CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS for the Best First Article prize:

The committee for the ASPHS Best First Article Prize in Iberian History invites submissions for this year's competition. Articles published in 2009, 2010, or 2011, in any language of the society (English, Portuguese, and Spanish), are eligible. The winner will receive an honorarium of $250.

The deadline for submissions is December 2, 2011, but earlier submissions are encouraged. A copy of the published article, the table of contents of the journal or volume in which the article was published, and the author’s c.v., including current contact information, should accompany each submission. Please send complete materials to each of the four members of the prize committee. Electronic submissions are preferred.

Electronic (PDF) copies should be submitted to:

A. Katie Harris (chair) : akharris at ucdavis dot edu
Joshua Goode: joshua.goode at cgu dot edu
Ivana Elbl: ielbl at trentu dot ca
David Graizbord: graizbord at hotmail dot com

If electronic submission is not possible, paper copies may be submitted to:

A. Katie Harris
Department of History
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616-8611

Joshua Goode
Department of History
Claremont Graduate University
121 E. Tenth St.
Claremont, CA 91711

Ivana Elbl
Department of History
1600 West Bank Drive
Trent University
Lady Eaton College South
Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8

David Graizbord
The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies
The University of Arizona
Louise Foucar Marshall Building
845 N. Park Ave., Suite 420
PO Box 210158B
Tucson, AZ 85721-0158B

The 2010 competition was for Best Dissertation, and the committee is pleased to announce the winner: 

Katrina Olds, "The 'False Chronicles' in Early Modern Spain:  Forgery, Tradition, and the Invention of Texts and Relics"  (Princeton University, 2009)

Although the committee reviewed an excellent crop of dissertations, Katrina Olds' study of the Cronicones Falsos, a series of purportedly ancient texts fabricated by an ambitious sixteenth-century Jesuit, stood out as the unanimous winner.  In contrast to earlier work on the Cronicones, Olds treats the forgeries not as aberrations, but rather as part of a wider scholarly conversation that took place in sixteenth-century Europe about the origins of Christianity in Spain.  This debate was imbued with controversies on several major questions, including the relationship between Spain and Rome, the origins of local traditions, and the acceptable standards for establishing authenticity.  Written with unusual elegance, the study presents a fluid, effortless mix of religous and social history, drawing fascinating links between intellectual and institutional histories and popular religious practice.  Olds demonstrates that the history of the Cronicones is a capacious topic, worthy of a study in excess of 600 pages, and that the story of their genesis, production, reception, and eventual denunciation provides a revealing window into the politics, religion and culture of the Counter-Reformation.