Historian Pieter M. Judson '78 Wins Prestigious Austrian Book Award
Historian Pieter M. Judson '78 Wins
Prestigious Austrian Book Award
by Maki Somosot '12
2/2/2010
The Austrian Ministry for Science and Research has honored Professor of History Pieter M. Judson '78 for his book, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Harvard University Press, 2006), with the prestigious Karl von Vogelsang-Staatspreis für Geschichte der Gesellschaftswissenschaften. The prize recognizes outstanding achievement in history and the social sciences; it is granted every 2 years to a deserving academic or field expert specializing in German and Austrian history.
Guardians of the Nation explores the nationalistic activities in imperial Austria before World War I, focusing on the difficulty of convincing local bicultural populations to forge loyalty to a singular Austrian nation and identity.
Judson will receive the prize at a ceremony in Vienna in April. He has also been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for Fall 2010, and has been offered a residency at the American Academy in Berlin for Spring 2011.
Judson's research interests center on German speaking Central Europe and on Eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. He teaches courses about nationalist conflict, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements, the history of sexuality in Europe, and about European Fascism.
