Professor Donald Akenson received the 2024 Albert B. Corey Prize for his book The Americanization of the Apocalypse: Creating America’s Own Bible (Oxford University Press, 2023). This biennial prize is jointly sponsored by the American Historical Association (AHA) and Canadian Historical Association (CHA) and awarded to the best book on the history of Canadian-American relations.
Dr. Akenson became a Distinguished University Professor at Queen’s in 2019, the university’s highest research-related honour. He also held a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984-85, won a Molson Prize Laureate for lifetime contribution to Canadian culture in 1996, was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order for God’s Peoples in 1993, and received honorary degrees from six universities in Canada, Northern Ireland, and New Zealand. Dr. Akenson has been the editor of the McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion since 1977; the series includes more than 80 volumes. The Americanization of the Apocalypse is his latest and one of 24 single-authored monographs. Dr. Akenson is the world’s foremost scholar in the Irish Diaspora, and writes about Irish history, religion, nationalism, education, and Canadian and American social history.
The CHA recognized The Americanization of the Apocalypse as “a study of prodigious research and analysis, written with clarity and verve…More than a study in intellectual history or religious history, The Americanization of the Apocalypse treats people, as individuals or in groups, as vectors in the transport of ideas…The book is highly readable, even amusing in places, as reflected in such chapter titles as “Big Deal at Amen Corner”. It promises to spark debates about the historical, geographical, and theological shaping of American fundamentalist Christianity.”
Congratulations, Dr. Akenson!
