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.   

The Center is now accepting nominations for the 2024 Kenshur Prize.  If you wish to have your book considered for the prize, please have one hard copy of the book mailed to each of the following three addresses by the deadline of January 31, 2024:

Barbara Truesdell (c/o Kenshur Prize)

Franklin Hall 0030B

601 E. Kirkwood Avenue

Bloomington, IN 47405 

Nush Powell (c/o Kenshur Prize)

Dept. of English

Heavilon Hall

500 Oval Drive

West Lafayette, IN 47907

Prof. Brian Cowan (c/o Kenshur Prize)

Dept. of History & Classical Studies

McGill University

855 Sherbrooke Ave West

Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7

Canada

(Please ensure that your submission contains the proper customs documentation for delivery to a Canadian address)

Previous winners:

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).