Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize
The Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize honors a distinguished work of scholarship in South Asian Studies that promises to define or redefine the understanding of whole subject areas. The committee particularly seeks nominations of broad scholarly works with innovative approaches that may concern any topic in any discipline or may cross disciplinary lines.
The prize recognizes a distinguished scholarly monograph beyond the author or authors’ first monograph or published research project. First monographs should be submitted for the Bernard S. Cohn Prize.
2025 Prize
$1,000 to the author.
Guidelines for Submission
- Nominated books for the 2025 Coomaraswamy Prize must be original, scholarly, nonfiction works with a 2023 copyright date, and must be the first publication of this text in English anywhere in the world.
- The book’s subject matter must deal with South Asia (India, Pakistan, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh).
- Works are not eligible if they are reference works, exhibition catalogs, textbooks, essay collections, poetry, fiction, memoirs, or autobiographies.
- Translations will be eligible only if they include a substantial introduction, annotation, or critical apparatus.
- Co-authored books are eligible; edited volumes of essays are not.
- Publishers must complete the book nomination form. Each press may nominate a maximum of six books for the Coomaraswamy Prize.
- Only publishers may nominate books.
- Upon receipt of a completed nomination form, publishers will be provided with addresses for prize committee members. A copy of each entry, clearly labeled “Coomaraswamy Prize,” must be sent to each member of the committee.
Books published by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. are ineligible for consideration for prizes administered by the Association for Asian Studies. Employees of the Association are excluded from consideration for AAS book prizes, subventions, and grants. Publishers should check with authors to certify that they are not employed by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
Deadline
The nomination deadline is June 30, 2024. Nominations will open for submission later in spring 2024.
Coomaraswamy Prize Committee
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan (Chair)
Columbia University
Shahzad Bashir
Brown University
Srimati Basu
University of Kentucky
2024 Award
Winner and Citation
Shailaja Paik, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India (Stanford University Press)
Shailaja Paik’s The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India is the committee’s unanimous choice for the recipient of the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize. Lucidly and movingly written, the book lives up handily to the prize’s remit to be awarded to a book “that promises to define or redefine the understanding of whole subject areas.” Drawing on evidence from archives, film, music, dance, and ethnography, the book’s multi-layered analyses bring to light new intersections between caste, gender, and sexuality in South Asia, and explores the unstable and complex meanings of Tamasha as a symbol of Dalitness. Remaining self-aware, committed, empathetic, and forcefully critical in equal measures, the book is impressive for its analytical depth and its coverage of Dalit history and aspiration for dignity and equality. Vast in scope, Paik’s book will prove generative for scholars far into the future.
Past Awards
Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize
1992 Margaret Trawick, Notes on Love in a Tamil Family
1993 Philip Lutgendorf, The Life of a Text: Performing the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas
1994 Kathryn Hansen, Grounds for Play: The Nautanki Theatre of North India
1995 Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204-1760
1996 Bina Agarwal, A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia
1997 Shahid Amin, Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992
1998 Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India
1999 Richard H. Davis, Lives of Indian Images
2000 Gauri Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief
2001 George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact of Global Proliferation
2002 Claude Markovits, The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama
2003 Arvind Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India
2004 Ann Grodzins Gold and Bhoju Ram Gujar, In the Time of Trees and Sorrows: Nature, Power, and Memory in Rajasthan
2005 Cecelia Van Hollen, Birth on the Threshold: Childbirth and Modernity in South India
2006 Joseph S. Alter, Yoga in Modern India: The Body between Science and Philosophy
2007 Susan Seizer, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage: An Ethnography of Special Drama Artists in South India
2008 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India
2009 Ramya Sreenivasan, The Many Lives of a Rajput Queen: Heroic Pasts in India c. 1500-1900
2010 Pravina Shukla, The Grace of the Four Moons: Dress, Adornment and the Art of the Body in Modern India
2011 Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter
2012 Molly Emma Aitken, The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting
2013 Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840-1915
2014 Akhil Gupta, Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India
2015 Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History
2016 Richard M. Eaton and Phillip B. Wagoner, Power, Memory, Architecture: Contested Sites on India’s Deccan Plateau, 1300-1600
2017 John S. Hawley, A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement
2018 Cynthia Talbot, The Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past 1200-2000
2019 Anirudh Krishna, The Broken Ladder: The Paradox and Potential of India’s One Billion
2020 Santanu Das, India, Empire, and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs
2021 Tony K. Stewart, Witness to Marvels: Sufism and Literary Imagination
2022 Benjamin D. Hopkins, Ruling the Savage Periphery: Frontier Governance and the Making of the Modern State
2023 Elora Shehabuddin, Sisters in the Mirror: A History of Muslim Women and the Global Politics of Feminism