The Kenneth W. Payne Student Prize is presented each year by the Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA) of the American Anthropological Association to a graduate or undergraduate student in acknowledgment of outstanding anthropological work on 1) a lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans* topic, or 2) a critical interrogation of sexualities and genders more broadly defined. 

Seven papers were submitted this year. We believe the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacted this historically low submission volume. Nevertheless, the winner and honorable mention are excellent papers. Submissions were evaluated according to the following criteria: use of relevant L/G/B/T/Q and/or feminist anthropological theory and literature, potential for contribution to and advancement of L/G/B/T/Q studies and our understanding of sexualities worldwide, attention to difference (such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, nation), originality, organization and coherence, and timeliness. 

The 2021 recipient of the Payne Prize: 

Guoquan “Tony” Jin (Pomona College), for the paper “The Ambivalent State of Radical Queer Imaginaries: The Chinese State, Identity Politics, and the Queer Private Sphere.”

The committee is also pleased to award an honorable mention to Alexandria Petit-Thorne (York University) for the paper “Queer Performance in the time of COVID-19: (In)Visibility, Censorship, and ‘Sexual Content’ in Digital Spaces”

Members of the 2021 Payne Prize Committee: Brooke Bocast (Montana State University), John Song Pae Cho (University of British Columbia), Harjant Gill (Towson University), Timothy McCajor Hall (UCLA), Michael Connors Jackman (Universität Wien), Michelle Marzullo [Chair] (California Institute of Integral Studies), and Asli Zengin (Rutgers University).

For additional information, contact the Payne Prize Committee chair, Michelle Marzullo at mmarzullo@ciis.edu