Graduate Student Paper Prizes

Each year the Area Councils offers a best paper prize to graduate students presenting at the Annual Conference. Submission requirements and prize amounts vary by area council. See each prize below for more details.

The Best Graduate Student Paper Prize—East and Inner Asia Council

The East and Inner Asia Council (EIAC; formerly the China and Inner Asia Council [CIAC]) of the Association for Asian Studies announces the 2024 competition for the best paper on a East/Inner Asia topic scheduled to be presented by a graduate student at the AAS 2024 Annual Conference.

The prize will recognize emerging scholarship in the field and foster intellectual exchange among junior and senior scholars. The award of $400 and a certificate will be presented at the 2025 AAS Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The East and Inner Asia Council of the AAS will also provide a sum of up to $600 to the winner of the prize to partially cover the cost of their travel to the 2025 Columbus Conference, where the winner will be recognized at the AAS Awards Ceremony.

The Council encourages graduate students who were accepted to present papers at the 2024 Annual Conference to submit their papers for consideration. Papers on any aspect and region covered by the East and Inner Asia Council (formerly the China and Inner Asia Council) will be considered. Students must be currently registered in a doctoral program in order to be considered for the Prize. Submitted papers should be no longer than 4,500 words, including footnotes. Papers over the word limit are automatically disqualified.

Please note that due to the generous support of the Chiang-Ching Kuo Foundation (CCK), prizes will be awarded for the three best EIAC 2024 Conference papers submitted. All three winners will be provided the same $400 cash prize, certificate, and up to $600 in travel funds to attend the 2025 Columbus Conference to publicly receive their award.

Please submit: (1) your 2024 conference paper; (2) proof of current doctoral program registration; and (3) accepted AAS panel abstract in PDF format up until March 18, 2024 to janet.theiss@utah.edu; please include “EIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize” as the message subject line. Papers received after March 18, 2024 will not be considered.

Past Winners

The 2022 EIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Dingru Huang (Harvard University), “An Elephant Capture: ‘War against Nature,’ Multi-Ethnic Nationalism, and Animals in Socialist China”
  • Yifan Li (Ohio State University), “The New Architectural Wonder: Reproducing the Nanjing Yangzi River Bridge in Mao-era China”
  • Yi Ren (University of Pennsylvania), “Pulling Strings from the Margins of the Society: Blind Propagandists and Political Campaigns in Southeast Shanxi, 1949-1977”

The 2021 CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • 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”

The 2020 CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Chloe Estep, Columbia University, “Futurist Biopoetics in Republican China”
  • Katrin Heilmann, King’s College, London, “‘Shelter-mentality’: China’s 1969 Mass Underground Construction Campaign”
  • Chuncheng Liu, University of California, San Diego, “In Score We Trust: Examination of a Social Credit System Infrastructure in China”

The 2019 Denver, Colorado Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Gavin Healy, Columbia University, for “Visual Culture and the Tourism Industry in Mao-Era China: ‘Scenery Export’?”
  • Sarah Xia Yu, University of Pennsylvania, for “Spitting in the Settlement: Public Nuisance, Health, and Sovereignty in Shanghai, 1911–1941”

The 2018 AAS Washington, D.C. Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Yi Lu, Harvard University, for “Proletarian Piracy: Culture of Reprints in Mao’s China”
  • Yiren Zheng, University of Chicago, for “Sounding the Ineffable: On Third-Century Chinese Whistling as an Alternative Voice”
  • Xue Zhang, Princeton University, for “How Knowledge Travels: The Distribution of Imperial Maps in Qing China”

The 2017 AAS Toronto Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Anne Rebull, University of Chicago, for “How to Act: Emboldening Theatricality in 1950s Performance Practice”
  • Denise Van der Kamp, University of California, Berkeley, for “Clean Air at what Cost? The Rise of ‘Blunt Force’ Pollution Regulation in China”
  • Nicholas H. Wong, University of Chicago, for “A Genealogical Askesis, or Beyond the Classroom: Zhang Taiyan and Ng Kim Chew’s Other Teachers on Chinese Writing”

The 2016 AAS Chicago Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Huiying Chen, University of Illinois at Chicago, for “On the Road: Understandings and Experiences of the Road by Manchu Bannermen in Eighteenth-Century China”
  • Jiangtao (Harry) Gu, University of Rochester, for “Beyond ‘The Ninth Wave’: On the State of Contemporary Chinese Art”
  • Steven Pieragastini, Brandeis University, for “Southern Exposure: Smuggling and Migration along China’s Southern Frontier in the early People’s Republic”

The 2015 AAS Chicago Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • McCabe Keliher, Harvard University, for “The Making of Qing Administrative Law”
  • Dasa Pejchar Mortensen, University of North Carolina, for “Ethnopolitics and Revolutionary Fervor: The Tibetan Red Guard Movement in Gyalthang”
  • Chelsea Zi Wang, Columbia University, for “Waiting for Replacement: Official Transfers and the Paradox of Speed and Delay in Ming Bureaucracy”

The 2014 AAS Philadelphia Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Yige Dong, Johns Hopkins University, “The Discovery of Parenthood: Science, Gender, and Class in Childrearing Literature during 1980’s China”
  • Margaret Roberts, Harvard University, “Fear or Friction? How Censorship Slows the Spread of Information in the Digital Age”
  • Fei Yan, University of Oxford, “The Politicized Mass Factionalism in a Chinese Context: Guangzhou’s January Power Seizure in 1967”

The 2013 AAS San Diego Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • David J. Bulman, Johns Hopkins University, for “Promotion-based Incentives for Growth: Evidence from the County Level in Jiangsu and Anhui”
  • Ting Luo, London School of Economics, for “China’s Village Committee Elections: Economic Development and Incumbent Advantage”
  • Christopher Byrne, McGill University, for “Verses of Silent Illumination: Hongzhi Zhengjue’s (1091-1157) Poetic Vision of the Caodong Secto of Chan Buddhism”

The 2012 AAS Toronto Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winners were:

  • Matthew King, University of Toronto, for “‘Mongols’ in the Buddhicization of Tibet and China: Late Mongol Readings of Tibetan Language Sources”
  • Elisa Oreglia, University of California, Berkeley, for “‘It’s Just Like Being There!’: Mobile Modernity and Rural China in the Age of the Internet”
  • Ning Yao, Heidelberg University, for “Representing Absence and Death: Wu Li’s (1632-1718) Handscroll Remembering the Past at the Xingfu Chapel (1672)”

The 2011 AAS-ICAS Hawaii Joint Conference CIAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was:

  • Wing Shan Ho, University of Oregon, for “Women and the State Ideology: Modernization and Perverted Characters in Chinese Television”
The Best Graduate Student Paper Prize—Northeast Asia Council

The Northeast Asia Council (NEAC) of the Association for Asian Studies announces the 2024 competition for the best paper on a Korea and/or Japan topic presented by a graduate student at the AAS 2024 Annual Conference.

The prize will recognize emerging scholarship in the field and foster intellectual exchange among junior and senior scholars. Consideration will be given to papers that have clear potential to be developed into publishable journal articles. An award of $400 and a certificate will be presented at the 2025 AAS Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The Northeast Asia Council of the AAS will also provide a sum of up to $600 to the winner of the prize to partially cover the cost of their travel to the 2025 Columbus Conference, where the winner will be recognized at the AAS Awards Ceremony.

The Council encourages graduate students who presented papers at the 2024 Annual Conference to submit their papers for consideration. Papers on any aspect and region of Japan and/or Korea will be considered. Students must have been registered in a doctoral program at the time of paper presentation in order to be considered for the prize. Submissions should be no more than 4,500 words (approximately 10 pages) excluding footnotes.

Please submit your 2024 conference paper, proof of spring 2024 doctoral program registration, and accepted AAS panel abstract in PDF format up until March 18, 2024 using this form. Please direct any queries to NEACstudentpaperprize@gmail.com.

Past Winners

The 2022 NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Lillian Tsay (Brown University), “Sweetening the Empire: Japanese Western-style Confectionery in Colonial Taiwan and Beyond”

The 2021 NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Juyoung Lee (Johns Hopkins University), “Chemical Fertilizer and the Making of ‘Scientific’ Farmers in 1960s South Korea”

The 2020 NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Jing Sun (University of Pennsylvania), for “Broken Promise: Rice, Manchuria and the Failure of Food Autarky of Imperial Japan, 1919-1941”

The 2019 Denver, Colorado Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Youjia Li (Northwestern University), for “Push-car Railways in the Japanese Empire: Colonialism, Technology, and the Spatial Construction in Colonial Taiwan.”

The 2018 AAS Washington, D.C. Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Benjamin R. Young (George Washington University), for “Mobilizing the Masses: The Vietnam War and Welcoming Foreign Leaders in North Korea.”

The 2017 AAS Toronto Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Sara Osenton (University of Toronto), for “Historicizing  the  Cyborg: Bodies Broken by War and the Cultural Imaginary.”

The 2016 AAS Seattle Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Sujin Lee (Cornell University), for “Birth Control and Eugenics for the Proletarian Class: A Genealogy of the Proletarian Birth Control Movement in Interwar Japan.”

The 2015 AAS Chicago Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Miriam Chusid (Princeton University), for “Tales from the Underworld: Visual Narratives of Salvation from Hell in Medieval Japan.”

The 2014 AAS Philadelphia Conference NEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Hyeseon Jeong (Ohio State University), for “Giving to Belong: South Korea’s ‘Graduation from Aid.'”

The Best Graduate Student Paper Prize—South Asia Council

The South Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies announces the 2024 competition for the best paper on a South Asia topic scheduled to be presented by a graduate student at the AAS Annual Conference.

The prize will recognize emerging scholarship in the field and foster intellectual exchange among junior and senior scholars. The award of $500 and a certificate will be presented at the 2025 AAS Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The South Asia Council of the AAS will also provide a sum of up to $300 to the winner of the prize to partially cover the cost of his or her travel to the 2025 Columbus Conference, where the winner will be recognized at the AAS Awards Ceremony.

The Council encourages graduate students who were accepted to present papers at the 2024 Annual Conference to submit their papers for consideration. Papers on any aspect and region of South Asia will be considered. Students must be currently registered in a doctoral program in order to be considered for the prize. Submitted papers should be no longer than 3,000 words, excluding footnotes.

Please submit your 2024 conference paper, proof of current doctoral program registration, and accepted AAS panel abstract in PDF format by March 18, 2024 to Walter Hakala, walterha@buffalo.edu. Papers received after March 18, 2024 will not be considered.

Past Winners
  • The 2022 SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize Winner was Abdullah Nazar Hamad (University of British Columbia/LUMS), “From Pre-colonial to Colonial Forms of Engagement with the Pasts: A Study of Some Var Texts”
  • The 2020 SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize Winner was Ayelet Kotler (University of Chicago), for “The Origin of Poetry, Retold: On Translating the Ramayana into Persian”
  • The SAC 2019 AAS Denver Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Gerjan Altenberg (McMaster University), for “Some Problems with the Theravāda-Vinaya as a Textual Source for the Study of Abortion.”
  • The SAC 2018 AAS Washington, D.C. Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Maria-Magdalena Fuchs (Princeton University), for “‘Act in the Living Present’: The Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam Lahore and the Quest for a Modern(ist) Islam.”
  • The SAC 2017 AAS Toronto Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Nicholas Roth (Harvard University), for “To Not Be Ignorant Like Frogs in a Well: Bābū Pyāre La‘l (1870/71-1917) and Vernacular Technical Literature in Provincial North India.”
  • The SAC 2016 AAS Seattle Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Emma Stein (Yale University), for “Building Kanchi in the Temple-Boom Age (ca. 8th-13th Centuries).”
  • The SAC 2015 AAS Chicago Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Christina Welsch (Princeton University), for “‘An Indulgence Which Can Never Be Denied Them’: The Question of Family Benefits in the East India Company’s Madras Army, 1746-1812.”
  • The SAC 2014 AAS Philadelphia Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Raphael Susewind (Bielefeld University), for “The ‘Wazirganj Terror Attack’: Local Democracy, Land Development, and Religious Revivalism.”
  • The SAC 2013 AAS San Diego Conference SAC Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was David Boyk (University of California, Berkeley) for “Mofussil Urbanity: Provinciality and the Public Sphere in Patna, 1900-1906.”
  • The SAC 2012 AAS Toronto Conference Graduate Student paper Prize winner was Arthur Dudney (Columbia University), for “Fashioning Everyday Speech into Literary Language in Eighteenth-Century Delhi.”
  • The SAC 2011 AAS Hawaii Conference Graduate Student paper Prize winner was Adrienne Fast (University of British Columbia), for “Performing “Artist”: Middle-Class Identity and the Working Artist in Late-Colonial Bengal.”
  • The SAC 2010 AAS Philadelphia Conference Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Juned Shaikh (University of Washington), for “Kamyunista Jahirnama [The Communist Manifesto]: Mavali, Dalit and the Making of Mumbai’s Working Class.”
  • The SAC 2009 AAS Chicago Conference Graduate Student Paper Prize winner was Jason Cons (Cornell University), for “Spatial Corruptions: Place, Rule, and Cattle Along the Indian-Bangladesh Border.”
The Pattana Kitiarsa Prize for Best Graduate Student Paper—Southeast Asia Council

The AAS Southeast Asia Council’s annual prize recognizes emerging scholarship in the field of Southeast Asian studies, from any disciplinary perspective. Graduate students at any stage, enrolled at the time of submission, are eligible and welcome to apply. The committee invites papers that fit the definition of “conference papers,” i.e. of a length and scope that can be presented on an AAS panel, and that make an intellectual and/or methodological contribution to the study of Southeast Asia.

The prize honors the memory of Pattana Kitiarsa, who was Associate Professor in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He was born in the northeastern Thai province of Nong Khai and maintained his roots in this Lao-speaking region. As a scholar, teacher, and friend he touched many people’s lives. Sadly, Pattana passed away from cancer at the age of 46. With his passing the field lost one of its leading scholars of Southeast Asian labor, religion, class, and media.

Please submit your 2024 AAS Annual Conference paper, proof of current doctoral program registration, and accepted AAS panel abstract in PDF format up until March 18, 2024 to seacpaperprize@gmail.com. Submissions should be up to 10,000 words maximum. Papers received after March 18, 2024 will not be considered. Any questions regarding the prize can be sent to the same email address.

The award of $500 and a certificate will be presented at the 2025 AAS Annual Conference in Columbus, Ohio. The Southeast Asia Asia Council of the AAS will also provide a sum of up to $400 to the winner of the prize to partially cover the cost of his or her travel to the 2025 Columbus Conference, where the winner will be recognized at the AAS Awards Ceremony.

Past Winners
  • The winner of the 2022 SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Ren Chao (University of Michigan), “Corporate Frontiers: Business, Empire, and Colonial Legal Pluralism in a Burmese Oilfield, c.1900-1908”
  • The winner of the 2021 SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Alexandra Dalferro (Cornell University), for “Weaving Queer Pasts and Futures in Thailand”
  • The winner of the 2020 SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Takahiro Kamisuna for “Beyond Nationalism: The Youth’s Struggle for the Independence of East Timor and Democracy for Indonesia”
  • The winner of the 2019 AAS Denver Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Cindy Nguyen (UC Berkeley), for “The Social Life of the Hanoi Central Library: Reading Cultures & Public Space, 1919-1941.”
  • The winner of the 2018 AAS Washington, D.C. Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Dat Manh Nguyen (Boston University), for “Unburdening the Heart: Urban Youth and Buddhist Emotional Education in Contemporary Vietnam.”
  • The winner of the 2017 AAS Toronto Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Kisho Tsuchiya (National University of Singapore), for “Converting Tetun: The Early Missionary Texts in a Timorese language and the Timorese Absent Presence 1875-1937.”
  • The winner of the 2016 AAS Seattle Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Horapin Phuaphansawat (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), for “’My Eyes are Open but My Lips are Whispering’: Anti-Royalism in Thailand after the 2006 Coup D’état.”
  • The winner of the 2015 AAS Chicago Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Michelle S. Eusebio (University of Florida), for “Why Rice Agriculture Did Not Reach the Pacific Islands During the Austronesian Expansion: Exploring Resistance, Foodways, and Identities in Enigmatic Territories.”
  • The winner of the 2014 AAS Philadelphia Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Lupt Utama (Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art), for “Modernising the Monarch: The Adoption and Adaptation of Victorian Fashion and Military Dress Uniforms in the Siamese Royal Court of King Chulalongkorn.”
  • The winner of the 2013 AAS San Diego Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Dredge Byung’chu Kang (Emory University), for “Eastward Orientations: Thai Middle Class Desire for White Asians.”
  • The winner of the 2012 AAS Toronto Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Joseph Harris, (University of Wisconsin, Madison), for “Who Governs? Autonomous Political Networks as a Challenge to Power in Thailand.”
  • The winner of the 2011 AAS-ICAS Hawaii Joint Conference SEAC Graduate Student Paper Prize was Noer Fauzi Rachman, (University of California, Berkeley), for “Struggle Over Land and Land Policy in Contemporary Indonesia.”