Prize Winners
Prize Winners for 2025
The following prizes were announced at the 2026 annual meeting.
SHEAR Book Prize for 2025
The 2025 SHEAR Book Prize went to two recipients this year. Richard Bell (Riverhead Books, Penguin Random House) received the award for The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. Richard Bell is a Professor at the University of Maryland.
Lauren Duval (Omohundro Institute with partner the University of North Carolina Press) received the award for The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence. Lauren Duval is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma.
James H. Broussard First Book Prize for 2025
Justine Meberg (Cambridge University Press) received the award for Protecting Women: US Army Culture in the Second US-Seminole War and the US-Mexican War. Justine Meberg is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.
James Bradford Biography Prize for 2025
Craig Thompson Friend (University of North Carolina Press) received the award for Becoming Lunsford Lane: The Lives of an American Aenaes. Craig Friend is a Professor of History and Public History at North Carolina State University.
April F. Masten (University of Illinois Press) was the finalist for Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing. April Masten is Professor of American History at Stony Brook University.
Mary Kelley Prize for 2025
Lauren Duval (Omohundro Institute with partner the University of North Carolina Press) received the award for The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence. Lauren Duval is an Associate Professor at the University of Oklahoma.
Ralph D. Gray Article Prize for 2025
Meagan Wierda received the award for “Statistics ‘in Relation to Themselves:’ African American Activists, the Census of 1840, and the Radical Potential of Quantification,” Journal of the Early Republic, Volume 45, Number 4 (Winter 2025), pp. 537-562. Megan Wierda is an Assistant Professor at the Université de Montréal.
Robyn Lily Davis Dissertation Prize for 2025
Edward Green (Penn State University) received the award for “Captains and Community: Interdependency, Diplomacy, and Development of ‘Quotidian Power’ in the Choctaw Nation, 1729-1860.”
SHEAR Distinguished Service Award
Johann Neem received the 2026 SHEAR Distinguished Service Award for his dedication to our organization, including his 2014-2017 term on the Advisory Council, and especially for his transformative work editing the Journal of the Early Republic.
SHEAR Service Award
Kate Tyler Wall received a 20 year service award for her work as managing editor of the Journal of the Early Republic.
