Department of History

Each spring the History Department holds the Sharabi Graduate Student Essay Competition in honor of the late Dr. Hisham Sharabi. Professor Sharabi taught undergraduate and trained graduate students at Georgetown for over 40 years.The competition is intended to encourage and reward excellence in graduate student written work.

Submssions are accepted late in the spring semester; awards are made at the beginning of the following fall semester. Papers are judged by a committee of two professors and one graduate student. All three committee members shall have no previous familiarity with the submitted work.

Submitted papers must be an original essay - research, historiography, or interpretive essay - written within the year prior to submission. Papers written for a course or for presentation at a conference are eligible. Published papers are ineligible. There is no maximum or minimum page requirement. One submission per student.

Papers should be submitted to the graduate program administrator, electronically or in hard copy, with two cover sheets, one which includes the title, author's name, name of advising professor, and the date and purpose for which the paper was written. The second cover sheet should only include the title.

2012

First prize: Alissa Walter, "Peasant Resistance and the Egyptian Family Planning Program, 1965-1980", advised by Professor Judith Tucker

Honorable Mentions:
John Gregory, "Militarization and Legal Precedent in Qing China: The Case of Zhu Tianzhao", advised by Professor James Millward

Joseph Hower, "A Hell of A Lot More to an Election than Julst Tallying the Votes": AFSCME, the Landrum-Griffin Act, and the Regulation of Labor Union Elections, 1961-1964", advised by Professor McCartin

2011

First prize (shared): Eric Gettig, "Trouble Ahead in Afro-Asia: The Johnson Administration, the Second Bandung Conference, and the Struggle for the Third World, 1964-5" and Katy Hull, "From Mothers to 'Milkers': The Early History of the Breast Pump in the United States"

2010

First Prize: Daniel Singer, "Imagining Turkey: Foreign Aid, Agricultural Development, and the American Vision of Turkey, 1950-1960"

2009

First Prize: Erin Stewart, "Of the Frontier the Yankee Made: The Ecological Legacies of Sherman's March"

2008

First Prize: Matthew Bowman, American Fundamentalists and the Problem of Nazism, 1933-1941 

2006

Shared First Prize: John Corcoran, "Divided Power, Shared Responsibility: Theoretical and Practical Relationships Between Uezd and Guberniia Zemstvos, 1864-1917"

Shared First Prize: Meredith Oyen, "Deserting Duty or Fighting Discrimination? Chinese Seamen in the Allied Merchant Marines in WW II"

Honorable Mention: Hoda Yousef, "Poetry in Migration: An Arabic Eulogy of President William McKinley "

2005

First Prize: Megan Faller, "Masculinity in Crisis? Rethinking the Muse in Vienna, 1900" 

Honorable Mention: Okezi Otovo, "Population Reform and Proletarian Babies: The Infant Hygiene Movement in Bahia, Brazil, in the Old Republic" 

Honorable Mention: Christina Petrides, "Slavery on the Black Sea: A Survey of Interconnections" 

Honorable Mention: Jonathan Wyrtzen, "Arab and Berber? Contesting, Constructing, and Mobilizing the Nation in Morocco and Algeria,1930-1939"

2004

First Prize: Ben Fulwider, An All-powerful Economic Weapon: Roads, Rails, and State Formation in Postrevolutionary Mexico, 1940-1950

Second Prize: Melissa Byrnes, Frenchmen or Foreigners? The Decolonization of Discourse on North African Immigration, 1961-1972

Third Prize: Vanesa Casanova-Fernández, Images of Europe and Africa in the Modern Spanish Imaginary: the Genesis and Evolution of Spanish Africanism 1859-1911

2003

No prizes awarded

2002

First Prize: Chris Morrison, Searching for Answers and Identity: The Creation of American Colonial Policy for the Philippines in an Age of Imperialism, 1898-1905

Second Prize: Aaron Palmer, Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor: Imperialist and Colonial Identity Among Governing Elites in South Carolina, Maryland, Barbados and Jamaica, 1763-1783

Third Prize (shared): Henri Lauzière, ‘Abd al-Salam Yasin in Moroccan Perspective: The Articulation of a Post-Salafi Islamism
Nadya Sbaiti, The Discourse On and Of Muta‘ in Contemporary Lebanon

2001

First Prize: Jeff Zalar, The Index of Forbidden Books and Catholic Nationalism in Wilhelmine Germany

Second Prize: Catherine Blair, We Ourselves Have Seen Him and Served with Him': A Look at the Participants in the Pugachev Rebellion

Third Prize: Alex Merrow, All for the Truth, All for the Church': Catholic Historiography in Nineteenth-Century Germany

2000

First Prize: Simone Ameskamp, Chosen Peoples and Promised Lands - Nationalism and Religion

Second Prize: Sean Foley, Statesmen, Taxes, and Visions: The Rise of the Mahdi in the Sudan, 1881-1885

Third Prize: Not awarded

1999

First Prize: Sara Scalenghe, The Court Records of Tripoli as a Source for the History of Women and Gender in the Ottoman Empire

Second Prize: John McGinn, See No Evil, Hear No Evil: NATO Policy during the Prague Spring

Third Prize (tie): Kathryn Coughlin, Virginity in Islamic Juridical and Popular Discoruse: A Diachronic Examination
Gregory Spira, 'El Ingreso Secreto': Viceregal Entry Ceremonies and the Consolidation of Legitimate Government in (title incomplete)

1998

First Prize: Jeffrey Taffet, My Guitar Is Not for the Rich: The New Chilean Song Movement and the Politics of Culture

Second Prize: Sherry Föhr (Lehr), Continuity Without Manipulation: Junkers and Peasants in Imperial Germany

Third Prize: Natana DeLong-Bas, Crisis in the Haramayn: Religious Legitimacy or Practical Statesmanship? The Muwahhidun Conquest and the Ottoman Recovery of Mecca and Medina