The Kenneth W. Payne Student Prize is presented each year by the Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA) to a graduate or undergraduate student in acknowledgement of outstanding anthropological work on 1) a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender topic, or 2) a critical interrogation of sexualities and genders more broadly defined.
The Prize includes a cash award in the amount of $500. Submissions are encouraged from graduate or undergraduate students in any of the four fields of anthropology. To be eligible for consideration, work should have been completed while the applicant was still enrolled as a student. Research papers as well as visual media (e.g. documentary film) are eligible for submission for this competition. Papers should be no longer than 40 pages, double-spaced, and typed in 11 or 12 point font; published papers or works accepted for publication will not be accepted for review. Visual media should run no longer than 60 minutes; media projects already under contract for commercial distribution will not be accepted for review.
THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS JUNE 1 each year. Submit an electronic copy of the print submission as a Word (*.doc or *.docx) attachment to payne.prize@gmail.com on or before the indicated deadline. Visual media projects should be available for download from an accessible website; send an email to payne.prize@gmail.com identifying the visual media project and indicating its accessibility. In either case, include with your email message a statement showing your intent to enter the Kenneth W. Payne Prize competition. Include your name, address, department and university, telephone number, and email address in the body of the email; in addition, indicate the stage of your graduate or undergraduate work at the time the submission was developed. You will receive a confirmation email that your submission has been received within a week of its receipt. Please only send duplicate copies or emails if you have not received a response two weeks post-submission.
Submissions will be judged according to the following criteria: use of relevant LGBTQ and/or feminist anthropological theory and literature, potential for contribution to and advancement of LGBTQ studies and our understanding of sexualities worldwide, attention to difference (such as gender, class, race, ethnicity, nation, disability), originality, organization and coherence, and timeliness. The award will be presented to the winner at the AQA Business Meeting during the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association.
Payne Prize Winners
Dennis Ohm (McGill University) “
Architectures of Queer Memory: Alvin Baltrop’s Photographic Archive of the Piers”
Honorable Mention:
Ian Liujia Tian (University of Toronto)
“Surface Breathing: Interstitial Spaces of Queer Activism in China’s Ballroom Scenes”
Febi R. Ramadhan (Northwestern University) “The Tale of a Suffocated Fish: Heteronormativity, Islamic Exegesis, and the Impossibility of Queer Possibilities”
Themal Ellawala (University of Illinois at Chicago)
“The Erotics of Violence: Imagining Alternative Possibilities to/of Queerphobia.”
Guoquan “Tony” Jin (Pomona College)
“The Ambivalent State of Radical Queer Imaginaries: The Chinese State, Identity Politics, and the Queer Private Sphere.”
Honorable Mention:
Alexandria Petit-Thorne (York University)
“Queer Performance in the time of COVID-19: (In)Visibility, Censorship, and ‘Sexual Content’ in Digital Spaces”
Alex Krantzler (University of California Los Angeles)
“‘Speak Like You Don’t Know Hebrew’: Cultivating Queer Registers in Contemporary Israel.”
Honorable Mentions:
Elspeth Davies (University of Cambridge, UK)
“Gender Blind: A Multisensory Account of Gender in the UK.”
Zhiqiu Benson Zhou (Northwestern University)
“The Myth of ‘More 0s than 1s’: Masculine Obsession and Anxiety in Chinese Gay Communities.”
Clara Beccaro (Columbia University/New School)
“Liberté, Égalité, Réfugiés: LGBTQIA+ Asylum Seekers and France’s Category of Worthiness.”
Honorable Mentions:
Stephen Chao (Princeton University)
“Curating Queer of Color Utopia in Queer/Trans Asian American Nightlife.”
Zhiqiu Benson Zhou (Northwestern University)
“Beyond Tongzhi and the Instability of Sexual Identities in China.”
Paula Martin (University of Chicago)
“Changing Our Bodies and Changing Our Selves: Bodily Interventions, Youth Futures, and the Possibilities of Gender.”
Honorable Mention:
Alexia Arani (University of California, Irvine)
“Queering Vulnerability, Queering Care: The Affective Politics of Queer Community.”
William Hébert (University of Toronto)
“Prisoners of Paradox: Trans Figures in the Canadian Prison”
Honorable Mentions:
Annie Wilkinson (University of California, Irvine)
“Cleanliness is Holiness: The Transnational Ex-Gay Movement and ‘Dehomosexualization’ in Ecuador”
Danmei (Melanie) Xu (Carleton College)
“Of Exigencies and Erasure: Becoming Lala in Queer Urban China”
Michael Pierson (MAPSS – University of Chicago)
“Viscous Frictions and Vagabond Friendships: Affecting Public Intimacy at Salonathon”
2015
Shunyuan Zhang (Emory University)
“Debris and Desire: Negotiating Erotic Spaces in Kunming, China”
Honorable Mention:
Erin L. Durban (University of Arizona)
“The Sexual Politics of Rescue: The Global LGBTQI and Postcolonial Homophobia after the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti”
2013
Brandon Davis (Princeton University)
“Desiring Israel: Gays, Jews and Homonationalism”
Honorable Mentions:
Janelle Lamoreaux (University of California San Francisco/Berkeley)
“Fishing for Affinity: Genders Benders and Environmental Activism in China”
Jack Dunn (King’s College, University of Cambridge)
“Fields of Masculinity: Imagining Queer Masculinity in Photography”
2012
Natalie Newton (University of California, Irvine)
“Contingent Invisibility: Space, Community, and Invisibility for Les in Saigon”
Honorable Mentions:
Ryan Richard Thoreson (Oxford University)
“On Panics, Pronouns, and Power: Transnational LGBT NGOs as Nodes in Networks of Knowledge”
Jake Silver (Reed College)
“Intimacy and Assemblage: The Commodity of Queerness in Israel and Abroad”
2011
Eric Plemons (University of California-Berkeley)
“Sexing the Face: Of Bones and Other Materials in the Making of Facial Feminization Surgery”
Jia Hui Lee (HarvardUniversity)
“‘Accept them as they are’: Lelaki Lembut as a Category of Effeminacy in Malaysia”
Honorable Mention:
Delwar Hussain (Kings College, Cambridge University)
“‘We Have the Bodies of Men, but the Hearts and Minds of Females’: Sexual Lives and Respectability on the Bangladesh-India Border”
2010
Zethu Matebeni (Witwatersrand Institute for Social and Economic Research)
“It’s all about 50/50: Sex, intimacy and pleasure in black lesbian relationships in Johannesburg.”
Honorable Mentions:
Ben Colburn (Brown University)
“Unfair Standards: Observations on the Production of Political Rifts Within Transgender Communities in the Greater Boston Area.”
Randall Jenson’s (DePaul University)
50 Faggots (documentary film)
2009
Gregory Mitchell (Northwestern University)
“TurboConsumers™ in Paradise: Neoliberalism, Civil Rights, and Brazil’s Gay Sex Tourist Industry”
Honorable Mentions:
Layoung Shin (SUNY Binghamton)
“Becoming ‘Authentic’ Iban within ‘Contagious’ Iban Culture: Young Women’s Same Sex Relationship in South Korea”
Alexis Matza (University of Iowa)
“Maskulinity: The Strategic Use of Gender by Men”
2008
Jennifer L. Chase (UC Irvine)
“The Bird Carried Across: Traditional Families, Modern Sex, and Belonging in Germany”
2007
John Cho (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
“The Wedding Banquet Revisited: ‘Contract Marriages’ Between Korean Gays and Lesbians”
Chris Tan (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
“‘But They are Like You and Me’: Gay Civil Servants and Citizenship in a Cosmopolitanizing Singapore.
Honorable Mention:
Ryan Thoreson (Oxford University)
“Somewhere Over the Rainbow Nation: Gay and Lesbian Rights in South Africa After a Decade of Democracy”
2006
Lucinda Ramberg (UC Berkeley)
“Medicalizing the Sacred Body: Subaltern Religiosity and Postcolonial Reform in South India”
Honorable Mention:
Natasha Sandraya Wilson (University of Iowa)
“Queer Situation: Poverty, Prisons, and Performances of Infidelity and Instability in the New Orleans Lesbian Anthem”
2005
Tomi Castle (University of Iowa)
“Sexualizing Citizenship: Identity Politics and Notions of the ‘Ideal Citizen’ in a Brazilian Lesbian Rights Organization.”
2004
Marcia Ochoa (Stanford University)
“Perverse Citizenship: Divas, Marginality, and Participation in ‘Loca-lization’”
Anthony Petro (University of Chicago)
“The Methodist Church, Progressive Politics, and God’s Love Subjects: Gay and Lesbian Activism in a Chicago Methodist Church”
2003
Sam Bullington (University of Minnesota)
“The Devil’s Deal of Cape Town: Race, Sexulaity, and the Limits of the Nation in Contemporary South Africa”
2002
Alyssa Cymene Howe (University of New Mexico)
“Queers and Televisionaries: The Strategics of Sexuality in Neoliberal Nicaragua”
1999
Lauren Hasten (Columbia University)
“Gender Pretenders: A Drag King Ethnography”
1998
Constance Sullivan-Blum (SUNY Binghamton)
“‘Child Molesters, Murderers, and Republicans’: Accepting Gay and Lesbian People into the ‘Full Life Church’”
1996
Niels Teunis (Northwestern University)
“Homosexuality in Dakar: Is the Bed the Heart of a Sexual Subculture?”
Printed in Journal of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identities 1(2): 153–169.
Peter A. Newman (University of Michigan)
1995
Patrick Larvie (University of Chicago)
1993
Deborah A. Elliston (New York University)
“‘Ritualized Homosexuality’ in Anthropology: Critiquing a Concept, Re-Situating Practice”
1992
Martin F. Manalansan IV (University of Rochester)
“(R)effacing the ‘Gay’ Filipino: Resistance, Postcolonialsim, and Identity”
Robert J. Morris
“Smoking the Image: The Systematic Censoring of Homotextuality from the Canon of ‘Hawaiiana’”
1991
Dwayne C. Turner (UCLA)
“You Can Only Lead If We Follow: Internal Struggle of an AIDS Activist Group”
1990
Carolyn White (University of Wisconsin)
“The Making of History: A Political Process”
1989
Raleigh Watts (University of Washington)
“Gender Variance among Male Polynesians”
1988
Scott Bravman (UC Santa Cruz)
“Anthropology as Politics: Language, Culture and Lesbian/Gay Theorizing”