Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize

The Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize honors outstanding and innovative scholarship across discipline and country of specialization for a first single-authored English-language monograph on South Asia, published during the preceding year. Books nominated may address either contemporary or historical topics in any field of the humanities or the social sciences related to any of the countries of South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal in the spirit of Barney Cohn’s broad and critical scholarship on culture and history in South Asia. The prize aims to acknowledge two books, one in humanities and one in social sciences, for recognition each year.

2026 Prize

$1,000 award for the author.

Guidelines for Submission

• Books must have a 2024 copyright date to be eligible for the 2026 prize.
• Prior publication of an edited volume, exhibition catalog, or translations without critical apparatus does not necessarily disqualify authors.
• Books may only be nominated for one prize competition within each regional category; please see the main Book Prizes page for regional categories.
• Publishers must complete the book nomination form. Each press may nominate a maximum of six books for the Cohn 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 “Bernard S. Cohn 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. 

Nominations for the 2026 Cohn Prize will open on April 28, 2025. Please check back for more information after that date.

2026 Cohn Prize Committee

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2025 Awards

Winners and Citations

Hafsa Kanjwal, Colonizing Kashmir: State-building under Indian Occupation (Stanford University Press)

Hafsa Kanjwal’s Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building Under Indian Occupation examines the paradoxical occupation of Kashmir by India’s early “postcolonial” state. It does so by foregrounding and reevaluating the role of Bakhshi Ghulam Muhammad, the second prime minister of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (1953-63), and by incorporating a diverse archive, including government documents, films and literary texts, tourist brochures, educational materials, memoirs, and interviews. Emphasizing the role of state-building policies in the integration of Kashmir, Kanjwal questions the uniqueness of the case of Kashmir through pertinent comparisons with similar geopolitical entanglements. State building, Kanjwal argues, involves acts of imagined territorial integration, subjective and cultural formations through a “politics of life,” economic dependency, control of information, and the managing of dissent. This accessible and well written account offers a fresh perspective on how processes of settler-colonialism and military occupation expose the contradictions of the democratic, secular, and liberal nation-state.

Rumya Sree Putcha, The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Duke University Press)

Rumya Sree Putcha’s The Dancer’s Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India traces the shifting signification of the Indian dancer, focusing especially on Telugu dancers from “dominant caste” and “model minority” backgrounds. Combining ethnography with a transnational archive of film, legal documents, advertisements, performances, and family and personal memories, Putcha uses dance as a powerful entry point for understanding the interrelation between womanhood, caste, citizenship, and silence. As she demonstrates, the separation of the woman’s body from her voice is foundational to her citizenship. The book employs a sophisticated interdisciplinary methodology that offers fresh insights and perspectives to a wide set of audiences, as well as a welcome bridge between the studies of South Asia and its diaspora. This book should be read far beyond its immediate field.

Honorable Mentions

Past Awards