Prizes & Subventions – Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies

Subventions (scroll down for prize info)

ASPHS is pleased to provide small subventions for regional and local meetings or workshops in the U.S. for activities related to our mission to promote the scholarly study of Spain and Portugal through History and related disciplines. The workshops need to be run by members of the ASPHS and funding preference will be given to those meetings that include more than one or two members of the ASPHS.

The deadline for submissions for the first of two funding cycles for the 2023-2024 academic year is November 1, 2023. The total funds available for disbursement will be $1500.

Members who wish to apply for subventions should prepare a proposal of no more than one page explaining the nature of the event and its connection to ASPHS’s mission. Proposals should be accompanied by a budget explaining how the requested funds will be expended. Please note that funding is intended to support workshops and symposia; it will not be granted to support individual travel, research, or in-class presentations by an invited speaker. Please send both the proposal and the budget to the members of the Board of Directors (board@asphs.net) on or before the deadline of each funding cycle. You must be a current member of ASPHS for your proposal to be considered.

Questions? Contact Association President Luis Corteguera at president@asphs.net.

Prizes

The ASPHS offers four prizes for excellence in scholarship in Iberian history. To be eligible, authors must be current members of the ASPHS.

The Association Best… Prize is offered each year (with different categories in a three-year cycle), while the Kagan, Bishko, and Oliveira Marques prizes will be offered every other year. Calls for submissions are generally in the fall; prizes are awarded the following spring and announced at our annual conference. Each prize carries an honorarium of $250.

See the tabs below for information on each prize.

Best Prize A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize Bishko Memorial Prize Kagan Prize Past Prize Winners

On a three-year rotation, the Association offers a prize for the best dissertation, the best early career article, and best first book. The 2024 prize will go to the best early career article, the 2025 prize will be for the best first book, and the 2026 prize will recognize the best dissertation (in every case covering the previous three years). Submissions will only be accepted from those who are active members at the time of submission.

2024 Prize: Best Early Career Article

The ASPHS is now accepting submissions for this year’s competition: Best Early Career Article in Iberian History. To be eligible, submissions must meet the following criteria:

articles or book chapters in a peer-reviewed publication
with a focus on Iberian history
published between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023
in any of the three languages of the society (English, Portuguese, and Spanish)
authored by a graduate student or Ph.D. who has received the degree in the past five years.
authors must be current members of the ASPHS.

The prize winner will be announced at the Business Meeting of the 53^rd Annual Conference of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies that will take place on July 8—12, 2024 at the University of Lisbon, Portugal. The winner is not required to attend the conference. The prize includes a $250 award.

Authors may submit only one work per grant cycle. The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2024. Submissions should be sent to bestprize@asphs.net.

2023 Prize: Best Dissertation

The Best Dissertation prize was awarded to Yonatan Glazer-Eytan for “Transgressing the Sacred: The Crime and Cult of Sacrilege in the Spanish Catholic Monarchy, 1558-1632” (PhD Johns Hopkins). The committee described Glazer-Eytan’s work as a capacious and original study that excavates how the categories of the sacred and the profane were constructed – how sacrilege was understood and, even more importantly, the role that it played in the formation of the sacred. Every accusation of sacrilege required demonstration of intent; examining how inquisitors and other theologians grappled with sacrilege illuminates how the categories of sacrilege and the sacred, as well as those who committed profanities against holy objects evolved throughout the contentious period following the Council of Trent and its reforms. Glazer-Eytan argues that the categories of sacred and profane were constructed by witnesses, accused people, theologians, and inquisitors, without stable or inherent meaning. Furthermore, the dissertation engages in sophisticated interdisciplinary analysis – a sacrilege was an act against an object, as opposed to blasphemy, which centered on speech. Glazer-Eytan’s deft and creative reading of objects combined with his sensitive analysis of textual sources reveals the complex contours of sacrilegious acts and their multifaceted meanings in the early modern Spanish monarchy. It constitutes a significant contribution to the history of religious minorities, intellectual thought, and religious culture in Habsburg Spain.

Honorable Mention: Victoria Carreras, “A Local Affair: Barcelona’s Municipal Schools and Recreational Activities in Late Francoist Spain” (PhD UC San Diego)

2022 Prize: Best First Book

The 2022 Best First Book winner was S. Elizabeth Penry, for The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

The Committee also agreed to name a title for an honorable mention: Claire Gilbert, In Good Faith: Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

In 2007 ASPHS held the first competition for the A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History. The prize was created by means of a generous endowment from Dr. Harold B. Johnson, of the University of Virginia, in memory of the distinguished Portuguese historian A. H. de Oliveira Marques (1933-2007). The prize is awarded every other year for the best peer-reviewed article or book chapter on Portuguese history published during the previous two years. Submissions will only be accepted from those who are active members at the time of submission.

Watch this space for the call for submissions for the next prize cycle in fall 2024.

2023 winner: Nuno Castel-Branco

“Material Piety: Science and Religious Culture in Seventeenth-Century Portugal,” Renaissance Quarterly 74 (2021): 1162–1209.

Focusing on Jesuit mathematicians that taught in 17th-century Lisbon, the article shows how religious objects and devotion interacted directly with science. As stated by the author, “The careful study of these encounters between science and devotional practice contributes to long-lasting debates about science and religion and, more importantly, to broader inquiries into the very purpose of practicing science in the early modern period”.
Castel-Branco has combined a skillful analysis of source materials with a solid knowledge of secondary literature to produce an article of great originality. Well-structured and with a clear argument, the text artfully articulates history of science, material culture, and religious practices.

2021 winner: Laurinda Abreu

“Health care and the spread of medical knowledge in the Portuguese empire, particularly the Estado da India (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries),” Medical History 64:4 (2020): 449-446.

Initiated in 2003, the Bishko Prize honors Professor Charles Julian Bishko, the distinguished historian of medieval Iberia who taught for 39 years at the University of Virginia. The biennial prize recognizes the best peer-reviewed article or book chapter on medieval Iberian history published by a North American scholar. Submissions will only be accepted from those who are active members at the time of submission.

Submissions for this cycle are now closed. Watch this space for the next call for submissions in fall 2024.

2023 Bishko Award: Adam Franklin-Lyons and Marie A. Kelleher

“Framing Mediterranean Famine: Food Crisis in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona.” Speculum 97.1 (2022): 40-76.

The 2022 Bishko Memorial Prize winner was selected from a diverse pool of submissions that collectively demonstrate the extraordinary quality and sophistication of current scholarship within our field. “Framing Mediterranean Famine: Food Crisis in Fourteenth-Century Barcelona,” by Adam Franklin-Lyons and Marie A. Kelleher, is a clearly written, inspirational example of collaborative scholarship that integrates multiple lines of inquiry into a feast of interesting arguments. The article not only addresses the timely issue of climate change and its impact on food production but also exhibits how these systems were shaped by human agents engaging in localized decision-making. The result is a beautiful balance of archival and historiographical work that weaves together compelling stories about premodern Barcelona, wider Europe, and the Mediterranean that equip the authors to advance an impactful, multi-faceted argument about how their new models regarding the genesis of famines should encourage medievalists as well as historians studying other periods to reassess their methodologies. We, the members of the committee, are honored to award Kelleher and Franklin-Lyons this year’s Bishko Prize for this exceptionally brilliant and deeply deserving work of path-breaking scholarship.

2021 Bishko Awards: Jessica Boon and Dana Wessell Lightfoot & Alexandra Guerson

For this cycle the committee felt that there were two submissions equally deserving of the award:

Jessica Boon, “The Body-and-Soul in Pain: Medico-Theological Debates in Late Medieval Castilian Passion Treatises.” Viator 50.1 (2019): 249-87. DOI 10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.121363. (actual publication date Sept 2020)

Dana Wessell Lightfoot & Alexandra Guerson, “A Tale of Two Tolranas: Jewish women’s agency and conversion in late medieval Girona,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 12.3 (2020): 344-364.

Established in 2023, the Richard L. Kagan Prize recognizes the best article or chapter in an edited collection on the history of the early modern Spanish world, c. 1500-c. 1800. The prize honors the contributions to this field by Richard Kagan, Academy Professor and Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emeritus of History at Johns Hopkins University. Submissions will only be accepted from those who are active members at the time of submission.

Submissions are now being accepted for the first Kagan prize! To be eligible, submissions must meet the following criteria:

articles or book chapters in a peer-reviewed publication
with a focus on the history of the early modern Spanish world, c. 1500 – c. 1800
published between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2023
in any of the three languages of the society (English, Portuguese, and Spanish)
authors must be current members of the ASPHS.

Authors may submit only one work per grant cycle. The deadline for submissions is March 15, 2024. Submissions should be sent to kaganprize@asphs.net. The prize committee is A. Katie Harris (University of California, Davis), chair; Silvia Z. Mitchell (Purdue University), and Magdalena Sánchez (Gettysburg College).

2020-2021

Best Early Career Article:
Gabriel de Aviles Rocha, Vasco da Gama Assistant Professor in History at Brown University, for “The Pinzones and the coup of the acedares: fishing and colonization in the fifteenth-century Atlantic.” Colonial Latin American Review 28:4 (2019), 427-449.

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize:

Laurinda Abreu, “Health care and the spread of medical knowledge in the Portuguese empire, particularly the Estado da India (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries),” Medical History 64:4 (2020): 449-446.

Bishko Memorial Prize (joint winners):
Jessica Boon, “The Body-and-Soul in Pain: Medico-Theological Debates in Late Medieval Castilian Passion Treatises.” Viator 50.1 (2019): 249-87. DOI 10.1484/J.VIATOR.5.121363. (actual publication date Sept 2020)

Dana Wessell Lightfoot & Alexandra Guerson, “A Tale of Two Tolranas: Jewish women’s agency and conversion in late medieval Girona,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 12.3 (2020): 344-364.

2019-2020

Best Dissertation:
Mónica García Fernández,“‘Dos en una sola carne’. Matrimonio, amor y sexualidad en el franquismo (1939-1975)” (Universidad de Oviedo, 2019)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize:

Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, “Women and the Acquisition, Transmission, and Execution of Public Offices in Early Modern Portugal,” Gender & History, vol. 31:2 (July 2019): 383-403.

Bishko Memorial Prize:

Pamela A. Patton, “Demons and Diversity in León,” Medieval Encounters 25, no. 1-2 (2019): 150-179.

2018 - 2019

Best First Book Award
Daniel Hershenzon’s book, The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

A. H. de Oliveira Marques Prize Winner
The 2019 winner was Márcia Gonçalves, “Of peasants and settlers: ideals of Portugueseness, imperial nationalism and European settlement in Africa, c. 1930-c.1945.” European Review of History: Revue européeane d’histoire 25, no 1: 166-186.

Bishko Memorial Prize Winner
The 2019 winner was Andrew Devereux, “Declared Enemies and Pacific Infidels: Spanish Doctrines of ‘Just War’ in the Mediterranean and Atlantic,” Republics of Letters 5, no. 3

2017 - 2018

Best Early Career Article
A tie between
Max Deardorff, “The Ties That Bind: Intermarriage between Moriscos and Old Christians in Early Modern Spain, 1526-1614,” Journal of Family History 2017, Vol. 42 (3) 250-270,
and
Edward Lawrence Holt, “Cantigas de Santa María, Cantigas de Cruzada: Reflections of Crusading Spirituality in Alfonso X’s Cantigas de Santa María,” Al-Masāq, 27:3, 207-224.

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Fabien Montcher,“Politics, Scholarship, and the Iberian Routes of the Republic of Letters: The Late Renaissance Itinerary of Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654),” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 2 (2017) 182-225.

Biskho Prize
Abigail Agresta, “‘Unfortunate Jews’ and Urban Ugliness: Crafting a Narrative of the 1391 Assault on the jueria of Valencia,” Journal of Medieval History, 43, (2017), 320-41.

2016 - 2017

Best Dissertation
Alejandro Gomez del Moral, “Buying into Change: Consumer Culture and the Department Store in the Transformation(s) of Spain, 1939–1982” (History, Rutgers, 2014 ). Honorable mention: Vanesa Rodriguez-Galindo, “Ways of Being Modern in Madrid: Urban Change, Street Life, and Customs in Late Nineteenth-Century Print Culture” (History of Art, UNED, Madrid – Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, 2015)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Hugo Ribeira da Silva, ”Projecting Power: Cathedral Chapters and Public Rituals in Portugal, 1564-1650″, Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1369-400.

Biskho Prize
Adam Beaver, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Jewish Legions: Sephardic Legends’ Journey from Biblical Polemic to Humanist History” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García Arenal, 21-65. Leiden: Brill, 2016.

2015 - 2016

Best First Book Thomas Barton, Contested Treasure: Jews and Authority in the Crown of Aragon (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014); honorable mention: Katrina Olds, Forging the Past: Invented Histories in Counter-Reformation Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Ricardo Roque, “Mimetic Governmentality and the Administration of Colonial Justice in East Timor, ca. 1860-1910,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (2015) 57/1: 67-97.

Biskho Prize
Therese Martin, “Crouching Crossbowmen in Early Twelfth-Century Sculpture: A Nasty, Brutish, and Short(-Lived) Iconography,” Gesta 54:2 (Fall 2015): 143-164.

2014 - 2015

Best First Article
Belen Vicens, “Swearing by God: Muslim Oath-Taking in Late Medieval and Early Modern Christian Iberia,” published in Medieval Encounters in 2014.

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Ana Isabel López-Salazar Codes, “Puderão mais os inquisidores que o rey. Las relaciones entre el Santo Oficio y la Corona en el Portugal de la Restauración (1640-1668)”, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, vol. 39 (2014).

Bishko Prize
Glaire D. Anderson, “Sign of the Cross: Contexts for the Ivory Cross of San Millán de la Cogolla,” Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 6:1 (Jan. 2014), 15-41

2013 - 2014

Best Dissertation
Fernando Vicente Albarrán, Los barrios negros: El Ensanche Sur en la formación del moderno Madrid (1860-1931)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Raphael Costa, “The ‘great façade of nationality’: some considerations on Portuguese tourism and the multiple meanings of Estado Novo Portugal in travel literature,” Journal of Tourism History v.5, n.1 (2013): 50-72.

Bishko Prize
Hussein Fancy, “Theologies of Violence: Recruitment of Muslim Soldiers by the Crown of Aragon,” Past & Present 221:1 (2013), 39-73.

2012 - 2013

Best First Book
James Matthews, Reluctant Warriors: Republican Popular Army and Nationalist Army Conscripts in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2012).

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Liam Brockey, “Doubting Thomas: The Apostle and the Portuguese Empire in Early Modern Asia,” in Sacred History: Uses of the Christian Past in the Renaissance World, ed. Katherine Van Liere (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Bishko Prize
Lucy K. Pick (University of Chicago), “Sacred Queens and Warrior Kings in the Royal Portraits of the Liber Testamentorum of Oviedo,” Viator 42 No. 2 (2011).

2011 - 2012

Best First Article
Michael J. Crawford, “Noble Status and Royal Duplicity in the Crown of Castile, 1454–1504,” European History Quarterly 41/4 (2011)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
José Alberto Rodrigues da Silva Tavim, “Jews in the Diaspora with Sephared in the Mirror: ruptures, relations, and forms of identity: a theme examined through three cases,” Jewish History (2011) 25: 175-205.

Bishko Prize
Thomas W. Barton, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of San Diego, for his article “Muslims in Christian Countrysides: Reassessing Exaricus Tenures in the Crown of Aragon,” Medieval Encounters 17 (2011): 233-320.

2010 - 2011

Best Dissertation
Katrina Olds, “The ‘False Chronicles’ in Early Modern Spain: Forgery, Tradition, and the Invention of Texts and Relics (Princeton University, 2009)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Maria Eugenia Mata, “As Small Events May Have Large Long-Run Effects on Business Perspectives (Portugal, 1940s),” Problems And Perspectives In Management, Vol. 8, Issue 3 (June 2010), pp. 17-30.

Bishko Prize
Olivia Remie Constable, “Regulating Religious Noise: The Council of Vienne, the Mosque Call, and Muslim Pilgrimage in the Late Medieval Mediterranean World,” Medieval Encounters 16 (2010): 64-95.

2009 - 2010

Best First Book (tie)
Marta V. Vicente, Clothing the Spanish Empire: Families and the Calico Trade in the Early Modern Atlantic World. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2006.

and

Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert. A Nation Upon the Ocean Sea. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
with honorable mention to Katie Harris. From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History
Alvaro S. Pereira, “The Opportunity of a Disaster: The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake,” The Journal of Economic History 69:2 (2009): 466-499.

Bishko Prize
Brian Catlos, “The de Reys (1220-1501): The Evolution of a ‘Middle-Class’ Muslim Family in Christian Aragon” Viator 40 (2009): 197-219.

2008 - 2009

Best First Article (2006-2008)
Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics” American Historical Review 111:3 (2006): 660-690.

Bishko Prize
Jessica A. Boon, “The Agony of the Virgin: The Swoons and Crucifixion of Mary in Sixteenth Century Castilian Passion Treatises,” Sixteenth Century Studies 38:1 (2007): 3-26.

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History (tie)
Maria de Lurdes Rosa, “Santa Maria de Oliveira, demónios e reis: o uso de poder sagrado por um santuário medieval,” Boletim de Trabalhos Históricos 2007/08, pp. 135-153.

and

Tiago C.P. dos Reis Miranda, “António Freire de Andrade Encerrabodes (1699-1783): no espelho de Pombal,” Penélope. Número 30-31 (2004), pp. 93-134. [published in 2008]

2007 - 2008

Best Dissertation in Iberian History (2005-2007)
Gabriel Paquette, “Governance and Reform in the Spanish Atlantic World, c. 1760-1810” (University of Cambridge, 2006)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History Lorraine White, “Strategic Geography and the Spanish Habsburg Monarchy’s Failure to Recover Portugal, 1640-1668,” The Journal of Military History, 71 (April 2007), 373-409.

2006- 2007

Best First Book Award (2004-2006)
Sasha David Pack, Tourism and Dictatorship: Europe’s Peaceful Invasion of Franco’s Spain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Bishko Prize
Katherine Elliot van Liere, “The Missionary and the Moorslayer: James the Apostle in Spanish Historiography from Isidore of Seville to Ambrosio de Morales,” Viator 37 (2006): 519-43

2005- 2006

Best First Article Award (2003-2005)
Scott Taylor, “Credit, Debt, and Honor in Castile, 1600-1650,” Journal of Early Modern History 7:1-2 (January 2003): 8-27

Bishko Prize
James D’Emilio, “The Royal Convent of Las Huelgas: Dynastic Politics, Religious Reform and Artistic Change in Medieval Castile”, in Meredith Parsons Lillich, ed., Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture VI (Cistercian Nuns and their World) (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 2005), 191-282

2004 - 2005

Best Dissertation in Iberian History
Amanda Wunder, “Search for Sanctity in Baroque Seville: The Canonization of San Fernando and the Making of Golden-Age Culture, 1624-1729” (Princeton University, 2002)

Bishko Prize
Richard P. Kinkade, “Beatrice ‘Contesson’ of Savoy (c. 1250-1290): The Mother of Juan Manuel,” in La Corónica 32.3 (2004), 163-226

2003 - 2004

Best First Book Award
David Coleman, Creating Christian Granada: Society and Religious Culture in an Old-World Frontier City, 1492-1600 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003)

Bishko Prize
John Williams, “Meyer Schapiro in Silos: Pursuing the Iconography of Style,” Art Bulletin 85 (2003), 442-68

2002 - 2003

Best First Article Award
Gretchen Starr-Lebeau, “The Joyous History of Devotion and Memory of the Grandeur of Spain: The Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe and Religious and Political Memory,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte/Archive for Reformation History 93 (2002), pp. 238-262, and Barry Ross Mark, “Kabbalistic Tocinofobia: Américo Castro, Limpieza de Sangre, and the Inner Meaning of Jewish Dietary Laws,” in Fear and Representations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance , ed. Anne Scott and Cynthia Kosso. Turnhout [Belgium]: Brepols, 2002.

2001 - 2002

Best First Article
A. Katie Harris, “Forging History: the Plomos of Granada in Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza’s Historia eclesiástica,” Sixteenth Century Journal XXX/4 (1999): 945-966.