Awards
Asia Center books have consistently won major awards from national and international scholarly associations over the years. Recent prize winners are listed below.
Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award (Society of Architectural Historians)
2004: Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930 (HEAM 223)
Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies (Modern Language Association of America)
2023: Honorable Mention: Brian Hurley, Confluence and Conflict: Reading Transwar Japanese Literature and Thought (HEAM 450)
Bei Shan Tang Monograph Prize for Chinese art history (Association for Asian Studies)
2024: Juliane Noth, Transmedial Landscapes and Modern Chinese Painting (HEAM 446)
Best First Book in the History of Religions (American Academy of Religion)
2022: Adam Lyons (co-winner), Karma and Punishment: Prison Chaplaincy in Japan (HEAM 443)
Anna Balakian Prize for the best book in comparative literature (International Comparative Literature Association) in 2007–10
2010: Karen Thornber, Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (HYI 67)
Charles Rufus Morey Book Award for an especially distinguished book in the history of art (College Art Association)
2017: Finalist: Elizabeth Kindall, Geo-Narratives of a Filial Son (HEAM 389)
European Association for Japanese Studies Book Award
2011: Second Prize: Christopher Gerteis, Gender Struggles: Wage-Earning Women and Male-Dominated Unions in Postwar Japan (HEAM 321)
Euroseas Humanities Book Prize (Euroseas) shortlist
2021: Claudine Ang, Poetic Transformation, Eighteenth-Century Cultural Projects on the Mekong Plains (HEAM 419)
First Book Prize (Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities)
2020: Janet Borland, Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo (HEAM 434)
First Book Prize for the most innovative book in planning history written in English (International Planning History Society)
2020: Hou Li, Building for Oil: Daqing and the Formation of the Chinese Socialist State (HYI 110)
Francis Hsu Book Prize for East Asian Anthropology (American Anthropological Association)
2010: Catherine Clayton, Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau and the Question of Chineseness (HEAM 324)
Franklin R. Buchanan Prize for Asia Curriculum Materials (Association of Asian Studies)
2019: Michael A. Fuller, An Introduction to Chinese Poetry: From the Canon of Poetry to the Lyrics of the Song Dynasty (HEAM 408)
Gaddis Smith International Book Prize for best first book by a Yale ladder faculty member
2022: Lucas Rambo Bender, Du Fu Transforms: Tradition and Ethics amid Societal Collapse (HYI 126)
Global and Transnational Sociology Best Publication (Book) by an International Scholar Award (American Sociological Association)
2023: Wu Jieh-min, Rival Partners: How Taiwanese Entrepreneurs and Guangdong Officials Forged the China Development Model (HYI 133)
Grace Abbott Book Prize (The Society of the History of Children and Youth)
2020: Janet Borland, Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo (HEAM 434)
Hagley Prize in Business History
2023: Finalist: John Wong, Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s–1998 (HEAM 454)
Harry Levin Book Prize for the best first book in comparative literature (ACLA)
2016: Tamara Chin, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (HYI 94)
ICAS Book Prizes (International Convention for Asia Scholars)
2023: Simon Avenell, Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (HEAM 451) (long list, Social Sciences)
2023: Eyck Freymann, One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World (HEAM 439) (long list, Social Sciences)
2019: Pu Wang, The Translatability of Revolution: Guo Moruo and Twentieth-Century Chinese Culture (HEAM 415) (long list, Humanities)
2017: Seth Jacobowitz, Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture (HEAM 387) (winner, best Humanities book on Asia published in 2015 or 2016)
2017: Ellen Widmer, Fiction’s Family. Zhan Xi, Zhan Kai, and the Business of Women in Late-Qing China (HYI 99) (short list, Social Sciences)
2017: Tamara Chin, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (HYI 94) (long list, Humanities, and winner, “Ground-Breaking Subject Matter Accolade”)
2017: Sunyoung Park, The Proletarian Wave. Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (HEAM 374) (long list, Humanities, and winner, “Most Accessible and Captivating Work for the Non-Specialist Reader Accolade”)
2015: Beverly Bossler, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity (HYI 83) (short list, Humanities)
2011: Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (HEAM 322) (short list)
2011: Jacob Eyferth, Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: The Social History of a Community of Artisans in Southwest China, 1920–2000 (HEAM 314) (long list)
2009: Hilde De Weerdt, Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127-1279) (HEAM 289) (short list)
James B. Palais Prize for books in Korean Studies (Association for Asian Studies)
2020: Yoon Sun Yang, From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men: Translating the Individual in Early Modern Korea (HEAM 405)
2020: Honorable Mention: Hwansoo Ilmee Kim, The Korean Buddhist Empire: A Transnational History, 1910–1945 (HEAM 416)
2014: Honorable Mention: Hwansoo Kim, Empire of the Dharma: Korean and Japanese Buddhism, 1877–1912 (HEAM 344)
2010: Sem Vermeersch, The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryo Dynasty, 918–1392 (HEAM 303)
James Henry Breasted Prize for best book in any field of history prior to CE 1000 (American Historical Association)
2015: Nicolas Tackett, The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy (HYI 93)
John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asia History (American Historical Association)
2013: Barbara Mittler, A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture (HEAM 343)
2012: Jun Uchida, Brokers of Empire: Japanese Settler Colonialism in Korea, 1876-1945 (HEAM 337)
2004: Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930 (HEAM 223)
John Whitney Hall Prize for books in Japanese Studies (Association for Asian Studies)
2021: Honorable Mention: Kirsten Ziomek, Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples (HEAM 418)
2020, Honorable Mention: Maren Ehlers, Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (HEAM 413)
2011: Karen Thornber, Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature (HYI 67)
2005: Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880–1930 (HEAM 223)
Joseph Levenson Prize for books in Chinese Studies (Association for Asian Studies)
2024, Pre-1900 Category, Honorable Mention: Lawrence Zhang, Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China (HEAM 456)
2022, Pre-1900 Category: Robert Ford Campany, The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE – 800 CE (HYI 122)
2021, Pre-1900 Category: Stephen Owen, Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (HYI 114)
2017, Pre-1900 Category: Ping Foong, The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court (HEAM 372)
2017, Pre-1900 Category, Honorable Mention: Anna Shields, One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China (HYI 96)
2016, Pre-1900 Category: Li Wai-yee, Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature (HYI 92)
2016, Pre-1900 Category, Honorable Mention: Chin, Tamara, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (HYI 94)
2015, Pre-1900 Category: Yuming He, Home and the World: Editing the “Glorious Ming” in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (HYI 82)
2013, Pre-1900 Category, Honorable Mention: K.E. Brashier, Ancestral Memory in Early China (HYI 72)
2012, Pre-1900 Category: Christopher M. B. Nugent, Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China (HYI 70)
2011, Pre-1900 Category: Eugenio Menegon, Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (HYI 69)
2011, Post-1900 Category: Jacob Eyferth, Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: The Social History of a Community of Artisans in Southwest China, 1920–2000 (HEAM 314)
2008 Pre-1900 Category: Martin J. Powers, Pattern and Person: Ornament, Society, and Self in Classical China (HEAM 262)
2006 Pre-1900 Category: Antonia Mary Finnane, Speaking of Yangzhou: A Chinese City, 1550–1850 (HEAM 236)
2005 Pre-1900 Category: John Makeham, Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects (HEAM 228)
2003 Pre-1900 Category: David Schaberg, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (HEAM 205)
Lionel Trilling Book Award (Columbia University)
2011: David B. Lurie, Realms of Literacy: Early Japan and the History of Writing (HEAM 335)
Modern Japan History Association Book Prize
2024: Finalist: Brian Hurley, Confluence and Conflict: Reading Transwar Japanese Literature and Thought (HEAM 450)
NSW Premier’s History Awards (The State Library of New South Wales)
2021, Shortlist, General History Prize: Janet Borland, Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo (HEAM 434)
Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Academia Sinica)
2017: Wei-Ping Lin, Materializing Magic Power: Chinese Popular Religion in Villages and Cities (HYI 97)
Stanislaus Julian Prize (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres)
2022: Robert Ford Campany, The Chinese Dreamscape, 300 BCE – 800 CE (HYI 122)
2021: Stephen Owen, Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (HYI 114)
2017: Terry Kleeman, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities (HYI 102)
2014: Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual, Third Edition (HYI 84)
2010: James Robson, Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue 南嶽) in Medieval China (HEAM 316)
Toshida Numata Book Prize in Buddhism (University of California, Berkeley)
2010: James Robson, Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue 南嶽) in Medieval China (HEAM 316)