Lionel Trilling Book Award
The Lionel Trilling Book Award has been awarded annually by the Academic Awards Committee of CCSC since 1976.
Named for Lionel Trilling, one of Columbia's legendary professors, the award is given to a faculty member who teaches in the College in recognition of a book published in the previous calendar year. Members of the awards committee read and review all of the recent scholarly book-length publications of the faculty.
The winner of the Trilling Award has traditionally been recognized in conjunction with the winner of the Mark Van Doren Award for teaching.
Edward Said and Andrew Delbanco are the only professors to have won the award twice.
The only professors to have won both the Van Doren and Trilling awards are Fritz Stern, Robert Murphy, Caroline Bynum, Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Carol Gluck.
Past Recipients
| Year | Recipient | Book | Department |
| 2012 | David B. Lurie | Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing | East Asian Languages and Cultures |
| 2011 | James S. Shapiro | Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? | English and Comparative Literature |
| 2010 | Katherina Volk | Manilius and his Intellectual Background | Classics |
| 2009 | Mark Mazower | Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe | History |
| 2008 | Joseph Massad | Desiring Arabs | Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures |
| 2007 | Sheldon Pollock | The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture and Power in Premodern India | Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures |
| 2006 | Andrew Delbanco | Melville: His World and Work | English and Comparative Literature |
| 2005 | Alan D. E. Cameron | Greek Mythography in the Roman World | Classics |
| 2004 | Philip Kitcher | In Mendel's Mirror: Philosophical Reflections on Biology | Philosophy |
| 2003 | William V. Harris | Restraining Rage: The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity | History |
| 2002 | Nicholas Dirks | Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India | Anthropology; History |
| 2001 | Jonathan Crary | Suspension of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture | Art History and Archaeology |
| 2000 | Hamid Dabashi | Truth and Narrative: The Untimely Thoughts of 'Ayn al-Qudat al-Hamadhani | Middle East and Asian Languauges and Cultures |
| Brian Greene | The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory | Mathematics; Physics | |
| 1999 | Robert Lieberman | Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State | International and Public Affairs; Political Science |
| 1998 | Robert Jervis | System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life | Political Science |
| 1997 | Ira Katznelson | Liberalism's Crooked Circle: Letters to Adam Michnik | Political Science; History |
| 1996 | Ann Douglas | Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s | English and Comparative Literature |
| Simon M. Schama | Landscape and Memory | History; Art History and Archaeology | |
| 1995 | Robert Pollack | Signs of Life: The Language and Meanings of DNA | Biological Sciences |
| 1994 | Edward Said | Culture and Imperialism | English and Comparative Literature |
| Diana Trilling | The Beginning of the Journey: The Marriage of Diana and Lionel Trilling | (Special Award) | |
| 1993 | Karl Kroeber | Retelling/Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times | English and Comparative Literature |
| 1992 | Caroline Bynum | Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion | History |
| 1991 | David Cannadine | The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy | History |
| 1990 | Andrew Delbanco | The Puritan Ordeal | English and Comparative Literature |
| 1989 | Eric Foner | Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 | History |
| 1988 | Robert Murphy | The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled | Anthropology |
| 1987 | Carol Gluck | Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period | History; East Asian Languages and Cultures |
| 1986 | No Award | ||
| 1985 | No Award | ||
| 1984 | W. T. H. Jackson | The Hero and the King: An Epic Theme | History |
| 1983 | Wm. Theodore de Bary | Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart | East Asian Languages and Cultures |
| 1982 | Arthur Danto | The Transfiguration of the Commonplace: A Philosophy of Art | Philosophy |
| 1981 | Peter Pouncey | Necessities of War: A Study of Thucydides’ Pessimism | Classics |
| 1980 | Istvan Deak | The Lawful Revolution: Louis Kossuth and the Hungarians, 1848-1849 | History |
| 1979 | No Award | ||
| 1978 | Morton Smith | Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God | History |
| 1977 | Fritz Stern | Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire | History |
| 1976 | Edward Said | Beginnings: Intention and Method | English and Comparative Literature |
