Professor Jim Goode wins book award

Goode's Book Very Good--Takes Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize
Date: February 20, 2008




James Goode has been awarded the Robert H. Ferrell Book Prize for his book, Negotiating the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919-1941.

The prize committee reads and evaluates books about the history of American foreign relations.

The Chair of the prize committee Kenton Clymer (who is also Chair of the History Department at Northern Illinois University) explained that the committee was impressed with your book on a number of levels. For one thing, the discipline of foreign relations history has for many years become ever more inclusive, evolving from the time when the history of American foreign relations involved little more than the study of what one high level diplomat said to another one. Your work continues that evolution by taking on a topic that, by studying the ways in which archaeological enterprises in several Middle Eastern countries were authorized, combines a study of traditional diplomacy with culture and art. The result is an absolutely fascinating story of foreign relations and world history involving intrigue, duplicity, colonialism, national assertion, and strange and wonderful personalities.

Clymer went on to say that, In particular, though, the book focuses attention on the importance of nationalism in the Middle East and how this affected the efforts of Western, and particularly, American museums to obtain treasures from ancient sites in places like Iran, Egypt, and Iraq. And, while historians of American foreign relations have explored the importance of nationalism, particularly in Asia, this book explores the phenomenon in a context that for most of us is utterly new.

Finally, the book is based on almost breathtaking research. The usual suspects are there (Record Group 59 in the National Archives, for example). But what about the several collections of papers in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago or records relating to several expeditions in the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania? Or even farther afield, the many collections in Egypt, France, Great Britain, Iran, and Turkey? This is a book based on a truly incredible array of archival sources in the United States, Europe, and several Middle Eastern countries.

The committee considers the book to be a wholly new inquiry and explained that books of reinterpretation are themselves & vital and important to the profession& [and] broaden our focus into a fresh arena and provide a model for other diplomatic historians, especially those just entering the field.

The prize will be presented at the SHAFR luncheon on Saturday, March 29 during the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians.

GVSU History Department chair, Gretchen Galbraith said, "Jim Goode's fellow historians are so pleased that he has received this well-deserved book prize for "Negotiating the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919-1941." His work embodies the teacher-scholar ideal that we honor at GVSU: he brings his rich scholarly imagination and rigorous standards to the classroom, to building the Middle Eastern Studies program, and to research, whether it's a collaborative project with students or his own scholarly work. He is truly deserving of this recognition for his work in diplomatic history."

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