The Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize

The purpose of the prize is to recognize and encourage distinguished research and writing by junior scholars in the field of diplomatic relations. The prize of $1,000 is awarded annually to the author of a distinguished article appearing in a scholarly journal or edited book, on any topic in United States foreign relations.

Eligibility: The author must be a graduate student or within ten years of receiving the Ph.D. at the time of the article's acceptance for publication. The article must be among the first six publications by the author. Previous winners of the Stuart L. Bernath Book Award or the Myrna F. Bernath Book Award are ineligible.

Procedures: All articles appearing in Diplomatic History will be automatically considered without nomination. Other nominations may be submitted by the author or by any member of SHAFR. The award is presented during the SHAFR annual conference.

To nominate an article published in 2024 for the 2025 prize, send (1) an electronic copy of the article; (2) a concise C.V. of the article’s author; and (3) a letter of nomination to Mattias Fibiger, [email protected].

Deadline for nominations is February 1, 2025

The Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize Recent Winners:

  • 2024 Sarah Sears, "Beyond the River's Violence: Reconsidering the Chamizal Border Dispute," Diplomatic History 47, no. 3 (June 2023): 419-445.
  • 2023 Emilie Connolly, "Fiduciary Colonialism: Annuities and Native Dispossession in the Early United States," American Historical Review 127, no. 1 (March 2022): 223–253.
  • 2022 Mattias Fibiger, “A Diplomatic Counter-revolution: Indonesian Diplomacy and the Invasion of East Timor,” Modern Asian Studies 55, no. 2 (March 2021): 587–628.
  • 2021 Mira Kohl, "Between Louisiana and Latin America: Oil Imperialism and Bolivia's 1937 Nationalization," Diplomatic History 44, no. 2 (April 2020): 210-236.
  • 2020 Bathsheba Demuth, "The Walrus and the Bureaucrat: Energy, Ecology, and Making the State in the Russian and American Arctic, 1870–1950,” American Historical Review 124, no. 2 (April 2019): 483–510.
  • 2019 Alex Beasley, “Service Learning: Oil, International Education, and Texas’s Corporate Cold War,” Diplomatic History 42, no. 2 (April 2018): 177–203.
  • 2018 Vanessa Ogle, "Archipelago Capitalism:  Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s-1970s," American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (December 2017): 1431–1458.
  • 2017 Tehila Sasson, "Milking the Third World: Humanitarianism, Capitalism, and the Moral Economy of the Nestlé Boycott," The American Historical Review 121, no 4, (October 2016): 1196–1224.
  • 2016 Tore C. Olsson, “Sharecroppers and Campesinos: The American South, Mexico, and the Transnational Politics of Land Reform in the Radical 1930s,” Journal of Southern History 81, no. 3 (August 2015): 607-46.
  • 2015 Brooke Blower, “From Isolationism to Neutrality: A New Framework for Understanding American Political Culture, 1919–1941,” Diplomatic History, 38:2 (April 2014): 345-376.
  • 2014 Sarah Miller Davenport, “‘Their blood shall not be shed in vain’: American Evangelical Missionaries and the Search for God and Country in Post-­World War II Asia,” Journal of American History, 99:4 (March 2013): 1109-32.
  • 2013 Thomas C. Field, Jr., “Ideology as Strategy: Military-Led Modernization and the Origins of the Alliance for Progress in Bolivia,” Diplomatic History 36:1 (January 2012)
  • 2012 Gregory Wigmore, “Before the Railroad: From Slavery to Freedom in the Canadian-American Borderland,” Journal of American History, 98:2 (September 2011), 437-54.
  • 2011 Andrew C. McKevitt, "'You Are Not Alone!': Anime and the Globalizing of America," Diplomatic History 34 (2010): 893-921.
  • 2010 Ryan Irwin, "A Wind of Change?: White Redoubt and the Postcolonial Moment, 1960-1963," Diplomatic History 33 (2009): 897-925.
  • 2009 Brian C. Etheridge, "The Desert Fox, Memory Diplomacy, and the German Question in Early Cold War America," Diplomatic History 32 (2008): 207-238.
  • 2008 Brian Delay, "Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War," American Historical Review 112 (2007): 35-68.
  • 2007 Sarah Graham, "The (Real)Politiks of Culture: U.S. Cultural Diplomacy in Unesco, 1946-1954," Diplomatic History 30 (2006): 231-251.
  • 2006 Sahr Conway-Lanz, "Beyond No Gun Ri: Refugees and the United States Military in the Korean War," Diplomatic History 29 (2005): 49-81.
  • 2005 Lawrence A. Peskin "The Lessons of Independence: How the Algerian Crisis Shaped Early-American History," Diplomatic History 28 (2004): 297-319.
  • 2004 Max Paul Friedman, "There Goes the Neighborhood: Blacklisting Germans in Latin America and the Evanescence of the Good Neighbor Policy," Diplomatic History 27 (2003): 569-597.
  • 2003 Amy L. S. Staples, "Seeing Diplomacy Through Bankers' Eyes: The World Bank, The Anglo-Iranian Oil Crisis, and the Aswan High Damn," Diplomatic History 26 (2002): 397-418.
  • 2002 Seth Jacobs
  • 2001 Joseph Manzione
  • 2000 Paul Kramer
  • 1999 Robert Dean; Michael Latham
  • 1998 Nancy Bernhard
  • 1997 Robert Vitalis
  • 1996 David Fitzsimons
  • 1995 Heike Bungert
  • 1994 Fredrik Logevall
  • 1993 Daniel P. O'C. Greene
  • 1992 Marc Gallicchio
  • 1991 William Weeks
  • 1990 Lester J. Foltos
  • 1989 Robert J. McMahon