The Gordon J. Laing Award is conferred annually, by the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

's Board of University Publications, on the faculty author, editor, or translator whose book has brought the greatest distinction to the list of the

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

. The first award was given in 1963 and the most recent award was given on April 9, 2025, to Jenny Trinitapoli, Professor, Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. The award is named in honor of Gordon Jennings Laing, the scholar who, serving as general editor of the Press from 1909 until 1940, firmly established the character and reputation of the Press as the premier academic publisher in the United States. The award is presented each spring at a ceremony at the David Rubinstein Forum at the University of Chicago.

Recipients of the Gordon J. Laing Award

* 2025 Jenny Trinitapoli - ''An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi'' * 2024 Margareta Ingrid Christian - ''Objects in Air: Artworks and Their Outside around 1900'' * 2023 Elisabeth S. Clemens - ''Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State'' * 2022 Lisa Wedeen - ''Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria'' * 2021 Michael Rossi - ''The Republic of Color: Science, Perception, and the Making of Modern America'' * 2020 Eve Ewing - ''Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side'' * 2019 Deborah L. Nelson - ''Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil'' * 2018 Forrest Stuart - ''Down, Out, & Under Arrest: Policing and Everyday Life in Skid Row'' * 2017

David Nirenberg David Nirenberg (born 1964) is an American medievalist and intellectual historian. He is the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. He previously taught at the University of Chicago, where he was Dea ...

- ''Neighboring Faiths: Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the Middle Ages and Today'' * 2016 Amir Sufi and Atif Mian - ''House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It From Happening Again'' * 2015 Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo - ''I Speak of the City: Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century'' * 2014

Alison Winter Alison Winter (19 November 1965 – 22 June 2016) was an American academic. Biography Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut, Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her ...

- ''Memory: Fragments of a Modern History'' * 2013 Andreas Glaeser - ''Political Epistemics: The Secret Police, The Opposition, and the End of East German Socialism'' * 2012

Adrian Johns Vice Admiral Sir Adrian James Johns, (born 1 September 1951) is a former senior officer in the Royal Navy, serving as Second Sea Lord between 2005 and 2008. He was the Governor of Gibraltar between 2009 and 2013. Early life and education Joh ...

- ''Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates'' * 2011 Robert J. Richards - ''The Tragic Sense of Life:

Ernst Haeckel Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (; ; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919) was a German zoologist, natural history, naturalist, eugenics, eugenicist, Philosophy, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biology, marine biologist and artist ...

and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought'' * 2010 Martha Feldman - ''Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy'' * 2009 Bernard Harcourt'

- ''Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age'' * 2008 Philip Gossett'

- ''Divas and Scholars: Performing Italian Opera'' * 2006 W.J.T. Mitchell - ''What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images'' * 2005 Bill Brown (critical theory) - ''A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature'' * 2004 Jonathan M. Hall - ''Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture'' * 2003 Robert J. Richards - ''The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe'' * 2002

Bruce Lincoln Bruce Lincoln (born 1948) is Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where he also holds positions in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Com ...

- ''Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship'' * 2001

François Furet François Furet (; 27 March 1927 – 12 July 1997) was a French historian and president of the Saint-Simon Foundation, best known for his books on the French Revolution. From 1985 to 1997, Furet was a professor of French history at the University ...

- ''The Passing of an Illusion: The idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century'' * 2000 James Chandler - ''England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism'' * 1999 André LaCocque &

Paul Ricoeur Paul may refer to: People * Paul (given name), a given name, including a list of people * Paul (surname), a list of people * Paul the Apostle, an apostle who wrote many of the books of the New Testament * Ray Hildebrand, half of the singing duo ...

- ''Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies'' * 1998 Martin E. Marty - ''Modern American Religion'' (in three volumes) * 1997

Marshall Sahlins Marshall David Sahlins ( ; December 27, 1930April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguishe ...

- ''How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example'' * 1996 W.J.T. Mitchell - ''Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation'' * 1995 Edward Laumann, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels - ''The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States'' * 1994

David McNeill Glenn David McNeill (born 1933 in California, United States) is an American psychologist and writer specializing in scientific research into psycholinguistics and especially the relationship of language to thought, and the gestures that accom ...

- ''Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal About Thought'' * 1993 Gerald N. Rosenberg - '' The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change?'' * 1992 Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff - ''On Revelation and Revolution, Volume 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa'' * 1991

Leszek Kołakowski Leszek Kołakowski (; ; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxism, Marxist thought, as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophy ''Main Current ...

- ''Modernity on Endless Trial'' * 1990 Richard G. Klein - ''The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins'' * 1989 S. Chandrasekhar - ''Truth and Beauty'' * 1988

David Grene David Grene (13 April 1913 – 10 September 2002) was an Irish American professor of classics at the University of Chicago from 1937 until his death. He was a co-founder of the Committee on Social Thought and is best known for his translations o ...

- ''Herodotus: The History'' (translation) * 1987 Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner - '' The Founders' Constitution'' (in five volumes) * 1986

Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (; – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian History of religion, historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. One of the most influential scholars of religion of the 20th century and in ...

- ''A History of Religious Ideas'' (in three volumes) * 1985

- ''Time and Narrative, Volume 1'' * 1984 Richard Hellie - ''Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725'' * 1983 Anthony C. Yu - ''

The Journey to the West ''Journey to the West'' () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the Classic Chinese Novels, great Chinese novels, and has been described as arguably the ...

'' (in four volumes) * 1982 James M. Gustafson - ''Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, Volume 1: Theology and Ethics'' * 1981 Wayne C. Booth - ''Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism'' * 1980

Morris Janowitz Morris Janowitz (October 22, 1919 – November 7, 1988) was an American sociologist and professor who made major contributions to sociological theory, the study of prejudice, urban issues, and patriotism. He was one of the founders of military s ...

- ''The Last Half Century: Societal Change and Politics in America'' * 1979 Alan Gewirth - ''Reason and Morality'' * 1978

Sewall Wright Sewall Green Wright ForMemRS HonFRSE (December 21, 1889March 3, 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. He was a founder of population genetics alongside ...

- ''Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Volume 3: Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions'' * 1977

- ''Culture and Practical Reason'' * 1976 Keith Michael Baker - ''Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics'' * 1975 Eric W. Cochrane - ''Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes'' * 1974 Stuart M. Tave - ''Some Words of Jane Austen'' * 1973

Edward Shils Edward Albert Shils (1 July 1910 – 23 January 1995) was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and an influential sociologist. He was known for his research on the r ...

- ''The Intellectuals and the Powers'' * 1972 Edward Wasiolek - ''The Notebooks of Dostoevsky'' (in five volumes) * 1971

Herrlee G. Creel Herrlee Glessner Creel (January 19, 1905June 1, 1994) was an American Sinologist and philosopher who specialized in Chinese philosophy and history, and a professor of Chinese at the University of Chicago for nearly 40 years. A prolific author, on ...

- ''The Origins of Statecraft in China, Volume 1: The Western Chou Empire'' * 1970 Gerald D. Suttles - ''The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City'' * 1969 Leonard B. Meyer - ''Music, the Arts, and Ideas: Patterns and Prediction in Twentieth-Century Culture'' * 1968 Philip Foster - ''Education and Social Change in Ghana'' * 1967 Donald F. Lach - ''Asia in the Making of Europe, Volume 1, Books 1 and 2'' * 1966 A. Leo Oppenheim - ''Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization'' * 1965 Tang Tsou - ''America’s Failure in China, 1941-1950'' * 1964

William Hardy McNeill William Hardy McNeill (October 31, 1917 – July 8, 2016) was an American historian and author, noted for his argument that contact and exchange among civilizations is what drives human history forward, first postulated in '' The Rise of the We ...

- '' The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community'' * 1963 Bernard Weinberg - ''A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance''

References

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External links

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of Gordon J. Laing Award winners from the University of Chicago University of Chicago American literary awards