The Leo Gershoy Award is a book prize awarded by the American Historical Association for the best publication in English dealing with the history of Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Endowed in 1975 by the Gershoy family and first awarded two years later, the prize commemorates Leo Gershoy, professor of French history at New York University. It was awarded biennially until 1985, and annually thereafter.
The first recipient of the award was Simon Schama; other distinguished honorees include Robert Darnton, John H. Elliott and Roy Porter. Carla Rahn Phillips of the University of Minnesota has uniquely won the prize on two occasions. [1]
Sourced from AHA [2]
The Age of Enlightenment was the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries. The Enlightenment featured a range of social ideas centered on the value of knowledge learned by way of rationalism and of empiricism and political ideals such as natural law, liberty, and progress, toleration and fraternity, constitutional government and the formal separation of church and state.
Early modern Europe, also referred to as the post-medieval period, is the period of European history between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, roughly the mid 15th century to the late 18th century. Historians variously mark the beginning of the early modern period with the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s, the Fall of Constantinople and end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453, the end of the Wars of the Roses in 1485, the beginning of the High Renaissance in Italy in the 1490s, the end of the Reconquista and subsequent voyages of Christopher Columbus to the Americas in 1492, or the start of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. The precise dates of its end point also vary and are usually linked with either the start of the French Revolution in 1789 or with the more vaguely defined beginning of the Industrial Revolution in late 18th century England.
The Georgian era was a period in British history from 1714 to c. 1830–1837, named after the Hanoverian kings George I, George II, George III and George IV. The definition of the Georgian era is also often extended to include the relatively short reign of William IV, which ended with his death in 1837. The subperiod that is the Regency era is defined by the regency of George IV as Prince of Wales during the illness of his father George III. The transition to the Victorian era was characterized in religion, social values, and the arts by a shift in tone away from rationalism and toward romanticism and mysticism.
There is significant disagreement among historians of the French Revolution as to its causes. Usually, they acknowledge the presence of several interlinked factors, but vary in the weight they attribute to each one. These factors include cultural changes, normally associated with the Enlightenment; social change and financial and economic difficulties; and the political actions of the involved parties. For centuries, the French society was divided into three estates or orders.
Sir Simon Michael Schama is an English historian and television presenter. He specialises in art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, and French history. He is a Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University.
Roy Sydney Porter, FBA was a British historian known for his work on the history of medicine. He retired in 2001 from the director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine at University College London (UCL).
The ideas of the Age of Enlightenment came to Spain in the 18th century with the new Bourbon dynasty, following the death of the last Habsburg monarch, Charles II, in 1700. The period of reform and 'enlightened despotism' under the eighteenth-century Bourbons focused on centralizing and modernizing the Spanish government, and improvement of infrastructure, beginning with the rule of King Charles III and the work of his minister, José Moñino, count of Floridablanca. In the political and economic sphere, the crown implemented a series of changes, collectively known as the Bourbon reforms, which were aimed at making the overseas empire more prosperous to the benefit of Spain.
Robert Choate Darnton is an American cultural historian and academic librarian who specializes in 18th-century France.
Sir John Huxtable Elliott was a British historian and Hispanist who was Regius Professor at the University of Oxford and honorary fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He published under the name J. H. Elliott.
Marianne Elliott is an Irish historian who was appointed OBE in the 2000 Birthday Honours.
Timothy Tackett is an American historian specializing in the French Revolution and professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine.
Louise-Félicité Guynement de Kéralio was a French writer and translator, originating from the minor Breton nobility.
David Avrom Bell is an American historian specializing in French history.
Habsburg Spain was at the height of its power and cultural influence at the beginning of the 17th century, but military, political, and economic difficulties were already being discussed within Spain. In the coming decades these difficulties grew and saw France gradually taking Spain's place as Europe's leading power through the later half of the century. Many different factors, including the decentralized political nature of Spain, inefficient taxation, a succession of weak kings, power struggles in the Spanish court and a tendency to focus on the American colonies instead of Spain's domestic economy, all contributed to the decline of the Habsburg rule of Spain.
Leo Gershoy was a history professor at New York University from 1940 to 1975. In his name the American Historical Association awards an annual prize for the best new book on 17th- or 18th-century European history. An annual lecture at New York University is also named for him.
Stuart B. Schwartz is the George Burton Adams Professor of History at Yale University, the Chair of the Council of Latin American and Iberian Studies, and the former Master of Ezra Stiles College.
Andy Wood, is a British social historian and academic.
Pamela H. Smith is an American historian of science specializing in attitudes to nature in early modern Europe (1350-1700), with particular attention to craft knowledge and the role of craftspeople in the Scientific Revolution. She is the Seth Low Professor of History, founding director of the Making and Knowing Project, founding director of the Center for Science and Society, and chair of the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience, all at Columbia University. Smith is serving a two-year term (2016-2018) as president of the Renaissance Society of America.
Jonathan Stewart Dewald is an American historian focusing on the social and cultural history of early modern Europe, as well as the intellectual history and political history of France. He is currently the SUNY Distinguished Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Alexandra Shepard is Professor of Gender History at the University of Glasgow. In 2018 Shepard was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition for her work in gender history and the social history of early modern Britain. In 2019 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.