2002	David Burr	Spiritual Franciscans: From Protest to Persecution in the Century After Saint Francis	Penn State University Press	Buy
2001	Wietse de Boer	The Conquest of the Soul: Confession, Discipline, and Public Order in Counter-Reformation Milan	Brill	Buy
2000	Franco Mormando	The Preacher’s Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy	University of Chicago Press	Buy
1999	Konrad Eisenbichler	The Boys of the Archangel Raphael: A Youth Confraternity in Florence, 1411–1785	University of Toronto Press
1998	John M. Headley	Tommasso Campanella and the Transformation of the World	Princeton University Press	Buy
1997	Silvana Patriarca	Numbers and Nationhood: Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy	Cambridge University Press	Buy
1996	Frederick J. McGinniss	Right-Thinking: Sacred Oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome	Princeton University Press	Buy
1995	Paula Findlen	Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy	University of California Press	Buy
1994	Elisabeth G. Gleason	Gasparo Contarini: Venice, Rome, and Reform	University of California Press	Buy
1993	Philip Cannistraro and Brian R. Sullivan	Il Duce’s Other Woman: The Untold Story of Margherita Sarfatti, Benito Mussolini’s Jewish Mistress, and How She Helped Him to Come to Power	William Morrow & Co
1992	Martha Pollak	Turin, 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital	University of Chicago Press
1991	Robert Charles Davis	The Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal: Workers and Workplace in the Pre-Industrial City	Johns Hopkins University Press
1990	Alan Reinerman	Austria and the Papacy in the Age of Metternich, Vol. 2: Revolution and Reaction, 1830–1838	Catholic University of America Press
1989	Samuel K. Cohn	Death and Property in Siena, 1205–1800: Strategies for the Afterlife	Johns Hopkins University Press
1988	Charles M. Radding	The Origins of Medieval Jurisprudence: Pavia and Bologna, 850–1150	Yale University Press
1987	Gary Ross Mormino	Immigrants on the Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis	University of Missouri
1986	Margaret L. King	Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance	Princeton University Press	Buy
1985	David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber	Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427	Yale University Press
1984	John F. D’Amico	Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome: Humanists and Churchmen on the Eve of the Reformation	Johns Hopkins University Press
1983	Randolph Starn	Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy	University of California Press
1982	Edward W. Muir	Civil Ritual in Renaissance Venice	Princeton University Press	Buy
1981	Felix Gilbert	The Pope, His Banker, and Venice	Harvard University Press	Buy
1980	Richard Krautheimer	Rome: Profile of a City, 312–1308	Princeton University Press	Buy
1979	David R. Coffin	The Villa in the Life of Renaissance Rome	Princeton University Press
1978	Paul F. Grendler	The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605	Princeton University Press	Buy
1977	Sarah Rubin Blanshei	Perugia, 1260–1340: Conflict and Change in a Medieval Italian Urban Society	American Philosophical Society
1976	not awarded
1975	Silvano Tomasi	Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880–1930	Center for Migration Studies of New York
1974	Eric Cochrane	Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800	University of Chicago Press	Buy