The AAS is pleased to announce the winners of this year’s prize competitions and offer congratulations to all honorees. Please join us at the AAS 2022 Awards Ceremony on Saturday, March 26 at 8:30am Hawaii Time, in-person at the Hawai’i Convention Center and live-streamed to all registered AAS 2022 Annual Conference Attendees.

AAS Book Prizes

Joseph Levenson Prize (China, Pre-1900)

Robert Ford Campany, The Chinese Dreamscape 300 BCE–800 CE (Harvard University Asia Center, 2020)

Honorable Mention: He Bian, Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Joseph Levenson Prize (China, Post-1900)

Silvia M. Lindtner, Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Patrick D. Hanan Book Prize for Translation

Wai-yee Li, editor & translator, Plum Shadows and Plank Bridge: Two Memoirs about Courtesans (Columbia University Press, 2020)

Honorable Mention: Wilt L. Idema, editor & translator, Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology (Cambria Press, 2019)

E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize

Melvyn C. Goldstein, A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 4: In the Eye of the Storm, 1957-1959 (University of California Press, 2019); Chinese translation published by Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2021.

Honorable Mention: Brenton Sullivan, Building a Religious Empire: Tibetan Buddhism, Bureaucracy, and the Rise of the Gelukpa (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

John Whitney Hall Prize (Japan)

Gabriele Koch, Healing Labor: Japanese Sex Work in the Gendered Economy (Stanford University Press, 2020) 

Honorable Mention: Nozomi Naoi, Yumeji Modern: Designing the Everyday in Twentieth Century Japan (University of Washington Press, 2020); see media gallery at Art History Publication Initiative.

James B. Palais Prize (Korea)

Heonik Kwon, After the Korean War: An Intimate History (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Honorable Mention: Hwisang Cho, The Power of the Brush: Epistolary Practices in Chosŏn Korea (University of Washington Press, 2020)

Bernard S. Cohn Prize (First book on South Asia)

Durba Mitra, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020)

Maria Rashid, Dying to Serve: Militarism, Affect, and the Politics of Sacrifice in the Pakistan Army (Stanford University Press, 2020)

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize (South Asia)

Benjamin D. Hopkins, Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State (Harvard University Press, 2020)

A.K. Ramanujan Book Prize for Translation (South Asia)

Archana Venkatesan, Endless Song: Nammāḻvār’s Tiruvȳmoḻi  (Penguin India, 2020)

Honorable mention: Philip Lutgendorf, Tulsidās, The Epic of Rām, vol. 5 (Harvard University Press, 2022)

Harry J. Benda Prize (First book on Southeast Asian Studies)

Teren Sevea, Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Honorable Mention: Puangchon Unchanam, Royal Capitalism: Wealth, Class, and Monarchy in Thailand (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). 

A.L. Becker Southeast Asian Literature in Translation Prize

Roger Nelson, A New Sun Rises Over the Old Land: A Novel of Sihanouk’s Cambodia (National University of Singapore Press, 2020)

Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials

John Frank, Arlene Kowal, Yurika Kurakata, and Anne Prescott, Walking the Tōkaidō: A Multi-Disciplinary Experience in History and Culture

Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award

Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz

Graduate Student Paper Prizes

China and Inner Asia Council

Mian Chen (Northwestern University), “Great-Leap Forwarding the Great Leap Forward: The Institutional Change of the Propaganda Machines in Socialist China (1957-1960)”

Hsien-min Chu (National Taiwan University), “Beyond a Ruling Guide: The Aesthetic Effect of Ruins in Shuijin zhu”

Debby Chih-Yen Huang (University of Pennsylvania), “Wives at Men’s Parties: Gender Ethics and Expressions of Closeness”

Northeast Asia Council

Juyoung Lee (Johns Hopkins University), “Chemical Fertilizer and the Making of ‘Scientific’ Farmers in 1960s South Korea”

South Asia Council

No South Asia Council student paper prize awarded

Southeast Asia Council

Alexandra Dalferro (Cornell University), “Weaving Queer Pasts and Futures in Thailand”