SERMEISS Prize Winners

Call for Proposals

SERMEISS BOOK PRIZE

2022

Dylan Baun,  University of Alabama in Huntsville, Winning Lebanon: Youth Politics, Populism, and the Production of Sectarian Violence, 1920–1958, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Honorable Mention: A. Asa Eger, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and Andrea U. De Giorgi, Florida State University, Antioch: A History, Routledge, 2021.

2021

Ryan J. Lynch, Columbus State University, Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Honorable Mention: Alyssa Gabbay, UNC Greensboro, Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam:  Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

2020

Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, William and Mary, The Kizilbash/Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics and Community, Edinburgh University Press, 2019.

Curtis Ryan, Appalachian State University, Jordan and the Arab Uprising: Regime Survival and Politics beyond the State, Columbia University Press, 2018.

2019

Matt Buehler, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Why Alliances Fail: Islamist and Leftist Coalitions in North Africa, Syracuse, 2018

SERMEISS ARTICLE/BOOK CHAPTER PRIZE

2023

Devin Stewart, Emory University, "Behind Enemy Lines: An Account of a Secret Conversion to Shiism in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Aleppo," Shii Studies Review, 2022 (Vol. 6, No. 1-2), pp. 3-75.

Honorable Mention: Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech, "Security Threats or Citizens?." In Enemies Within: The Global Politics of Fifth Columns, Oxford University Press.

2022

Nassima Neggaz, New College of Florida, "The Many Deaths of the Last ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Musta‘ṣim bi-llāh (d. 1258)". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2020 (Vol. 30, No.4), pp. 585-612. 

Honorable Mention: Gunes Murat Tezcur,  Rebecca Shiel, and Bruce M. Wilson, University of Central Florida, "The Effectiveness of Harnessing Human Rights: The Struggle over the Ilısu Dam in Turkey," Development and Change, 2021 (Vol. 52, No. 6), pp. 1343-1369.

Honorable Mention: Hilary Cooperman, Rollins College, "Pushing through the skin to break the bones: Israel's Performance of Extraterritorial Expansion into West Bank, Palestine," Culture, Theory, and Critique, 2021 (Vol. 62, No.1-2), pp. 76-95.

2021

Holger Albrecht, Alabama, “Military Insubordination in Popular Mass Uprisings,” Political Science Quarterly, 2019 (Vol. 134, No. 2), pp. 303-328.

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth M. Perego, Appalachian State University, “Emasculating Humor from Algeria’s ‘Dark Decade,’ 1991-2002,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2020 (Vol. 52, No. 1), pp. 67-88.

2020

Rania Kassab Sweis, University of Richmond, "Doctors with Borders: Hierarchies of Humanitarians and the Syrian Civil War,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Volume 51 (2019), pp. 587-601.

Honorable Mention: Eric Lob, Florida International University, “Construction Jihad: state-building and development in Iran and Lebanon’s Shiʿi Territories,” Third World Quarterly, Volume 39, #11 (2018), pp. 2103-25.

2019

Dylan Baun, University of Alabama-Huntsville, “Lebanon’s Youth Clubs and the 1936 Summer Olympics: Mobilizing Sports, Challenging Imperialism and Launching a National Project,” The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2018.


SERMEISS TRAVEL GRANT

2023

Lillian Frost, Virginia Tech, for travel to Jordan, to complete a project on "Intentional Ambiguity: Protracted Refugee Citizenship Policies under Pressure in Jordan."

Melissa Camp, UNC Chapel Hill, for travel to the UK to do archival research for her dissertation project, "Sounding the Nahda: Musical Modernity in the Postcolonial Ottoman Empire."

2021

Donohon Abdugafurova, Emory, for travel to Uzbekistan to conduct research on “Gender, Islam and Religious values of Eldercare in Uzbekistan.”

2020

Dylan Baun, University of Alabama-Huntsville, for travel to Lebanon to collect primary source material for a digital archive on the 1958 war.

2019

Yara Asi, Department of Health Management and Informatics, University of Central Florida, for travel to Palestine to conduct research on “The Mortality of Structural Violence: How Movement Restrictions Impede Health and Well-being in the Palestinian Territories.”