The Mediterranean Seminar Book Prizes
The Mediterranean Seminar/CU Mediterranean Studies Group sponsors three triennial book prizes:
The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Book in Mediterranean Studies,
The Wadjih F. al-Hamwi Prize for the Best First Book in Mediterranean Studies, and
The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection.
The 3rd Wadjih F. al-Hamwi Prize for the Best First Book in Mediterranean Studies is now open with a deadline of 31 December 2026.
For prize descriptions, details and entry instructions, click here.
Past Winners
2026 - The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Book in Mediterranean Studies
Winner: Shawcross, Teresa. Wisdom’s House, Heaven’s Gate: Athens and Jerusalem in the Middle Ages (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
Winner: Stroebel, William. Literature’s Refuge: Rewriting the Mediterranean Borderscape (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2025)
Honorable mention: Kosmin, Paul J. The Ancient Shore (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2024).
2025 - Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection
Winner Best Edition & Translation: La Porta, Sergio, and Alison M. Vacca, An Armenian Futūh Narrative: Łewond’s Eighth-Century History of the Caliphate (Chicago: : Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture , 2024).
Winner Best Translation: Reynolds, Dwight., Medieval Arab Music and Musicians Three Translated Texts. (Boston: Brill, 2021).
Winner Essay Collection : Fabris, Angela, Albert Göschl, and Steffen Schneider, eds., Sea of Literatures Towards a Theory of Mediterranean Literature (Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2022).
Honorable mention Best Edition & Translation: Colominas Aparicio, Monica, The Book of Disputation : A Mudejar Religious-Philosophical Treatise Against Christians and Jews : A Study and an Accompanying Text Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2024).
Honorable mention Best Translation: Zacuto, Moses ben Mordecai, Hell Arrayed (Tofteh ‘Arukh): A Seventeenth-Century Hebrew Poem on the Punishment of the Wicked in the Afterlife, translated, annotated, and introduced by Michela Andreatta (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, 2023).
Honorable mention Essay Collection: Bouras-Vallianatos, Petros, and Dionysios Ch. Stathakopoulos, eds., Drugs in the Medieval Mediterranean: Transmission and Circulation of Pharmacological Knowledge (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
See details here.
2024 - The 2nd Wadjih F. al-Hamwi Prize for the Best First Book in Mediterranean Studies
Winner: Andreas Guidi, Generations of Empire: Youth from Ottoman to Italian Rule in the Mediterranean (University of Toronto Press, 2022).
Honorable Mention: Anthi Andronikou, Italy, Cyprus, and Artistic Exchange in the Medieval Mediterranean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Honorable Mention: Matt King, Dynasties Intertwined. The Zirids of Ifiriqiya & the Normans of Sicily (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022).
See details here.
2023 - The Mediterranean Seminar Best Book Prize 2023
Winner: Carolina López-Ruiz, Phoenicians and the Making of the Mediterranean (Harvard University Press: 2021).
Winner: Jessica M. Marglin, The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press: 2022).
Honorable Mention: Andrew Devereux, The Other Side of Empire. Just War in the Mediterranean and the Rise of Early Modern Spain (Cornell University Press: 2020).
Honorable Mention: Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss, The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France (Getty Research Institute: 2022).
See details here.
2022 - Prize for the Best Source Edition, Book Translation, or Essay Collection
Winner (Essay Collection): Clara Almagro Vidal, Jessica Tearney-Pearce, Luke Yarbrough, eds. Minorities in Contact in the Medieval Mediterranean. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021).
Winner (Edition/ Translation): Osman of Timisoara, Prisoner of the Infidels: The Memoir of an Ottoman Muslim in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. and trans. Giancarlo Casale (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021).
Honorable Mention (Edition/ Translation): Aaron Michael Butts and Simcha Gross, The History of the ‘Slave of Christ’ : From Jewish Child to Christian Martyr, (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2016).
See details here.
2021 - The Wadjih F. al-Hamwi Prize for the Best First Book in Mediterranean Studies
Winner: Mayte Green-Mercado, Visions of deliverance. Moriscos and the Politics of Prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean. (Cornell: 2020)
Honorable Mention: Hannah Barker, That Most Precious Merchandise. The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500 (University of Pennsylvania: 2019),
Honorable Mention: Claire Gilbert, In Good Faith. Arabic Translation and Translators in Early Modern Spain (University of Pennsylvania: 2020)
Honorable Mention: Daniel Hershenzon, The Captive Sea. Slavery, Communication, and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean (University of Pennsylvania: 2018)
See details here.
2020 - The Mediterranean Seminar Prize for the Best Book in Mediterranean Studies
Winner: Konstantina Zanou, Transnational Patriotism in the Mediterranean, 1800-1850: Stammering the Nation (Oxford: 2018)
Honorable Mention: Joshua White, Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Stanford: 2018)
See details here.