2026 Conference highlights:
Hosted by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the two-day 119th annual meeting featured 57 panels, two spectacular luncheon talks, a presidential plenary, an awards ceremony and reception.
President-Elect Jessica Kim congratulates Alex Nuñez (left) winner of the W. Turrentine Jackson dissertation award and David-James Gonzales (right) winner of the Pacific Coast Branch book award. (Details below)
James Gregory delivers Presidential Address on “Sundown Towns in the American West: Tracing the Regional Dynamics of Black Exclusion.”
Albert Broussard, winner of the 2026 PCB-AHA Distinguished Service Award.
PCB Awards
The PCB-AHA Distinguished Service Award: Right: Albert Broussard, longtime PCB-AHA contributor, distinguished teacher, and author of many important books and articles at Awards Ceremony
The W. Turrentine Jackson Award (to the author of a dissertation adjudged to be the most outstanding on any aspect of the history of the American West in the twentieth century): Alex Nuñez, University of Arizona, for his dissertation: “Field of Dreamers: Becoming Mexican American Through the National Pastime.”
The Norris and Carol Hundley Award (for the best book published in history during a calendar year by a scholar living in the region served by the PCB-AHA): Renata Keller, University of Nevada, Reno, for “Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War” (University of North Carolina Press, 2025)
The Pacific Coast Branch Award (for the best book submitted by a scholar who resides in the states and provinces from which the PCB-AHA draws its membership, offered only for first books, and usually to younger scholars): David-James Gonzales, Brigham Young University, for “Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California” (Oxford University Press, 2025)
The Tonous and Warda Johns Family Book Award (for the best monograph or edited volume in the history of U.S. foreign relations, immigration history, or military history): Renata Keller, University of Nevada, Reno, for “Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War” (University of North Carolina Press, 2025)
The Robert W. Cherny Award (for the best article in labor and political history appearing in the Pacific Historical Review or published elsewhere by a member of the PCB-AHA): Taylor Cozzens, Arkansas Tech University, “Workers in the Field, Lawyers in the Court: Environmental Justice, Poverty Law, and the California Rural Legal Assistance” published in the Pacific Historical Review (Winter 2025).
The Abbott-Johnson Prize (for the best article in the history of the Pacific World published in the Pacific Historical Review or in another journal by a PCB-AHA member): no award this year
The Louis Knott Koontz Memorial Award (for the most deserving contribution to the Pacific Historical Review, selected by the Board of Editors of the Review): Alexander Jin, Bennington College, “No Chinese Should Obey It: A Transpacific History of the Geary Act” Pacific Historical Review (Fall 2025).
The W. Turrentine Jackson Prize (to a graduate student whose essay has been adjudged by the Editors of the Pacific Historical Review to be of outstanding quality): Taylor Cozzens, Arkansas Tech University, “Workers in the Field, Lawyers in the Court: Environmental Justice, Poverty Law, and the California Rural Legal Assistance,” Pacific Historical Review (Winter 2025).
