The HOTCUS Article Prize and Early Career Article Prize recognize the outstanding research being published by HOTCUS members. A prize of £100.00 will be awarded to the best article on a twentieth-century US history topic published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal during the previous calendar year. All the details for the 2025 round of applications will be made available at the end of 2024.
The winner of the HOTCUS 2024 Article Prize is Nicholas Grant (University of East Anglia) for their article “Patriotism and Black Internationalism” published in Modern American History. The committee would like to congratulate Nick, and shared the following commendation:
Nicholas Grant’s article “Patriotism and Black Internationalism,” Modern American History (2023) revisits Paul Robeson to illuminate the fascinating interplay of patriotism of Black internationalism in the Twentieth century. Grant’s deeply researched and sensitive reading of Robeson uses a wealth of materials from Robeson’s writings, hearings from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the media to make significant and far-reaching interventions recognising that internationalism has often been imbricated with, rather than exclusive or, forms of patriotism and national belonging. It is an excellent example of how to use rigorous historical scholarship to draw out lessons of contemporary relevance. Robeson’s story has been told many times, but this article mines further insights.
The winner of this year’s early career article prize is Jennifer Chochinov (King’s College London) for their article “True Patriots and Democrats”: U.S. Student Activism in Cold War-era Spain” published in Diplomatic History.The committee would like to congratulate Jennifer, and shared the following commendation:
The committee appreciated Jennifer’s study of American student activism in Cold War era Spain. In their article, “‘True Patriots and Democrats’: U.S. Student Activism in Cold War-era Spain,” Diplomatic History (2023), Jennifer used a diverse set of sources, for example, using oral history interviews to fill in archival silences. Further, Jennifer made a rather complex historical topic easy to understand. She wrote the essay in a way that was accessible and engaging for a lay audience.
The early career article prize committee also gave honourable mentions to Tom Arnold-Forster for his article and William Robert Billups.
Previous Winners
For full details on each year’s prize and the committee’s commendations please click here
2023: Zoe Colley (University of Dundee) “Erasing Minds: Behavioral Modification, the Prison Rights Movement, and Psychological Experimentation in America’s Prisons, 1962–1983” in he Journal of American Studies.
Early Career: Stephen Colbrook (University of Oxford) “Clandestine Networks and Closeted Bureaucrats: AIDS and the Forming of a Gay Policy Network in California” in the Journal of Policy History.
2022: Christian O’Connell (University of Gloucestershire) ‘A Roman Holiday? African Americans and Italians in the Second World War’ in History.
Early Career: Emma Day (University of Oxford) ‘The Fire Inside: Women Protesting AIDS in Prison since 1980’ in Modern American History.
2021: Patrick Hagopian (Lancaster University) ‘The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and the Politics of Post-Racialism,’ in History and Memory.
Early Career: Sarah Thomson (University of Edinburgh) ‘Presidential Travel and the Rose Garden Strategy: a case study of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 tour of Europe,’ in Presidential Studies Quarterly.
2020: Kaeten Mistry (University of East Anglia) ‘A Transnational Protest Against the National Security State’: Whistle-Blowing, Philip Agee, and Networks of Dissent’ in Journal of American History.
2019: Daniel Matlin (Kings College London) ‘ʺA New Reality of Harlem”: Imagining the African American Urban Future during the 1960s’ in Journal of American Studies.
2018: Christopher Phelps (University of Nottingham), “The Sexuality of Malcolm X” in Journal of American Studies.
2017: Maria McGrath (Bucks County Community College), “Living Feminist: The Liberation and Limits of Countercultural Business and Radical Lesbian Ethics at Bloodroot Restaurant” in The Sixties: Journal of History, Politics and Culture.