Early American Literature Book Prize
The Early American Literature Book Prize is offered in collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, the Society of Early Americanists, and the MLA’s Forum on Early American Literature. The prize is awarded in even calendar years to a first monograph and in odd years to a second or subsequent book.
Hard copies of books that make the short list will be requested from the publisher. The book prize selection committee consists of the journal’s editors, as well as one representative from the SEA executive committee and one representative from the executive committee for the MLA’s Forum on early American literature.
Eligibility Criteria
Monographs should address early American literature, cultural history and society broadly conceived through approximately 1830.
Odd prize years: author’s second or subsequent monograph
Even prize years: author’s first monograph
Monographs should be published within the two years prior to the prize year
- For example: monographs considered for the 2024 prize were published in 2022 and 2023; monographs considered for the 2025 prize were published in 2023 and 2024
Nominations
Nominations and self-nominations are accepted year-round via email. To nominate a title, email the following to ealassistanteditor@gmail.com:
- Author
- Title
- Webpage URL/link to the book description
Nominations close each year on March 31.
Prize Selection committee
The book prize selection committee consists of the journal’s Co-Editors, one representative from the Society of Early Americanists, and one representative from the executive committee from the MLA’s Forum on early American literature.
EAL Book Prize Previous Winners
2025
Andrew Lipman
Squanto: A Native Odyssey (Yale UP, 2024)
2025 Honorable Mention
Phillip Round
Inscribing Sovereignties: Writing Community in Native North America
2025 Short List
Anna Brickhouse
Earthquake and the Invention of America: The Making of Elsewhere Catastrophe (Oxford UP, 2024)
2025 Short List
Brycchan Carey
The Unnatural Trade: Slavery, Abolition, and Environmental Writing, 1650-1807 (Yale UP, 2024)
2025 Short List
Russ Castronovo
American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability (Princeton UP, 2023)
2024
Miles P. Grier
Inkface: Othello and White Authority in the Era of Atlantic Slavery (2023)
2023
Kirsten Silva Gruesz
Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas (2022)
2023
Kelly Wisecup
Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilations and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures (2021)
2022
Wendy Raphael Roberts
Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelism (2020)
2021
Rodrigo Lazo
Letters from Filadelfia: Early Latino Literature and the Trans-American Elite (2020)
2020
Lindsay DiCuirci
Colonial Revivals: The Nineteenth-Century Lives of Early American Books (2018)
2019
Lisa Brooks
Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (2018)
2018
Caroline Wigginton
In the Neighborhood: Women’s Publication in Early America (2016)
2017
Patricia Crain
Reading Children: Literacy, Property, and the Dilemmas of Childhood in Nineteenth-Century America (2016)
2016
Robert Gunn
Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands (2016)
2015
Anna Brickhouse
The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945
2015
Wil Verhoeven
Americomania and the French Revolution Debate in Britain, 1789–1802
Richard Beale Davis Prize
The Modern Language Association’s Forum on early American literature awards the Richard Beale Davis prize for the best article in each volume of Early American Literature.
Richard Beale Davis Prize Previous Winners and Honorable Mentions
2023
Lloyd Alimboyao Sy
“‘The Voice of
“Stopping by Woods in Mashpee Territory: Belonging in William Apess’s Indian Nullification”
2023 Honorable Mention
Andrea Knutson
2022
Rebecca Rosen
“‘The Voice of
the Innocent Blood Cries Aloud from the Ground to Heaven’: Speaking and Discovering Infanticide in the Early American Northeast.”
2022 Honorable Mention
Camille Owens
“‘I, Young in Life’: Phillis Wheatley and the Invention of American Childhood.”
2021
Stacey Dearing
“Remembering Dorothy May Bradford’s Death and Reframing ‘Depression’ in Colonial New England.”
2020
Courtney Chatellier
“Translation, Counterrevolution, and the Early American Novel: Richard Aslop’s The Lovers of La Vendée, or Revolutionary Tyranny.”
2020
Drew Lopenzina
“In de Dark Wood, No Indian Nigh’: William Apess and the ‘Indian Hymn.’”
2019
Reed Gochberg
“Circulating Objects: Crevecoeur’s ‘Curious Book’ and the American Philosophical Society Cabinet.”
2019
Ana Schwartz
“‘Mercy as Well as Extremity’: Forts, Fences, and Fellow Feeling in New England Settlement.”
2016
Kathleen Donegan
Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America
More Prizes
1921 Prize Previous Winners
2022
Camille Owens
“‘I, Young in Life’: Phillis Wheatley and the Invention of American Childhood.”
2020
Ajay Kumar Batra
“Reading with Conviction: Abraham Johnstone and the Poetics of the Dead End.”