Adam Beaver, winner of the Bishko Prize 2017

The 2017 winner of the Bishko Prize was Adam Beaver, for “Nebuchadnezzar’s Jewish Legions: Sephardic Legends’ Journey from Biblical Polemic to Humanist History” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García Arenal, 21-65. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Thanks to the prize committee, Michael Crawford, Gretchen Starr-LeBeau, and Brian Catlos, for evaluating the submissions.

Adam G. Beaver is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University and historian of late medieval and early modern Spain (PhD, Harvard University). His research focuses primarily on Spaniards’ interactions with the Levant, both real and imaginary. He is currently finishing his first book, on Renaissance theories about the origins of Spanish Judaism, which aims to generate a richer and more imaginative understanding of the common origins of biblical scholarship, Orientalism, and national identity in early modern Europe. He is also at work on his second book, a study of the Renaissance Mediterranean as seen through the lens of the humanist Pietro Martire d’Anghiera’s 1502 embassy to Mamluk Egypt on behalf of Spain’s Catholic Monarchs. His publications include articles on replicas of the Holy Land in Spain (2013) and Christian Hebraists and the cultural history of Judaism (2014).

Past Prize Winners 2016-2017

Best Dissertation:  Alejandro Gomez del Moral, “Buying into Change: Consumer Culture and the Department Store in the Transformation(s) of Spain, 1939–1982” (History, Rutgers, 2014 ).  Honorable mention:  Vanesa Rodriguez-Galindo, “Ways of Being Modern in Madrid: Urban Change, Street Life, and Customs in Late Nineteenth-Century Print Culture” (History of Art, UNED, Madrid – Universidad de Cantabria, Santander, 2015)

A.H. de Oliveira Marques Prize in Portuguese History: Hugo Ribeira da Silva, ”Projecting Power: Cathedral Chapters and Public Rituals in Portugal, 1564-1650″, Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016): 1369-400.

Biskho Prize: Adam Beaver, “Nebuchadnezzar’s Jewish Legions: Sephardic Legends’ Journey from Biblical Polemic to Humanist History,” in After Conversion: Iberia and the Emergence of Modernity, ed. Mercedes García Arenal, 21-65. Leiden: Brill, 2016.