Professor Elliott Gorn elected to Society of American Historians

Elliott J. Gorn, Joseph A. Gagliano Professor of Urban History at Loyola University Chicago, has been elected to the Society of American Historians. Gorn is among a small and select number of authors to be nominated this year by the Society. His appointment will be officially announced at the Society’s annual awards dinner Monday, 20 May 2013, at the Century Club in New York City.

Gorn was appointed to the Loyola faculty in 2012 and is one of the nation's foremost scholars of American urban, cultural and social history. His major books include Dillinger’s Wild Ride: The Year That Made America’s Public Enemy Number One, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America, A Brief History of American Sports (co-authored with Warren Goldstein), and The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America. Gorn has also edited another eight volumes and published and reprinted more than 50 articles in a wide variety of scholarly and media publications, including the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, Harper’s Magazine, Le Monde Diplomatique and Slate. He has served as the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in North American Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland (2009-2010); the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow at the Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif. (2005-2006); a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (1997-1998); a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library (1993-1994); an Irish American Cultural Institute Fellow (1993); an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center (1988-1989); and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (1984-85).

The Society of American Historians was founded in 1939 by the journalist and historian Allan Nevins and several fellow authors to identify and celebrate distinguished writing about United States history across a wide range of genres. Membership is by election only, limited to 250 historians and 16 publishers, and includes scholars, essayists, biographers, journalists, novelists, filmmakers, and others who have demonstrated their commitment to the concept of literary distinction in the writing or presentation of history. Notable members of the Society included Pulitzer Prize-winners Robert Caro and Susan Faludi, the acclaimed novelist E.L. Doctorow, and the award-winning filmmakers Ken and Ric Burns.

The Society awards the Allan Nevins Prize for the best-written dissertation on American history, the Francis Parkman Prize for the best nonfiction book on an American theme, the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for the best historical novel on an American subject, and the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award for Distinguished Writing in American History of Enduring Public Significance.