American Studies Association Announces 2025 Prize and Award Winners

The American Studies Association (ASA) is delighted to announce the recipients of its 2025 prizes and awards, recognizing outstanding scholarship, community leadership, and creative intellectual innovation across the interdisciplinary field of American Studies. These prizes honor the legacy of foundational figures in the field and celebrate the next generation of scholars who are reshaping conversations about race, gender, environment, empire, culture, and justice.

John Hope Franklin Prize

Recognizing the most outstanding book in American studies published in the previous year, this prize honors the legacy of renowned historian and past ASA president John Hope Franklin.

Winner: Daniel Widener, University of California, San Diego

Book: Third Worlds Within: Multiethnic Movements and Transnational Solidarity (Duke University Press)

Widener’s sweeping, incisive study examines Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latine internationalism and offers an urgent vision of anti-racist, anti-imperialist solidarity work.

Honorable mention: Nguyẽ̂n-võ Thu-hương, University of California Los Angeles

Book: Almost Futures: Sovereignty and Refuge at World's End

Lora Romero Prize

Awarded annually to the best first book in American studies, highlighting intersectional approaches to race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. It honors Lora Romero, a beloved ASA scholar who passed away in 1997.

Winner: Rahsaan Mahadeo, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Book: Funk the Clock: Transgressing Time While Young, Perceptive, and Black (Cornell University Press)

Mahadeo’s ethnography reveals how Black youth navigate—and resist—the racialized structures of time through methodological brilliance and deep ethical commitment.



Honorable Mention(s): 

• Benjamin Barson, Bucknell University
  
  Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons

• Bayley J. Marquez, University of Maryland-College Park
  
  Plantation Pedagogy: The Violence of Schooling Across Black and Indigenous Space

Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize

Awarded for the best doctoral dissertation in American studies, ethnic studies, or women’s studies, this prize honors intellectual historian Ralph Henry Gabriel.

Winner: Ann Ngoc Tran, University of Pennsylvania

Dissertation: “The Ark is Already Gone: A History of Boat Refugee Non-Arrival”

Tran’s dissertation offers a moving, theoretically rich history of Vietnamese boat refugees through the concept of “non-arrival,” illuminating lives lost, displaced, or erased by imperial violence.

Honorable Mention(s): 

• Tareq Radi, New York University
  
  “Cultivating Credit: War, Race and the Uneven Development of Empire in Palestine.” 

• Bryant Brown, Jr., Rutgers University
  
  “Antimanifesto Poetics: Black Avant-Gardism’s Queer Critique of the Manifesto Genre.”

Angela Y. Davis Prize

Recognizing scholarship used for the public good, this award honors Angela Y. Davis, the celebrated activist, author, and prison abolitionist.

Winner: Christine Hong, University of California, Santa Cruz

Hong is honored for her transformative community-engaged scholarship on racial justice, anti-imperialist organizing, Korean War memory, and public advocacy across California and global communities.

Bode-Pearson Prize

Presented for a lifetime of achievement in American studies, in honor of Carl Bode and Norman Holmes Pearson, pioneering leaders of the field.

Winner: Matthew Frye Jacobson, Yale University

A towering figure in American cultural history, Jacobson is recognized for his prolific scholarship, mentorship of nearly 100 graduate students, and wide-ranging contributions to public humanities.

Wise-Susman Prize

Awarded for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the ASA annual meeting, honoring Gene Wise and Warren Susman.

Winner: Mora McLean, George Washington University

Paper: “Battered Paradise: The Progressive Destruction of St. Thomas Harbor, St. Thomas, USVI Under Danish and American Rule”

McLean’s powerful paper examines layered histories of empire, climate change, and Black ecological endurance in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Honorable mention: Suiyi Tang, University of Southern California

Paper: "'Living is Doing': Ruth Asawa's Cold War Games for Thought.”

Yasuo Sakakibara Prize

Recognizing the best paper by an international scholar at the ASA annual meeting.

Winner: Dr. Wigbertson Julian Isenia, University of Amsterdam

Paper: “MARIKU! Queer, Trans, and Otherwise in the Afterlife of Empire”

Isenia’s work brings linguistic, historical, and decolonial analysis together to chart new futures for archipelagic and queer theory.

Constance M. Rourke Prize

Honoring the best article published in American Quarterly by an ASA member, named for cultural historian Constance Rourke.

Winner: Sam Ikehara, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Article: “The Feel of Peace: Noise Pollution and the Sovereignty of Wind” (September 2024)

Ikehara’s article reframes militarized violence and Pacific relationality through the medium of sound and air across Hawai‘i and Okinawa.

Honorable mention: David Stein, University of California, Santa Barbara

Article: "Toward an Intersectional Analysis of Money: Racial Capitalism, Stagflation, and Unemployment as Economic Policy" (vol. 76, no. 4)

Digital Humanities Caucus Awards

Ángel David Nieves Book Award — Monograph

Winner: Stephen Robertson, George Mason University

Book: Harlem in Disorder: A Spatial History of How Racial Violence Changed in 1935

 

Ángel David Nieves Book Award — Edited Collection

Winner: Lisa Marie Rhody, CUNY Graduate Center

Book: Feminist Digital Humanities: Intersections in Practice

Rhody’s work charts new feminist approaches to digital research, publishing, and theory.

(Co-authored with Susan Schreibman)

Honorable Mention(s):

• Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal
  
  Co-authors are the DISCO Network: David Adelman (University of Michigan), André Brock (Georgia Tech), Aaron Dial (Colgate University, Stephanie Dinkins (Stony Brook University), Rayvon Fouché (Northwestern University), Huan He (Vanderbilt University), Jeff Nagy (York University), Lisa Nakamura (University of Michigan), Catherine Knight Steele (University of Maryland), Rianna Walcott (University of Maryland), Josie Williams (Stony Brook University), Kevin Winstead (University of Florida), M. Remi Yergeau (Carleton University), and Lida Zeitlin-Wu (University of Notre Dame)

• Critical Making in the Age of AI 
  
   Coauthors: Emily Johnson and Anastasia Salter, Professor of English, University of Central Florida

Digital Project Awards — Newcomer & Legacy

Digital Project Award (Newcomer)

Winner: Jessica Marie Johnson & the K4BL Collective

Project: Keywords for Black Louisiana

A groundbreaking digital archive of Black life in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.

Digital Project Award (Legacy)

Winner: Melanie Walsh (with collaborators)

Project: Responsible Datasets in Context

Advancing critical, ethical, and antiracist approaches to dataset creation and use.

Honorable Mention(s):

• “Keeping Watch"

  • Michael Decker, Directory of Graduate Student Support, University of Idaho 

  • Devin Becker,  Co-Director of the CDIL and Associate Dean for Research and Instruction, University of Idaho Library/CDIL

  • Jack Kredell, Doctoral Candidate in Environmental Science, University of Idaho

  • Chris Lamb,  Doctoral Candidate in Geography, Clark University

• "“Fossil/Futures: A Landscape Stories Interactive Documentary"

  • Kathleen M Ryan, Associate Professor, University of Colorado Boulder

  • David Staton, Associate Professor, University of Northern Colorado

  • Tammy Mattews, Assistant Professor St. Bonaventure Universit

  • Elizabeth Skewes, Associate Professor and Associate Faulty Director CMDI in D.C., University of Colorado Boulder  

Environmental Justice Caucus — Annette Kolodny Award

Winner: Heidi Amin-Hong, UC Santa Barbara

Paper: “Remapping Multispecies DMZs: Visual Poetics and Cold War Containment”

International Committee — Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize

Winner: Bridget Bennett, University of Leeds

Paper: “Antislavery in the Dissenting Atlantic Archives and Unquiet Libraries, 1776–1865”

Queer/Trans Caucus Awards

Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize

Winner: Petrus Liu, Boston University

Book: The Specter of Materialism: Queer Theory and Marxism in the Age of the Beijing Consensus (Duke University Press)

Crompton-Noll Prize for Best LGBTQ Studies Article

Winner: Cole Rizki, University of Virginia

Article: “Gore Aesthetics: Chilean Necroliberalism and Travesti Resistance”

(Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies)

Race, Indigeneity, and Scholar Support (RISS) Committee — Richard A. Yarborough Award

Winner: Shirley Moody-Turner, Penn State University

Honored for transformative mentoring, community building, and intellectual leadership in African American Studies and digital humanities.

Sports Studies Caucus — Emerging Scholar Award

Winner: Jordan Keesler, University of Maryland, College Park

Recognized for groundbreaking scholarship in trans sports studies and social-justice–oriented sports research.

Honorable Mention(s):

• Paulina Serrano, Post-Doctoral Scholar, University of Texas 

• Maurice Rippel, PhD Candidate, Yale University