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 2023 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 2025; 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 SIHS prize committee at SIHS.early.modern@gmail.com by July 1, 2024 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 and an interview with the author published on the SIHS website.
To Apply send to SIHS.early.modern@gmail.com:
- Digital (pdf) version of article in published or FirstView format
- One-page CV (pdf), indicating PhD status (if in progress or when it was completed)
Award Committee
Carrie Beneš (chair)
Professor of History
New College of Florida
benes@ncf.edu
Joshua Birk
Professor of History
Smith College
jcbirk@smith.edu
Nicholas Terpstra
Professor of History
University of Toronto
nicholas.terpstra@utoronto.ca
This Year’s Recipient – Winner: Matteo Pompermaier
Matteo Pompermaier, “Credit and Poverty in Early Modern Venice,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52, no. 4 (March 7, 2022): 513–36.
The Society for Italian Historical Studies is happy to announce this year’s recipient of the Article Prize on medieval or early modern Italian history to Matteo Pompermaier, for his article on “Credit and Poverty in Early Modern Venice,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52.4 (Spring 2022): 513-536. In this carefully reasoned and clearly written article, Pompermaier uses the records of property auctioned by the Giustizia Nuova to recover the material world and honor the stories of people who do not usually appear in the documentary record. By examining the credit services of Venetian inns and wineshops, which provided micro-loans and sold wine on credit against the pawn of simple household objects or items of clothing such as handkerchiefs, Pompermaier shows how possession of these commonplace material goods gave the working poor of eighteenth-century Venice access to credit. His genuinely interdisciplinary study will be of interest to cultural, economic, and political historians as well as historians of material culture.
Honorable Mention – Melissa Vise
Melissa Vise, “Compositio: Horizons of Truth in the Decameron, the Notarial Register, and Civic Peace Pacts,” Viator, December 16, 2022.
The Society for Italian Historical Studies also gives an honorable mention of Melissa Vise, “Compositio: Horizons of Truth in the Decameron, the Notarial Register, and Civic Peace Pacts,” Viator 52.2 (2021): 227-259. In this article, Vise brings together the divergent worlds of literary and legal scholarship as she explores how seemingly disparate texts – the stories gathered in Boccaccio’s tale collection and the peace pacts registered by notaries – construct the pursuit of truth. In so doing, she helps us to understand not only the Decameron but also the work of notaries in late medieval Florence.