About the Cheiron Book Prize
Beginning in 2004, Cheiron: The International Society for the History of Behavioral and Socal Sciences has awarded the Cheiron Book Prize biennially for an outstanding monograph in the history of the social/behavioral/human sciences.
Eligible works for the Cheiron Book Prize include original book-length historical studies, written in English. Topical areas can include, but are not limited to, histories of psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, sociology, and social statistics.
Cheiron Book Prize: Call for Submissions
Cheiron welcomes – and encourages – authors and publishers to submit entries for Cheiron’s upcoming Book Prize Competition. Eligible works include original book-length historical studies, written in English, and published after October 15, 2024. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2025.
Submissions will be judged on the basis of their scholarly character, depth of research, and the importance of their contribution to their field of study. The author of the winning book will receive $500 and be expected to discuss their work in a session solely devoted to the Book Prize at Cheiron’s next annual meeting, which will be held as a virtual (Zoom) meeting June 25 through June 27, 2026. Announcements of the award will be widely circulated to relevant journals and organizations.
Please submit nominations to Ian Davidson: [email protected]
Past Winners
William Max Nelson
Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens
University of Chicago Press, 2024
Michael Pettit
Governed by Affect: Hot Cognition and the End of Cold War Psychology
Oxford University Press, 2024
Kristina Ramos
Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment
The University of North Carolina Press, 2022
Nadine Weidman
Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America
Harvard University Press, 2021
Martin Summers
Oxford University Press, 2019
Theodore M. Porter
Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity
Princeton University Press, 2018
Susanna L. Blumenthal
Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Culture
Harvard University Press, 2016
Susan D. Lamb
The Pathologist of the Mind: Adolf Meyer and the Origins of American Psychiatry
Johns Hopkins University Press
2004
Jeffrey Sklansky
The Soul’s Economy: Market Society and Selfhood in American Thought, 1820-1920
University of North Carolina, 2002