Since 2007, the Center has awarded an annual book prize to an outstanding monograph of interest to scholars of the eighteenth century working in a range of disciplines. The prize is named in honor of the work of Oscar Kenshur, professor emeritus of comparative literature at Indiana University, a dix-huitièmiste par excellence, former Chicago cab driver, and one of the founding members of the Center.
This year's Kenshur Prize has been awarded to William Max Nelson for Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens (University of Chicago Press, 2024). We will hold our Kenshur symposium virtually (via Zoom) on Thursday, November 20, from 3-5PM.
Prize nominations are currently open for the 2026-27 Kenshur Prize. To be eligible, your book must carry a copyright of 2025 and be submitted to the prize committee by the deadline of January 31, 2026. To nominate your book, please submit one hard copy of the book to each of these three addresses:
Barbara Truesdell
Franklin Hall 0030B
Indiana University
601 E. Kirkwood Avenue
Bloomington, IN 47405
Meredith Martin
Department of Art History, New York University
303 Silver Center
100 Washington Square East
New York, NY 10003
Gillian Weiss
Department of History
Case Western Reserve University
10900 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44106
Previous winners:
April G. Shelford, A Caribbean Enlightenment: Intellectual Life in the British and French Colonial Worlds, 1750-1792 (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
Meredith Martin and Gillian Weiss, The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France (Getty Publications, 2022).
Henrietta Harrison, The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire (Princeton University Press, 2021).
Vincent Brown, Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Harvard University Press, 2020).
Lynn Festa, Fiction Without Humanity: Person, Animal, Thing in Early Enlightenment Literature and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
William Deringer, Calculated Values: Finance, Politics, and the Quantitative Age (Harvard University Press, 2018).
Amanda Jo Goldstein, Sweet Science: Romantic Materialism and the New Logics of Life (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
Deirdre Loughridge, Haydn's Sunrise, Beethoven's Shadow: Audiovisual Culture and the Emergence of Musical Romanticism (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
Sean Silver, The Mind is a Collection: Case Studies in Eighteenth-Century Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
Michael Kwass, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground (Harvard University Press, 2014).
Hanneke Grootenboer, Treasuring the Gaze: Intimate Vision in Late Eighteenth-Century Eye Miniatures (University of Chicago Press, 2013).
Srinivas Aravamudan, Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel (University of Chicago Press, 2012).
James H. Johnson, Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic (University of California Press, 2011).
Joanna Stalnaker, The Unfinished Enlightenment: Description in the Age of the Encyclopedia (Cornell University Press, 2010).
Dan Edelstein, The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Vanessa Agnew, Enlightenment Orpheus: the Power of Music in Other Worlds (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Trish Loughran, The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770-1870 (Columbia University Press, 2007).