 Charles Debenedetti Memorial Prize
Best Article published in Peace History in 2021-2022
Awarded October 2023
The Peace History Society awards the DeBenedetti Prize in Peace History bi-annually for an English language journal article, book chapter, or book introduction on peace history.
The winner for 2021-2022 is Michelle Tusan, “The Concentration Camp as Site of Refuge: The Rise of the Refugee Camp and the Great War in the Middle East,” Journal of Modern History, 93, no 4, (December 2021): 824-860.
In this impressive article, Professor Michelle Tusan of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas examines the development of concentration camps for civilians and more permanent refugees in the Middle East during the First World War. She argues this development marked a watershed in both international humanitarian aid and geopolitics. “The Armenian genocide, conditions of total war, and the uneasy peace in the Middle East,” she writes, “helped to forge the refugee camp as an international humanitarian aid institution.” (858) Tusan analyzes the nuanced negotiations among humanitarian, military, and local actors, and the civilian and military functions of the refugee camp that have defined international aid into our own day. Tusan utilizes diverse archival sources from a variety of viewpoints in this insightful article.
|
