October 2025

Matt Jacobson awarded the American Studies Association’s 2025 Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize

Matthew Frye Jacobson has been awarded the 2025 Bode-Pearson Prize from the American Studies Association. The most prestigious prize awarded by the American Studies Association, the Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize recognizes the outstanding achievement of an individual who has dedicated a lifetime of work to the mission and values of American studies. Previous winners have included Ralph Henry Gabriel, Bernice Johnson Reagon, John Hope Franklin, and Lisa Lowe.

The Atlantic: "How Native Nations Shaped the Revolution" by Ned Blackhawk

The Founders were inspired—and threatened—by the independence and self-governance of nations like the Iroquois Confederacy.

Paola Bertucci on WTNH to discuss her book "The Land of Marvels"

Paola Bertucci, professor of history and curator-in-charge of the History of Science and Technology Division of the Yale Peabody Museum, was recently featured on WTNH to discuss her award-winning new book, The Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour. In the segment, she describes the manipulation of scientific information in eighteenth-century Europe—and how today’s concerns around misinformation, disinformation, and the search for truth in science have deep historical roots.

Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made

Apostles of Development recounts the work of six individuals, all former classmates at Cambridge University, who helped make international development–the effort to reduce poverty and inequality around the world–into a juggernaut of the second half of the twentieth century. International development employed millions, affected billions, and spent trillions; it held the hopes of the former colonies to create an economic independence to match their newfound political one, and the plans of wealthy counties to build an enduring economic order.

Foreign Policy: "The Problem With the Global South’s Self-Help Push" by David Engerman

Poorer countries have become more integrated but not necessarily more united.

Sunil Amrith Awarded 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction

Sunil Amrith, Henry R. Luce Director of the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, has been awarded the 2025 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Nonfiction for his book The Burning Earth. Salman Rushdie, Kaveh Akbar, Priscilla Morris, and Lauren Markham were among others honored.

Hindustan Times: "Imprint of the people in shaping the Constitution" by Rohit De and Ornit Shani

The story of the making of India’s Constitution, as usually told, begins in Delhi. As the clock struck 11 on December 9 1946, the story goes, the Constituent Assembly convened for the first time in Constitution Hall, New Delhi. The debates over the next three years among the 300 Assembly members and the constitutional text they produced have become the main source for understanding how India’s Constitution came to be.