BHC Announces 2012 Prize Recipients

At the Business History Conference annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 29-31, 2012, recipients of the following BHC prizes and grants were announced:

Harold F. Williamson Prize.The award is bestowed every two years to a mid-career scholar who has made significant contributions to the field of business history. The prize memorializes the contributions to business history of the late Harold F. Williamson.

2012 recipient: Mary O’Sullivan, University of Geneva

Hagley Prize. The prize is awarded jointly by the Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference to the best book in business history (broadly defined) written in English and published during the two years prior to the award.

2012 Recipient: Sharon Ann Murphy, Providence College, Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

Ralph Gomory Prize. This prize, made possible by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, recognizes historical work on the effects of business enterprises on the economic conditions of the countries in which they operate.

2012 recipient: Richard White, Stanford University, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W.W. Norton, 2011).

2012 honorable mentions: Jason M. Colby, University of Victoria, The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America (Cornell University Press, 2011), and Philip J. Stern, Duke University, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

2012 Gomory article prize recipient: Gregg Mittman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Paul Erickson, "Latex and Blood: Science, Markets, and American Empire," Radical History Review 107 (Spring 2010): 45-73.

Herman E. Krooss Prize. The prize recognizes the best dissertation in business history written in English and completed in the three calendar years immediately prior to the annual meeting.

2012 recipient: Alexia Yates, Harvard Center for History and Economics, “Selling Paris: Real Estate and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-Siècle Capital” Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2010).

Oxford Journals Article Prize. This prize recognizes the author of an article published in Enterprise & Society judged to be the best of those that have appeared in volume previous to the year of the BHC annual meeting.

2012 recipient: Milena Veenis, University of Amsterdam, “Cola in the German Democratic Republic: East German Fantasies on Western Consumption” 12 (Sept. 2011): 489-524

2012 honorable mentions: Bianca Murillo, Willamette University, “'The Devil We Know’: Gold Coast Consumers, Local Employees, and the United Africa Company, 1940-1960” 12 (June 2011): 317-55, and Christopher Jones, Ciriacy-Wantrup Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, “The Carbon-Consuming Home: Residential Markets and Energy Transitions” 12 (Dec. 2011): 790-823.

Mira Wilkins Prize. This prize, established in recognition of the path-breaking scholarship of Mira Wilkins, is awarded to the author of the best article published annually in Enterprise & Society pertaining to international and comparative business history.

2012 recipient: Neil Rollings, University of Glasgow, “Multinational Enterprise and Government Controls on Outward Foreign Direct Investment in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1960s” 12 (June 2011): 398-434.

K. Austin Kerr Prize. The prize recognizes the best first paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Business History Conference by a new scholar (doctoral student or those within three years of receiving their Ph.D.). It honors K. Austin Kerr, longtime professor of history at the Ohio State University and former president of the Business History Conference.

2012 recipient: Gabriel N. Rosenberg, “The Programa Interamericano para la Juventud Rural and the Cultivation of Agribusiness and U.S. Hegemony in Cold War Latin America.”

2012 honorable mention: Kate Epstein, Rutgers University-Camden, “Arms and the State: American Torpedoes, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Origins of the Military-Industrial Complex before World War I,” Judge Glock, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, “The Federal Housing Administration: Did It Really Favor the Suburbs?”

The CEBC Halloran Prize in the History of Corporate Responsibility. The prize recognizes a paper presented at the BHC annual meeting that makes a significant contribution to the history of corporate responsibility. It is funded by the Center for Ethical Business Cultures (CEBC) at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business in honor of Harry R. Halloran, Jr.

2012 recipient: Jennifer Armiger, SUNY-Albany, “'What Was Good Enough in the 1960s Is Not Good Enough Today’: Sex, Race, and Business Opposition to Equal Opportunity Policy in 1970s America.”