Fw: H-ASIA: AAS prize citations from 2011 Conference

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Subject: H-ASIA: AAS prize citations from 2011 Conference

> H-ASIA
> April 15, 2011
>
> Prize citations for scholars honored at 2011 Association for Asian Studies
> conference, Honolulu, April 1, 2011
> ************************************************************************
> Ed. note: As promised, here are the balance of the citations for the
> awards presented at the annual conference of the Association for Asian
> Studies, Honolulu, April 1, 2011. I am sure that all H-ASIA members will
> join in offering congratulations to Sumit Sarkar, Eugenio Menegon, Robert
> Ford Campany, Jacob Eyferth, Karen Thornber, Hwasook Nam, Finbarr Flood,
> Jeffrey Hadler, Alfred McCoy, Lynn Parisi and Peter Perdue, Eric Gangloff,
> Wim Stokhof, Juned Sheikh and Simon Lim. FFC
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> From: Michael Paschal <mpaschal@asian-studies.org>
>
> 1.) AAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies
> Sumit Sarkar
>
> Sumit Sarkar, Professor Emeritus of Modern Indian History in Delhi
> University, India, began his distinguished research career with The
> Swadeshi Movement in Bengal that, several reprints later, continues to be
> reissued. His continuing work on nationalist politics made him a leading
> authority in the study of anti-colonial nationalism. Later, his exemplary
> immersion in vernacular sources led him to pioneer the field of social
> history in India in the collection published as Writing Social History
> (Oxford, Delhi, 1997). Having begun his career studying varieties of
> nationalism in India, he ended it with a call to look beyond the horizons
> of the nation-state. In yet another provocative collection of essays
> titled Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism,
> History (Permanent Black and Indiana University Press, 2002) Sumit
> Sarkar's treatment of the historical growth of the Right-wing in Indian
> politics led him to locate it as a vibrant and growing force in conditions
> of economic globalization.
>
> Having been spurred to study the historical antecedents of South Asian
> ethnocentrism and militarism, Sarkar pushed his own limits by studying
> the ways in which gender entered into and inflected these various brands
> of
> parochialism in a volume he co-edited with Tanika Sarkar, Women and Social
> Reform in Modern India (2008).
>
> Professor Sarkar began his teaching career at Burdwan and Kolkata
> Universities in Bengal. With the exception of short-term teaching
> assignments at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Sussex, he
> devoted the majority of his time to mentoring and teaching at the
> Department of History in Delhi University from 1976 till 2009.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> 2.) 2011 Joseph Levenson Book Prize: Pre-1900 Category
> AAS China and Inner Asia Council
>
> Eugenio Menegon
>
> _Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late
> Imperial China_
>
> Harvard University Asia Center, 2009
>
> Eugenio Menegon's book is a ground-breaking study of the ways in which
> Christianity became a local religion in late imperial China. Utilizing
> materials in Chinese, Japanese, Latin, Spanish, French, German, English,
> and Italian, Menegon is able to tease this local story out of sources
> both hostile to Christianity (Chinese government sources like criminal
> confessions, elite writings, etc) and supportive of it (missionary
> reports,
> pamphlets, accounts by Christian families, etc). Menegon marshals this
> stunning range of sources to paint an amazingly rich and nuanced portrait
> of
> an indigenous Christian community in Fuan, Fujian, and to explain how it
> managed to endure for over four centuries. This is an impressive account –
> as he puts it – of the "transformation of a global religion into a local
> one" (p. 154).
>
> Menegon also succeeds in providing a superb and detailed account of the
> complexities of social and religious life in late imperial China. Menegon
> is a master of the historical narrative, and the book is beautifully
> written. In short, the committee salutes the cosmopolitan sweep of
> Menegon's research, his impressive powers of historical analysis, and his
> compelling storytelling skills. We are honored to award the book this
> year's Pre-1900 Joseph Levenson Prize.
>
> Selection Committee: Michael Puett (Chair), Melissa Maccauley, Ding Xang
> Warner
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Honorable Mention:
>
> Robert Ford Campany
>
> _Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China_
> University of Hawaii Press, 2009
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 3.) 2011 Joseph Levenson Book Prize: Post-1900 Category
>
> AAS China and Inner Asia Council
>
> Jacob Eyferth
>
> _Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: The Social History of a Community of
> Artisans in Southwest China, 1920-2000_
>
> Harvard University Asia Center, 2009
>
> Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots traces the history of a group of papermakers
> living on the edge of Sichuan's Chengdu plain. In rich detail, Eyferth
> analyzes the growth of rural paper making during the first half of the
> twentieth century, its stagnation and near destruction under Mao, and, for
> some households, its revival in the 1980s and 1990s. He describes arduous
> labor routines and captures a way of life that embeds those routines
> within
> encompassing community and family relations, gender divisions, marketing
> networks, and religious associations.
>
> Eyferth confidently manages a rich variety of sources to produce intimate
> accounts of individuals and households as they struggled to make a living
> from their technical skills and hard work. His sophisticated combination
> of
> archival sources, participant observation, oral histories, and interviews
> not only opens up new research avenues, but also makes methodological
> innovations that will positively challenge future fieldwork historians.
>
> In clear and commanding prose Eyferth exposes a deep rural-urban divide,
> accentuated by Maoist policies, which devalued rural enterprise and the
> kinds of local knowledge that sustained life and community not only in
> rural
> Sichuan but in villages and towns throughout China. Through careful
> reading
> of the conceptual literature, innovative methodologies, a keen eye for
> rural
> lifeways, and sophisticated analytical skills, Eyferth develops an
> analysis
> that is grounded in detail, yet goes well beyond the predicament of any
> one
> village to offer significant insights into the dramatic economic and
> political changes that transformed the Chinese countryside.
>
> Selection Committee: Jonathan Unger (Chair), Michael Hockx, Rubie Watson
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 4.) 2011 John Whitney Hall Book Prize
>
> AAS Northeast Asia Council
>
> Karen Thornber
>
> _Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese
> Transculturations of Japanese Literature_
>
> Harvard University Asia Center, 2009
>
> Empire of Texts in Motion is an ambitious and wide-ranging book,
> exploring the literary relationships amongst Japan, China, Korea and
> Taiwan during the twentieth-century Japanese empire. It explores the
> fluid exchange of literary ideas, and the impact of Japanese literature
> on the other countries' writings, and it does so with enormous attention
> to an amazingly large sample of texts. It is original in its examination
> of the interlinks among these nations (the glue being Japan), and
> downplays the more common perception of the impact of Western literature.
>
> The inherent breadth of the subject - analyzing writing across East Asia -
> is impressive, the research monumental - the author searched and read
> across borders to a degree rarely encountered. In its embrace of so
> many geographic and linguistic areas, and in such depth and detail, it
> establishes a model for future research on East Asia, and very likely
> beyond, since the kinds of transcultural issues it explores are not
> limited to East Asia.
>
>
> Selection Committee: Sonia Ryang (Chair), Ethan Segal, Andrew Watsky,
> Christine Yano
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 5.) 2011 James B. Palais Book Prize
>
> AAS Northeast Asia Council
>
> Hwasook Nam
>
> _Building Ships, Building a Nation: Korea's Democratic Unionism under Park
> Chung Hee_
>
> University of Washington Press, 2009
>
> From a very strong field of books, Building Ships, Building a Nation stood
> out for its combination of meticulous research and innovative analysis.
> Although a case-study of the union activities at the Korea Shipbuilding
> and
> Engineering Corporation (KSEC) in the 1960s, Hwasook Nam's book is much
> more
> than the study of a single union in a single decade. With her examination
> of
> the KSEC, we come to rethink many of our basic assumptions about South
> Korea's economic development, the chronology of its labor and social
> movements, and the connections between pre- and post-colonial Korean
> history. A pioneering work on contemporary Korean history, Building Ships,
> Building a Nation will occupy a central place in the emerging literature
> on
> the post-war period.
>
> Nam has cast a social historian's eye on a field long dominated
> by political economists, revealing a history from the bottom up that has
> been largely hidden by a top-down understanding of state-led development.
> She makes a powerful argument that the "economic miracle" of the Park
> Chung
> Hee era was not merely a modernization program imposed on a passive
> society,
> but was in part born from a populist modernity that can be found in worker
> activism going back several decades. Moreover, Nam convinces that this
> alternative vision of modernity emanated from the workers themselves, well
> before its appropriation by 1980s intellectuals and student activists. Nam
> gives voice and agency to a segment of society and a period of time that
> were relegated to silence for many years, and in the process profoundly
> alters our understanding of South Korean state and society.
>
>
> Selection Committee: Charles Armstrong (Chair), Nancy Abelmann, Kyung Hyun
> Kim, Robert Oppenheim
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 6.) 2011 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize
>
> AAS South Asia Council
>
> Finbarr Barry Flood
>
> _Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim"
> Encounter_
>
> Princeton University Press, 2009
>
>
> Finbarr Flood's Objects of Translation is a magisterial study of material
> culture and community identity in South Asia from the eighth to the early
> thirteenth century. In tracing the Muslim advance eastward from the
> Abbasid
> and Fatimid caliphates in western Asia, Flood complements textual data by
> analyzing objects to reveal how peoples of diverse ethnicities evolved
> patterns of political and social co-existence and synthesis. Using coins,
> clothing, and architecture, he documents the fluidity of
> relationships—political, economic, social, and religious—and the dense
> networks of circulation that linked Muslims of Arab, Persian and Turkish
> descent to Rajput and other Hindus. In patronizing, creating, and using
> these objects, Muslim and Hindu elites shared center stage with
> stonemasons,
> carvers, illustrators, and soldiers.
>
> Particularly noteworthy for our understanding of the evolution of an
> Islamic culture not constrained by later imperial and nation-state
> boundaries or indeed, religious ideologies, is the incisive and balanced
> analysis of the implications of "loot" and "reused" elements in
> architecture, especially in the construction of the great thirteenth-
> century Qutb Minar complex in Delhi. Objects of Translation is a timely
> contribution to medieval Indian historical studies, a major addition to
> translation theory and historical-cultural studies, and a field-changing
> work of art history. It is a landmark.
>
>
> Selection Committee: Barbara Ramusack (Chair), Karen Leonard, Sheldon
> Pollock
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 7.) 2011 Harry J. Benda Prize in Southeast Asian Studies
>
> AAS Southeast Asia Council
>
> Jeffrey Hadler
>
> _Muslims and Matriarchs: Cultural Resilience in Indonesia through Jihad
> and Colonialism_
>
> Cornell University Press, 2009
>
> In Muslims and Matriarchs, Jeffrey Hadler provides a rich social history
> of
> the Minangkabau of West Sumatra. Elegantly written, it is an illuminating
> study of change in the realms of gender relations, public and private
> space,
> intellectual life, religion, politics and society. Steeped in the
> scholarship of the region, Hadler worked closely and creatively with both
> historical records and contemporary realities, and his book offers a rich
> mix of sources and analytical approaches to the Minangkabau of West
> Sumatra,
> and to the broader Muslim community of the Indonesian archipelago.
>
> Muslims and Matriarchs traces the patterns of continuity and change that
> have characterized modern Minangkabau history, stretching from the end of
> the Padri rebellion into the twilight years of Dutch colonial rule in West
> Sumatra. His primary interest, however, lies largely in broader social
> changes, in education, gender relations and home life for the Minangkabau.
> With great nuance and depth, Hadler shows how the Minangkabau
> "matriarchate"
> responded creatively to change and to the forces of capitalism and
> modernity
> by questioning elemental cultural definitions and, as a result, producing
> some of the country's leading nationalist intellectuals and activists.
>
> Thanks to its originality, meticulous research, elegant writing,
> compelling analysis, and deep reflection on local realities and responses
> to some of the most significant transformations in modern Indonesian and
> Southeast Asian history, Hadler's book is this year's distinguished winner
> of the Benda Prize.
>
> Selection Committee: Nora Taylor (Chair), Nancy Eberhardt, Richard O'Connor,
> John Sidel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 8.) 2011 George McT. Kahin Prize
>
> AAS Southeast Asia Council
>
> Alfred W. McCoy
>
> _Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines and the
> Rise of the Surveillance State_
>
> University of Wisconsin Press, 2009
>
>
>
> Alfred McCoy's absorbing, magisterial study exposes the dark side of the
> entanglement of the Philippines and the United States that began in 1898
> and
> continues to this day. In the early years of the entanglement, new ideas
> about counter-insurgency, surveillance and policing on a national scale
> were
> introduced by the US Army, understandably more concerned with putting down
> resistance and establishing order than with allowing civil liberties to
> flourish. McCoy argues persuasively that these half-baked repressive ideas
> and practices, created to aid a fledgling colonial endeavor, have been
> central elements of Philippine governance ever since.
>
> Repressive policies, of course, characterize all colonial encounters and
> many of them persist after independence. McCoy goes on to argue, however,
> that when the notions of national policing, surveillance and counter-
> insurgency were first introduced in the Philippines, they were unfamiliar,
> and would have been unwelcome in the United States. He shows how they
> migrated to America under Woodrow Wilson, whose regime was eager to
> enforce internal security during and after World War I. A colonial
> experiment, in other words, became part of the colonial power's own
> repressive arsenal at home and abroad, just as it did in the independent
> Philippines, under a series of pro-American regimes. One outcome of the
> colonial encounter, McCoy convincingly suggests, was a pair of closely
> allied, heavily policed surveillance states.
>
> Policing America's Empire is a passionate, elegantly written book that
> owes its mastery to McCoy's narrative and analytical gifts, his years of
> painstaking research and his sure sense of the ominous global implications
> of his story.
>
> Selection Committee: David Chandler (Chair), Barbara Watson Andaya,
> Charles Keyes, Rita Smith Kipp
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 9.) 2011 Franklin Buchanan Prize for Curricular Materials
>
> AAS Committee on Teaching About Asia
>
> Lynn Parisi and Peter Perdue
>
> "China in the World: The Rise and fall of the Canton Trade System"
>
> Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Visualizing Cultures, 2009
>
>
> The 2011 Buchanan Prize for curriculum materials dealing with one or more
> of
> the countries and cultures represented by AAS goes to Peter Perdue and
> Lynn
> Parisi, for their online curriculum resource, China in the World: The Rise
> and Fall of the Canton Trade System, published as part of the
> Massachusetts
> Institute of Technology's online Visualizing Cultures Image-driven
> Scholarship project. The authors have developed a rich collection of
> exemplary scholarly essays and innovative curriculum lesson plans that are
> amply illustrated with images of commercial, art, and craft goods that
> were
> exchanged in the Canton region during the late 18th and 19th centuries.
>
> K-16 educators and students will benefit immensely from this readily
> available resource that contextualizes the importance of the Canton
> trading system in relationship to developing economic, political and
> military relations between China and Western European powers and the
> United
> States. The website gives a solid overview of the geographic features of
> the
> Pearl River Delta, of the various merchants and artists who interacted
> there, and of the various goods and commodities that were traded there –
> all
> of which is compellingly contextualized in relationship to the Canton
> trading system and its ultimate demise.
>
> Educators will appreciate the well thought-out organizational scope and
> attractiveness of the essays and images, as well as the thoughtful
> lesson plans that complement the essays. The website is an example not
> only
> of quality curricular scholarship, but also will serve as a model in the
> developing area of online curriculum material.
>
>
>
> Selection Committee: Kevin Lawrence (Chair), Robert Fish, Peter Gilmartin,
> Jean Johnson, Rylan Sekiguchi
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 10.) AAS Citation for Exceptional Service in Asian Studies
>
> Eric J. Gangloff
>
> Japan-United States Friendship Commission
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff was trained as a scholar of Japanese literature,
> having earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago and studied at
> Waseda University and the University of Tokyo;
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff taught Japanese studies for over a decade at the
> University of Chicago and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and
> played a critical role in developing the Asian studies program at the
> University of Tennessee;
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff has served the American people for more than 25
> years
> at the Japan-United States Friendship Commission (JUSFC), as Associate
> Executive Director, as the Director of the Commission's Japan office, and
> (since 1991) as the JUSFC's Executive Director;
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff has through his work at the JUSFC contributed
> substantially to research, training, and exchange with Japan, and
> supported
> the valuable projects of countless scholars, students, and artists through
> JUSFC grant programs;
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff has promoted educational exchange and information
> access between the United States and Japan through this work with the
> U.S.-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON);
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff was instrumental in the founding of the United
> States-Japan Bridging Foundation which has raised private funds to support
> over 1,000 undergraduate scholarships for study in Japan;
>
> WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff has throughout his career provided inspired
> leadership in cultural, educational, and scholarly dialogue and exchange
> between Japan and the United States;
>
> AND WHEREAS: Eric Gangloff has earned the respect of generations of
> scholars
> in Asian studies for his numerous academic achievements, his many
> administrative talents, his enlightened public service, and his tireless
> work strengthening the relationship between the United States and Japan;
>
>
>
> Be it recorded that the board of the Association for Asian Studies
> unanimously and enthusiastically presents this citation for
> exceptional service to Eric J. Gangloff on this, the 1st day of April,
> 2011.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 12.) AAS Citation for Exceptional Service in Asian Studies
>
>
> Wim Stokhof
>
> The AAS wishes to acknowledge the distinguished contributions of Dr.
> Willem
> Arnoldus Laurens Stokhof to contemporary Asian Studies. Educated as a
> linguist at the University of Amsterdam, Dr. Stokhof has trained a
> generation of students for research in the languages and cultures of
> Indonesia. Dr. Stokhof has also pioneered internationalized forums for
> Asian
> Studies and scholarly cooperation. He served as Secretary to the Committee
> for Advanced Asia Studies of the European Science Foundation. He was the
> founder-secretary of the European Alliance for Asian Studies and the
> initiator of the Annual Asia-Europe Workshop Series (ASEF) in Singapore.
> He
> was the founding-director of the International Institute of Asian Studies
> (IIAS) in Leiden and Amsterdam. Under Dr. Stokhof's tireless direction,
> the
> IIAS heightened cooperation between Asia- and Western-based scholars, and
> promoted new, collaborative models of research. Perhaps most relevant to
> our
> current gathering, Stokhof was the founding initiator of the International
> Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), a conference forum that has also
> strengthened ties between scholars in Asia and the West.
>
> Stokhof has also fostered international co-operation in Islamic Studies.
> He was the founding director of the International Institute for the
> Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden. He directed the
> Indonesian-Netherlands Co-operation in Islamic Studies, training more than
> thirty Ph.D.s from Indonesia. He also chaired the Indonesian Linguistic
> Development Project (ILDEP), and directed the INPA training program for
> upgrading Indonesia's governors and bupatis in co-operation with the
> ministries of Interior Affairs of Indonesia and the Netherlands.
>
> In recognition of his visionary contributions, unparalleled in their
> influence, the Association for Asian Studies honors and thanks Dr.
> Stokhof.
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 13.) 2010 Best Student Paper on South Asia
>
> AAS South Asia Council
>
> Juned Shaikh
>
> University of Washington
>
>
> "Kamyunista Jahirnama: Mavali, Dalit, and the Making of Mumbai's Working
> Class"
>
> This paper provides an important contribution to the social and
> intellectual history of Mumbai's working class through a study of the 1931
> Marathi translation of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. It argues that the
> translation of the Communist Manifesto includes conceptual categories and
> a
> typology of the working class that emerged out of specific intellectual
> exchanges between workers, union leaders, and intellectuals in the early
> decades of the twentieth century in Bombay. By examining the categories of
> the mavali, the dalit, and kamgaar varga (the working class), the paper
> reconsiders the seminal debates on the formation of the working class. The
> paper is theoretically sophisticated, grounded in critical debates on
> working class histories, and contributes to the emergent field of South
> Asian intellectual history.
>
>
>
> Selection Committee: Vinayak Chaturvedi, Matthew Nelson
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 14.) 2010 Best Student Paper on Southeast Asia
>
> AAS Southeast Asia Council
>
> Samson Lim
>
> Cornell University
>
> "Detective Fiction, the Police, and Secrecy in Early Twentieth Century
> Siam"
>
>
>
> Samson Lin's engagingly written, meticulously researched paper on the
> simultaneous rise of detective fiction and detective work starting in
> late nineteenth century Siam represents academic sleuthing of the highest
> order. Lim writes of the emergence of a new genre of detective fiction in
> Siam, following close on the heels of cognate lurid tales in the US and
> Europe—for instance, vernacular adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes
> stories,
> transposed to Bangkok, translations of Agatha Christie and others, as well
> as original works. More than mere entertainment, these immensely popular
> stories performed ideological double-duty, for instance crafting
> identifiable "non-Thai" villains, to be routed out by the royal elite
> rather
> than the inept police bureaucracy, and paralleled the development of
> detective work itself in Siam.
>
> Weaving together archival, statistical, literary, and scholarly sources,
> Lim argues convincingly that this genre arose and thrived when and
> how it did in line with pervasive dislocations in Bangkok and the kingdom
> more broadly at the time—a time of massive migration, urbanization, and
> administrative consolidation, as well as of sharply rising violent crime.
> Lim's narrative of mysteries and mayhem sheds light on conundrums of
> building state (and especially police) norms and capacity, fixing elite
> authority, and the global and local in popular culture at a transformative
> juncture in Siamese history.
>
> Selection Committee: Meredith Weiss, Hjorleifur Jonssen, Chie Ikeya
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Paschal
> Association for Asian Studies
> ***********************************************************************
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