The section awards the Charles Tilly Best Article Award every year to the best article in the area of comparative and historical sociology. Nominated publications should have appeared within two years prior to the year in which they are nominated. Articles may be nominated by authors or by other section members.
2025
co-winner
Andreas Wimmer, Seungwon Lee, and Jack LaViolette (Columbia University), “Diffusion Through Multiple Domains: The Spread of Romantic Nationalism Across Europe, 1770–1930.” American Journal of Sociology 130 (4): 931–75.
co-winner
AKM Skarpelis (Queen’s College, CUNY), Horror Vacui: Racial Misalignment, Symbolic Repair, and Imperial Legitimation in German National Socialist Portrait Photography | American Journal of Sociology: Vol 129, No 2.
Honorable Mentions:
Joy Chen (Renmin University), Erik H. Wang (NYU), and Xiaoming Zhang (Zhejiang University), “From Powerholders to Stakeholders: State‐building with Elite Compensation in Early Medieval China.” American Journal of Political Science 69 (2): 607–23.
2024
co-winner
Celene Reynolds. 2022. “Repurposing Title IX: How Sexual Harassment Became Sex Discrimination in American Higher Education.” American Journal of Sociology 128(2):462-514
co-winner
Jeremy Levine and Kelly L. Russell. 2023. “Crime Pays the Victim: Criminal Fines, the State, and Victim Compensation Law 1964–1984.” American Journal of Sociology 128(4):1158-1205
Honorable Mentions:
Jorge Daniel Vasquez. 2023. “WEB Du Bois’s Global Sociology and the Anti-racist Struggle for Democracy in Cuba (1931–1941).” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 21(1):1-27
2023
co-winner
Regina S. Baker. 2022. “The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South.”
co-winner
Robert Braun. 2022. “Bloodlines: National border crossings and antisemitism in Weimar Germany.”
2022
Yang Zhang. 2021 “Why Elites Rebel: Elite Insurrections During the Taiping Civil War in China.” American Journal of Sociology.
Honorable Mention:
Benjamin Bradlow. 2021. “Embedded Cohesion: Regimes of Urban Public Goods Distribution.” Theory and Society.
Daniel Hirschman. 2021. “Rediscovering The 1%: Knowledge Infrastructures and The Stylized Facts of Inequality.” American Journal of Sociology.
2021
co-winner
Hana Brown, “Who Is an Indian Child? Institutional Context, Tribal Sovereignty, and Race-Making in Fragmented States,” American Sociological Review. 2020; 85(5):776-805.
co-winner
John N. Robinson III, “Making Markets on the Margins: Housing Finance Agencies and the Racial Politics of Credit Expansion,” American Journal of Sociology . Volume 125, Number 4 | January 2020
2020
co-winner
Fabien Accominotti, Shamus R. Khan, and Adam Storer. 2018. “How Cultural Capital Emerged in Gilded Age America: Musical Purification and Cross-Class Inclusion at the New York Philharmonic.“ American Journal of Sociology 123(6): 1743-83.
co-winner
Alexander E. Kentikelenis and Sarah Babb. 2019. “The Making of Neoliberal Globalization: Norm Substitution and the Politics of Clandestine Institutional Change.” American Journal of Sociology 124(6): 1720-62.
2019
co-winner
Barış Büyükokutan. 2018. “Elitist by default? Interaction dynamics and the inclusiveness of secularization in Turkish literary milieus.” American Journal of Sociology 123(5): 1249-1295.
co-winner
Christopher Muller. 2018 “Freedom and Convict Leasing in the Postbellum South.” American Journal of Sociology 124(2): 367-405.
2018
Greta Krippner, “Democracy of Credit: Ownership and the Politics of Credit Access in Late Twentieth-Century America.” American Journal of Sociology, 123(1): 1-47
2017
co-winner
Barry Eidlin, 2016, “Why is There No Labor Party in the United States? Political Articulation and the Canadian Comparison, 1932-1948.” American Sociological Review 81(3): 488-516.
co-winner
Ivan Ermakoff, 2015, “The Structure of Contingency,” American Journal of Sociology 121(1): 64-125.
2016
Josh Pacewicz. 2015. “Playing the Neoliberal Game: Why Community Leaders Left Party Politics to Partisan Activists”, American Journal of Sociology 121(3):826-881.
Honorable Mention:
Damon Mayrl. 2015. “How Does the State Structure Secularization?”, European Journal of Sociology 56(2):207-239.
2015
Melissa Wilde and Sabrina Danielsen. 2014. “Fewer and Better Children: Race, Class, Religion, and Birth Control Reform in America.” American Journal of Sociology 119(6): 1710-1760.
Honorable Mention:
Malcolm Fairbrother. 2014. “Economists, Capitalists, and the Making of Globalization: North American Free Trade in Comparative-Historical Perspective.” American Journal of Sociology 119(5): 1324-1379.
2014
Robert Fishman and Omar Lizardo. “How Macro-Historical Change Shapes Cultural Taste.” American Sociological Review 78(2): 213-239.
2013
Elisabeth Anderson. 2012. “Ideas in Action: The Politics of Prussian Child Labor Reform, 1817-1839”. Theory and Society 42: 81-119.
2012
Nicolas Hoover Wilson, 2011. “From Reflection to Refraction: State Administration in British India, circa 1770-1855.” American Journal of Sociology 116(5):1437-77.
Honorable Mention:
Hazem Kandil, 2011. “Islamizing Egypt? Testing the limits of Gramscian Counterhegemonic Strategies.” Theory and Society 40(1):37-62.
2011
co-winner
Danielle Kane and Jung Mee Park, 2009. “The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia.” American Journal of Sociology 115(2):365-404.
co-winner
Andreas Wimmer and Yuval Feinstein, 2010. “The Rise of the Nation-State across the World, 1816 to 2001.” American Sociological Review 75(5):764-790.
2010
Dan Slater, 2009. “Revolutions, Crackdowns, and Quiescence: Communal Elites and Democratic Mobilization in Southeast Asia.” American Journal of Sociology 115(1):203-254.
2009
Cedric de Leon, 2008. “‘No Bourgeois Mass Party, No Democracy’: The Missing Link in Barrington Moore’s American Civil War.” Political Power and Social Theory 19: 39-82.
Honorable Mention:
Ho-fung Hung, 2008. “Agricultural Revolution and Elite Reproduction in Qing China: The Transition to Capitalism Debate Revisited.” American Sociological Review 73: 569-88.
Liliana Riga, 2008. “The Ethnic Roots of Class Universalism: Rethinking the ‘Russian’ Revolutionary Elite.” American Journal of Sociology 114: 649-705.
2008
John F. Padgett and Paul D. McLean, “Organizational Invention and Elite Transformation: The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence,” American Journal of Sociology, 111(5) (March 2006): 1463-568.
2007
Wimmer, Andreas and Brian Min, 2006. “From Empire to Nation-State: Explaining Wars in the Modern World, 1816-2001.” American Sociological Review 71:867-897.
2006
Prasad, Monica. 2005. “Why is France so French? Culture, Institutions and Neoliberalism, 1974-1981.” American Journal of Sociology 111(2): 357-407.
Honorable Mention:
Ari Adut, 2005. “A Theory of Scandal: Victorians, Homosexuality, and the Fall of Oscar Wilde.” American Journal of Sociology 111(1): 213-248.
2005
Marc Steinberg. 2003. “Capitalist Development, the Labor Process, and the Law.” American Journal of Sociology 109: 445-495.