2021 Winners 

Charles A. Beard Prize
Given by the Department for a senior thesis of distinction in any historical field or period.

Nicholas Loud – “Death of a Trolley Conductor”: Urban Landscape, Social Mobility, and Cross-Class Coalition in the Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895

Garrett Mattingly Prize
Given by the Department for a senior thesis of distinction in any historical field or period.

Coleman Sherry – Corporate Heads: Phrenology, Physiognomy, and the Character of Big Business, 1895-1914

 Lily Prize
Given by the Department for the best senior thesis in history on a non-U.S. topic. Established by James P. Shenton in memory of his mother.

Isabel von Stauffenberg – “Verraten und Verkauft”: The Contested Politics of Germany’s Treuhandanstalt

Herbert H. Lehman Prize
Given to a General Studies student with an outstanding record of accomplishment in history courses at Columbia. Preference given to those with substantial coursework in U.S. History.

Yasemin Buharali – Re-imagining Education in the Early Turkish Republic: İsmail Hakkı Tonguç and His Transformative Educational Vision

Chanler Historical Prize (prize split)
Given by the College for the best essay submitted by a senior on a topic dealing with the history of the American civil government.

Alex Hempel – Trichloroethylene Contamination of American Military Bases: An Alternative Toxic Waste History

Mary Marsh – Setting the Scene in Japanese America: Post–World War II Visions of Transnational Politics and Culture

Albert Marion Elsberg Prize (prize split)
Given by the College for a sophomore, junior, or senior who has demonstrated excellence in modern history.

Ramsay Eyre – Land Hunger in the Abolitionist Imagination, 1865-1872

Christopher Mingo – Hidden in Plain Sight: Italian Concentration Camps in Cyrenaica: 1930-1933

Allen J Willen Memorial Prize
The prize is awarded to the Columbia College student who writes the best seminar paper on a contemporary American political problem.

Emile Warot – Dodging Antitrust: Nostalgia, Big Business, and the Baseball Monopoly

Undergraduate Education Committee Prize (Prize split)
The Undergraduate Education Committee Prize is given to a thesis of excellence written in any field of history.

Aisha Akoshile – An Age-Old Tug of War: Understanding the Intergenerational Conflicts of southern African Nationalist Groups

Peter Gaber – Aestheticizing the political, politicizing the aesthetic: Reactions to the disappearance of representation in the French avant-garde, 1951-1962

Departmental Honors 2021

Kayla Abrams – For the People?: The Role of Prosecutorial Misconduct in the Rise of Progressive Prosecution in Brooklyn, 1964-2019

Yasemin Buharali – Re-imagining Education in the Early Turkish Republic: İsmail Hakkı Tonguç and His Transformative Educational Vision

Jasleen Chaggar – Contesting Imperial Citizenship: The election of Dadabhai Naoroji as an MP in 1892

Emma Kateman – Capturing a Lifestyle: The Relationship Between the American Government and the American Film Industry 1945-1954

Zachary Kimmel – No Person Shall Be Deprived: Antislavery Due Process in New York State Courts, 1840-1860

Grace MacNeill – Reviving the Dead Letter: Attempts to Enforce Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment after the 1920 Presidential Election

Willem Morris – Copper Democracy: An International Labor History of The Anaconda Company: 1945-1960

Ari Papahronis – En Solidaridad: Nicaraguan Solidarity and Reagan-Era Radical HIV/AIDS Activism

Max Watson – Brokers of Conflict: On Subsidies, East Indian Trade, and the Electorate of Hanover in the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756

Vinzent Wesselmann – Imported Deviance: Conformity, Halbstarke, and American Youth Culture in Postwar Germany

 

A list of past years Prizes & Honors winners can be found here.