BAAS is pleased to announce the winners of the 2025 Arthur Miller First Book Prize and the Arthur Miller Article Prize.

The Arthur Miller Institute First Book Prize is awarded for the best first book on any American Studies topic in the preceding calendar year, and celebrates books that contribute to the development of American Studies as an interdisciplinary field. This year’s winner is Elsa Devienne with the book Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (OUP, 2024). The committee has also given an honourable mention to Erin Forbes with Criminal Genius in African American and US Literature (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024).

The Arthur Miller Institute Article Prize is awarded for the best journal-length article on any American Studies topic published in a UK journal. The winner for 2025 is Thomas Cryer, “A False Picture of Negro Progress”: John Hope Franklin, Racial Liberalism, and the Political (Mis)uses of Black History during the 1963 Emancipation Centennial, Journal of American Studies. An honourable mention was awarded to Jenny Terry, Scopes, Specula, the Speculative: Histories of Medical Experimentation and Looking in African American Art and Fiction, Journal of American Studies.