AAS Regional Conferences — Student Paper Prize Winners

We congratulate all the student paper prize winners who presented at AAS regional conferences in 2020-21. In recognition of their accomplishments, the Council of Conferences (CoC) has awarded these scholars a free one-year student membership in the AAS.

*Denotes members of the CoC-sponsored graduate student panel appearing at AAS 2022 

Asian Studies Conference Japan (ASCJ)

*Kameyama Mitsuhiro, Tohoku University, “Tracing Karma in Meiji Japan: The Global Entanglement of Religion, Morality and Science” 

Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast (ASPAC) 

Anran Tu, University of California, San Diego, “Seeing Nature, Envisioning the Modern: Nature History Education in China, 1900-1920”

*Katherina Whatley, Stanford University, “Sonic Imaginary: Religion, Exoticism and Musical Symbolism in Heian Japan”  

New England Conference (NEAAS)

Mark Bookman, University of Pennsylvania, “The Coronavirus Crisis: Disability Politics and Activism in Contemporary Japan” 

John G. Grisafi, Yale University, “Marginal Religion and COVID-19 in Korea: Shincheonji, Public Discourse, and the Shaping of Categorical Language”

*Sanchit Toor, Ashoka University, “Singing Selfhood or Singing Resistance: Counterpublics in the Songs of Rural Women in North India” 

Kaitlyn Ugoretz, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Shinto in the Time of Coronavirus: Japanese Religion Online During Global Pandemic”  

New York Conference on Asian Studies (NYCAS)

*Sara Ann Swenson, Syracuse University (Currently, Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College), “‘Three Trees Make a Mountain’: Women and Contramodern Buddhist Volunteerism in Vietnam” 

Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs (MCAA)

Xin Yu, Washington University in St. Louis, “Literature and Lineage: The Construction of Cultural Lineages in Ming Huizhou, 1450-1644” 

Erica Kanesaka Kalnay, Brown University, “Racial Attachments: Dakko-chan, Black Kitsch, and Kawaii Culture” 

Southwest Conference on Asian Studies (SWCAS)

*Melissa A. Hosek, Stanford University, “Ecology, [Post]humanism, and Liu Cixin’s ‘The Three Body Problem’” 

The Mid-Atlantic Region (MAR/AAS), Southeast Conference (SEC/AAS), and Western Conference (WCAAS) did not award paper prizes in 2020-21 due to pandemic-related cancellations.