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 with a 2022 imprint date.

Awarded:

Annually

Purse:

$1,500

Winner announced:

October 2022

Submission instructions:

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

Submit Via AHA →

Submission deadline: May 15, 2023

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:

  1. Entries must be published in English by historians whose usual residence is in North America.
  2. Books with a copyright of 2022 are eligible for the 2023 award.
  3. 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.
  4. Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
  5. 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, 2023, to be eligible for the 2023 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2023 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2024 AHA annual meeting in San Francisco.

If you have questions, please contact the prize administrator.

Past Winners

Year Awardee Work Publisher
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 buy
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 E. Natalie Rothman Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects Between Venice and Istanbul Cornell University Press buy
2011 Michael Ebner Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy Cambridge Univ. Press buy
2010 Stanislao Pugliese Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone Farrar, Straus and Giroux buy