Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 13, 2004|Volume 32, Number 18

Yale scholars Snyder and Gay honored
by American Historical Association

The American Historical Association (AHA) has honored two Yale scholars.

Timothy Snyder, assistant professor of history, received the George Louis Beer Prize for "outstanding historical writing in European international history since 1895." Peter Gay, the Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, was given the AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction.

Timothy Snyder

Snyder, a member of the Yale history department since 2001, won the Beer Prize for his book "The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999" (Yale University Press, 2003). The book will also receive the annual award of the journal Przeglad Wschodni (Eastern Review) for the year 2003 at a ceremony at Warsaw University in March.

Describing the book as a major advance in the study of nationalism, the AHA citation says, in part: "... Snyder shows how multiple versions of national identity evolved and competed with each other in what are now Poland, Lithuania, Byelorussia and Ukraine. Snyder's work is a strikingly innovative contribution to the study of the transnational elements in international history."

Snyder is a co-editor of "The Wall Around the West" and author of "Nationalism, Marxism and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1872-1905)," which received the prestigious Halecki Prize for "outstanding work of East European History" from the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.

Peter Gay

Gay was one of three historians who received the AHA Award for Scholarly Distinction this year, and the third Yale scholar to receive the distinction since it was established in 1984. The previous Yale winners were John Whitney Hall, Ramsay MacMullen and Edmund S. Morgan.

The AHA citation describes Gay as "an 'homme de lettres' of rare distinction, and a historian of perhaps unparalleled productivity" whose "brilliantly crafted books have become an important part of our knowledge and appreciation of modern European history." The citation also notes: "It was Peter Gay who called for a social history of ideas, a call that has brought us some of the most significant work in European history in the last 20 years."

Gay's books range from his early work "The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx" to a biography of Freud to a five-volume history of the bourgeoisie, titled "The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud." He is also author of "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider"; the two-volume essay "The Rise of Modern Paganism"; "The Science of Freedom"; and the autobiography "My German Question: Growing Up in Nazi Berlin."

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