The 2019 SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize was awarded to Alice Isabella Sullivan (University of Michigan) for her article “The Athonite Patronage of Stephen III of Moldavia, 1457-1504,” Speculum 94.1 (2019): 1-46.

The jury consisted of Carolyn Guile, Colleen McQuillen, Marie-Alice L’Heureux.

Jury commendation: After contextualizing Stephen III’s activities within the mid-fourteenth-century legacy of patronage directed from within the sub-Carpathian Romanian-speaking lands, Sullivan demonstrates how the Prince’s “aspirations as a Christian ruler and protector of Orthodox faith” (8) in a kingdom perceived as a bulwark of Christianity, and his fashioning himself “an heir to the authority of Byzantine emperors among Christian peoples under Ottoman control”(4) motivated his activities as a patron of Athonite monasteries of the “Holy Mount”. The committee felt this highly original study deserves the Prize for its new and significant contribution to our understanding of not only how sacred landscapes developed within the northeastern Greek territories in the nearly fifty-year period of Stephen III’s rule, but also how princely patronage from Europe’s eastern borderlands had a direct and profound impact on the broader reification of Byzantine culture after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to focus on the study of Byzantine ideology in these lands (historical Wallachia, Moldavia) in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, Sullivan turns a conventional center-periphery argument on its head. An impressive linguistic and material array of primary sources that includes liturgical artifacts, vestments, manuscripts, buildings, inscriptions, and monetary records in Church Slavonic, Greek and Romanian underpins Sullivan’s deft elucidation of the connection between cross-cultural exchange and contemporary patronage. The committee would like to recognize and praise the intellectual work that a study of this type requires, the clarity of its presentation, and the demonstration of how the study of “borderland” territories is essential to how we interpret and theorize cross-cultural exchange.

Next Emerging Scholar Prize deadline: September 30, 2020

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is pleased to announce the second annual call for submissions for the SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize. The award aims to recognize and encourage original and innovative scholarship in the field of East European, Eurasian, and Russian art and architectural history. The winner will be announced at the Society’s annual meeting at ASEEES, scheduled for Friday, December 7, 2018.

Applicants must have published an English-language article in a scholarly print or online journal, or museum print or online publication within the preceding twelve-month period. For the 2018 prize, articles published between September 30, 2017 and September 30, 2018 are eligible. Additionally, applicants are required to have received his or her PhD within the last 5 years (2013 or thereafter for the 2018 prize) and be a member of SHERA in good standing at the time that the application is submitted. The winner will be awarded $500 and republication (where copyright allows) or citation of the article on H-SHERA.

To apply, please email a CV including contact information (email, mailing address, and telephone) and a copy of the English-language article with header/colophon of the journal or catalogue together with a brief abstract to shera.prizes@gmail.com no later than October 22, 2018.

To join or renew membership in the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA), please visit http://shera-art.org/membership/join-shera.php.

Last year’s awardee was Prof. Christina E. Crawford of Emory University for her essay “From Tractors to Territory: Socialist Urbanization through Standardization.”

The Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is pleased to announce a call for submissions for the newly-established SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize. The award, to be announced at the Society’s annual meeting at ASEEES, aims to recognize and encourage original and innovative scholarship in the field. Applicants must have published an English-language article in a scholarly print or online journal or museum print or online publication within the preceding twelve-month period. For the 2017 prize, articles published between September 30, 2016 and September 30, 2017 would be eligible. Additionally, applicants are required to have received his or her PhD within the last 5 years (2012 or thereafter for the 2017 prize) and be a member of SHERA in good standing at the time that the application is submitted. The winner will be awarded $500 and republication (where copyright allows) or citation of the article on H-SHERA. Applications should include a CV including contact information (email, mailing address, and telephone) and a copy of the English-language article with header/colophon of the journal or catalogue together with a brief abstract. Applications should be sent to shera.prizes@gmail.com no later than October 15, 2017.