Prizes & Awards
The Elinor Melville Prize for Caribbean and Latin American Environmental History
Award Amount
$500
2026 Nomination Deadline
As this is a biennial prize, the CLAH is not accepting nominations for the Elinor Melville Prize in 2026.
Award Overview
The Melville Prize was established in 2007 through a bequest from Elinor Melville. It carries a stipend of $500. The Melville prize is awarded for the best book in English, French, Spanish or Portuguese on the Caribbean and Latin American Environmental History that is published anywhere during either of the two imprint years previous to the year of the award. Melville defined environmental history as “the study of the mutual influences of social and natural processes.” The prize will go to the book that best fits that definition, while also considering sound scholarship, grace of style, and importance of the scholarly contribution as criteria for the award. Normally not considered for the award are reprints or re-editions of works published previously, and works not primarily historical in aim or content. More general works of environmental history with significant Caribbean and Latin American content may also be considered.
1. For the 2027 Melville Prize, to be awarded in January of 2028, the Melville Prize Committee will review and judge books with imprint years 2025 and 2026.
2. CLAH members, including members of the selection committee, may nominate books. Publishers and authors (who are current members of CLAH) may nominate their own books as well. For a book to be considered, each of the three committee members must receive a copy, either from the publisher or from another source. Books received after June 1 of the award year will not be considered.
3. Authors are advised to consult their publishers to be certain their books have been nominated and a copy sent to each member of the Prize Committee.
4. In exceptional cases, the Prize Committee may decide on co-winners. The co-winners will split the prize. In such cases, there would not be an honorable mention.
Note: The CLAH requires current membership for all of its prizes and awards.
donations to the melville prize fund can be made here.
2025
Marcy Norton, The Tame and the Wild: People and Animals after 1492 (Harvard University Press, 2024)
2023
Germán Vergara, Fueling Mexico: Energy and Environment, 1850-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
Honorable Mention:
Seth Garfield, Guaraná: How Brazil Embraced the World’s Most Caffeine-Rich Plant (University of North Carolina Press, 2022)
2021
Rocío Gómez, Silver Veins, Dusty Lungs: Mining, Water, and Public Health in Zacatecas, 1835-1946 (Nebraska University Press, 2020)
2018
Mikael Wolfe, Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico (Duke University Press, 2017)
2016
Barbara Mundy, The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City (University of Texas Press, 2015)
2015
Vera Candiani, Dreaming of Dry Land: Environmental Transformation in Colonial Mexico City (Stanford University Press, 2014)
2014
Susanna Hecht, The Scramble for the Amazon and the ‘Lost Paradise’ of Euclides da Cunha (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
2013
Eric D. Carter, Enemy in the Blood: Malaria, Environment, and Development in Argentina (University of Alabama Press, 2012)
2012
Emily Wakild, Revolutionary Parks: Conservation, Justice, and Mexico’s National Parks, 1910-1940 (University of Arizona Press, 2011)
2011
Mark Carey, In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society (Oxford University Press, 2010)
2010
Stefania Gallini, Una historia ambiental del café en Guatemala: La Costa Cuca entre 1830 y 1902 (Guatemala City: Aviansco, 2009)
2009
Reinaldo Funes Monzote, From Rainforest to Cane Field in Cuba: An Environmental History Since 1492 (University of North Carolina Press, 2008)
Honorable Mention:
Rosalva Loreto Lopez, Una vista de ojos a una ciudad novohispana: La Puebla de los Angeles en el Siglo XVIII
2008
Shawn William Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
2007
Myrna Santiago, The Ecology of Oil: Environment, Labor and the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1938 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)