Historian Isabel Hull receives award for book ‘A Scrap of Paper’

Isabel Hull has received a Certificate of Merit from the American Society of International Law for her book, “A Scrap of Paper: Breaking and Making International Law During the Great War” (Cornell, 2014). The award, for “a preeminent contribution to creative scholarship,” was presented at the ASIL’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. in March. 

The award committee cited Hull’s original historical research in three languages in the archives of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and the use of this research to show that international law played a far greater role in the First World War than is commonly appreciated today.”

“This book is remarkably timely,” wrote the committee, “not only because of the war’s centenary, but because it addresses evergreen questions about the impact of international law on government decision making, especially during time of war. Hull's engagement with contemporary debates on the making and breaking of international law enhances the timelessness of her inquiry. This work of creative and meticulous scholarship will change forever our understanding of modern international law, as it emerged from the crucible of war.”

Hull’s other award-winning books include “Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany” (2004), which received the German Studies Association DAAD 2005 Book Prize for the "Outstanding Book in History and Political Science," the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa Society Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for "outstanding scholarly studies that contribute to interpretations of the intellectual and cultural condition of humanity, and the "H/Soz/u/Kult (Humanities, Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte Forum) Prize for the best history book in modern history for 2006.

She also wrote “Sexuality, State and Civil Society in Germany, 1700-1815, (1996) which received the 1997 Leo Gershoy Award of the American Historical Association for the "most outstanding work in English on any aspect of the field of 17th- and 18th-Century European History" and the 1997 Berkshire Prize of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians for the best history book that year written by a woman.

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