The SIHS Article Prize for Medieval and Early Modern Italian History will be awarded to the best English-language, peer-reviewed journal article made public (either in published form or on a “FirstView platform”) in the calendar year 2025 on Italian history broadly defined by an early career author. The time period for “Medieval-Early Modern” includes roughly from the fifth century to the Napoleonic Wars. Geographical scope and disciplinary methodology are defined in the broadest possible terms. Early career refers to anyone who is in the process of completing their PhD or anyone who was within 6 years of completion when the article was made public. Only members of the Society of Italian Historical Studies (SIHS) will be considered (membership to SIHS for anyone without a tenure track job is $10/year, for tenure track faculty it is $30/year). The award will be presented at the annual SIHS meeting at the American Historical Association in January 2027; efforts to make the article open-access after the announcement of the win will also be made.
A digital version of the article should be submitted to the chair of the committee, Joshua Birk, at jcbirk@smith.edu, by July 1, 2026 with a one-page CV attached that indicates PhD status or date of completion. The prize consists of a $100 monetary reward, as well as a feature on the SIHS website including comments on why the article was selected.
If you have any questions concerning this article prize, feel free to contact the committee through the above email.
Award Committee
Prof. Joshua Birk (chair)
Email: jcbirk@smith.edu
Website: https://www.smith.edu/academics/faculty/joshua-birk
Prof. Nicholas Terpstra
Email: nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca
Website: https://www.history.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/nicholas-terpstra
Prof. Eva Del Soldato
Email: evadel@sas.upenn.edu
Website: https://figs.sas.upenn.edu/people/eva-del-soldato
2026 Recipients – Winner: Caroline Murphy
Caroline Murphy, “Drawing the Disordered River in Late-Renaissance Tuscany.” Grey Room 100 (Summer 2025): 6–35.
The year’s SIHS committee awards the prize for an outstanding article on medieval or early modern Italian history to Caroline Murphy, for her article “Drawing the Disordered River in Late-Renaissance Tuscany.” Grey Room 100 (Summer 2025): 6–35. In this wonderfully transdisciplinary piece, Caroline Murphy examines the understudied topic of water management and uses it to explore the intersection of political management and ecology. This article uncovers the work of otherwise little-known bureaucrats and shows how their practice of description and persuasion evolved through a combination of textual and visual tools. Murphy illuminates the meanings and concerns that inform these rough drawings and provides a deep knowledge of the socio-political context in which these documents were conceived, making this piece a remarkable contribution to current scholarship.
https://architecture.mit.edu/people/caroline-e-murphy
Honorable Mention – Tommaso Zerbi
Tommaso Zerbi, “Rex Utriusque Siciliae: Neo-Medievalism and Revolution”, Architectural History, 68 (2025): 57–90.
The committee awards an honorable mention to Tommaso Zerbi, for his article, ‘Rex Utriusque Siciliae: Neo-Medievalism and Revolution’, Architectural History, 68 (2025): 57–90. Zerbi’s article offers an imaginative merging of cultural and political concerns that bridge the medieval period with the modern by exploring the reception, understanding, and mobilization of medieval motifs in both politics and architecture within the context of early nineteenth-century efforts at monarchical restoration and recovery in southern Italy. Zerbi reveals the complexity of the Bourbon king’s relationship with the past and their attempts to use it to legitimize their power in Naples and Sicily through precise architectural projects. This article expands the treatment of Italian medievalism beyond the more common focus on Anglo-American and Northern European revivalism, and illustrates that architecture is always political.
https://www.tommasozerbi.co.uk/
Past Recipients
- 2025 – Ori Ben-Shalom, Public Health, Medicine, and Religious Reform in Carlo Borromeo’s Milan
- 2025 – Gabriele Marcon, “The Boundaries of Knowledge: Books, Experts, and Readers in Early Modern Mines
- 2024 – Catherine Ferrari, “The Widow, The Gambler, and the Unruly Witness: Witness Testimony and Political Agency in a Lawsuit in Early Modern Piedmont.”
- 2024 – Rachel Midura, “‘They Hide from Me, Like the Devil from the Cross’: Transalpine Postal Routes as Intelligence Work, 1555–1645”
- 2023 – Matteo Pompermaier, “Credit and Poverty in Early Modern Venice”
- 2023 – Melissa Vise, “Compositio: Horizons of Truth in the Decameron, the Notarial Register, and Civic Peace Pacts,”
- 2022 – Erin Maglaque, “Care Work and the Family in Catholic Reformation Tuscany”
- 2021 – Michael Martoccio, “The Art of Mercato: Buying City-States in Renaissance Tuscany”