The Society for Italian Historical Studies, in affiliation with the American Historical Association, regularly administers three annual Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prizes in Italian History.
The late Howard R. Marraro made bequests to the American Historical Association, the American Catholic Historical Association, and the Society for Italian Historical studies, for the award by each society of a Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize in Italian History. Each association has appointed its own selection committee. The amount of the annual award to be made by the SIHS is $750.00.
Each award will be given for the book deemed best by the various committees and published during the previous calendar year, which treats of Italian history in any epoch, Italian cultural history, or Italian-American relations. Entries must be published in English by historians whose usual residence is in North America.
The Marraro Prize is administered via the American Historical Association; to submit an entry, please consult the instructions at http://www.historians.org/awards-and-grants/awards-and-prizes/helen-and-howard-r-marraro-prize.
For further information, please contact SIHS Executive Secretary James Palmer.
This Year’s Recipient
Carol Helstosky, Italian Forgers: The Art Market and the Weight of the Past in Modern Italy, (Cornell University Press, 2024)
From the Award Committee: Carol Helstosky’s Italian Forgers charts a story of the rise of Italian control over its artistic and cultural heritage between the mid 1800s and mid 1900s. Helstosky uses several fascinating case studies to explore such concepts as forgery and modernity, especially how those concepts were applied to Italy by Italians and others. The analyses in each chapter provide a model for how to use the specific, here artists like Giovanni Bastianini and Icilio Joni, to make major contributions to broader historiographical debates.
Past Recipients
2024 2023 2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2015
2011
2007
2001
1997
1991
Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi
Fascism, the War, and Structures of Feeling in Italy, 1943-1945: Tales in Chiaroscuro
(Oxford University Press, 2023)
Franco Baldasso
Democracy, Memory, and Literature in Post-Fascist Italy
(Fordham University Press, 2022)
2022
Brenda Deen Schildgen
Dante and Violence: Domestic, Civic, Cosmic
(University of Notre Dame Press, 2021) 
Pamela Ballinger
The World Refugees Made Decolonization and the Foundation of Postwar Italy
(Cornell University Press, 2020)
Sharon T. Strocchia
Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy
(Harvard University Press, 2019)
Konstantina Zanou
Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation
(Oxford University Press, 2018)
Unn Falkeid,
The Avignon Papacy Contested: An Intellectual History from Dante to Catherine of Siena
(Harvard University Press, 2017)
Sarah Ross,
Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice
(Harvard University Press, 2016)
Stephanie Zeier Pilat
Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era
(Ashgate, 2014)
Heather Hyde Minor
The Culture of Architecture in Enlightenment Rome
(The Pennsylvania University Press, 2010)
Stefanie B. Siegmund
The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence
(Stanford University Press, 2004)
Jutta Sperling
Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice
(University of Chicago Press, 1999)
Nicholas Terpstra
Lay Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna
(Cambridge University Press, 1995)
David I. Kertzer & Dennis P. Hogan
Family, Political Economy and Demographic Change
(University of Wisconsin Press, 1989)
