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.

CLOSED
Submit Via AHA →

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:

  1. Entries must be published in English by historians whose usual residence is in North America.
  2. Books with a copyright of 2023 are eligible for the 2024 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, 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
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