On March 1, 2011, the White House announced the winners of the 2010 National Humanities Medals. The medals are awarded by the NEH for outstanding achievements in history, literature, education, and cultural policy. Among this year’s winners were several distinguished members of the AHA:

Bernard Bailyn (Harvard Univ.) is a pioneer of early American and Atlantic history who has had a defining influence on the field both as an award-winning author and the organizer of the esteemed International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World at the Charles Warren Center. He is a fifty-year member of the AHA and served as AHA President in 1981. Over the years he’s been a generous supporter of the AHA as well as the National History Center.

Stanley N. Katz (Princeton Univ., Woodrow Wilson Sch.) has earned distinction both as a scholar and a leader in the discipline. He served for many years as the President of the American Council of Learned Societies, and has been one of the Association’s most reliable friends for many decades. He has served on (and often chaired) committees ranging from intellectual property to international historical activities. He is also proud to note that he helped push the American Historical Review online during his tenure as vice president of the Research Division. In recognition of his exceptional service to the AHA, in 2005 he was awarded the Troyer Steele Anderson Prize.

Gordon S. Wood (Brown Univ.) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian of the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution. Wood is a former student of Bailyn’s who has set a distinguished mark on the field of American history, from his first book, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, (which won the Association’s John H. Dunning Prize) to his most recent book, Empire for Liberty (which earned the American History Book Prize from New-York Historical Society). Over the past decade he has taken a particularly strong stand in favor of improved academic history writing, including a recent article in Perspectives on History.

The prizes will be presented in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House today. A complete list of winners for arts and humanities can be found on the NEH site and in this Washington Post story.

This post first appeared on AHA Today.