2018 SMA Award Recipients

Award Committee

Each year, the SMA hosts a Business Meeting and Awards Ceremony at the AAA Annual Meetings to honor the winners of SMA and SIG prizes. Below is a list of this past year’s awardees.

The Career Achievement Awardgiven in even numbered years, honors senior scholars who have made significant contributions to the field of medical anthropology throughout their career, evident in theoretical and methodological contributions, and who communicate the relevance of the field to broader publics. SMA was pleased to award this to Joan Ablon (University of California, San Francisco, Professor Emerita).

The Eileen Basker Memorial Prize is awarded annually for a significant contribution in research on gender and health (to scholars from any discipline or nation) for a book, article, film or PhD within the preceding three years. The 2018 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize was awarded to Anita Hannig (Brandeis University) for her book Beyond Surgery: Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital(University of Chicago Press, 2017). An honorable mention was also awarded to Carolyn Sufrin (Johns Hopkins University) for her book Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women behind Bars (University of California Press, 2017).

The Steven Polgar Professional Paper Prize is awarded to a medical anthropologist for the best paper published in the SMA’s journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly (MAQ). The 2018 recipient is Andrew McDowell (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/French National Centre for Scientific Research) for his paper “Mohit’s Pharmakon: Symptom, Rotational Bodies, and Pharmaceuticals in Rural Rajasthan” in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 31(3): 332–348.

The Charles Hughes Graduate Student Paper Prize is awarded in even years and granted to the best graduate paper submission in medical anthropology. The 2018 award went to Laura Meek(University of California, Davis) for her paper, “The Grammar of Leprosy: Temporal Politics & An Impossible Subject.” In addition, an honorable mention was awarded to Utpal Sandesara (University of Pennsylvania) for his paper, “Biopolitical Melodrama: Victimhood, Villainy, and Heroism in Indian Efforts against Sex Selection.”

The MASA Graduate Student Mentorship Award is given annually to a senior or mid-career scholar and honors career-long excellence in graduate student teaching and mentoring, especially during the phases of MA and PhD fieldwork and thesis or dissertation writing. The 2018 prize was awarded to the late Joan Stevenson (Western Washington University). Her husband accepted the award on her behalf at the SMA Business Meeting.

The Contingent Faculty Award is a new award from SMA to support underemployed, non-student SMA members who have had abstracts accepted and will be presenting papers or posters at the annual meeting of the AAA. The purpose of this award is to assist SMA members facing challenges to travel to the AAA meeting and to raise awareness regarding the challenges faced by underemployed peers. The 2018 recipients were Kasey Jernigan and Emily Metzner.

Student Travel Awards to AAA Meetings
The 2018 travel awards were given to six students, which enabled them to present the following papers at the AAA meeting in San Jose, California.

Undergraduate Award:

  • McCall Bromelkamp (Creighton University) for “Community Health in the Campos: Exploring Findings from a Community Assessment in the Dominican Republic”

Graduate Awards:

  • Chelsey Carter (Washington University in St. Louis) for “More Than Analytic? Considering the Intersections of Race and Class in the Lived Experiences of People with ALS”
  • Rebecca Henderson (University of Florida) for “How Much is Too Much: Moral Demarcations of Pathology in Hoarding Disorder”
  • Raphaëlle Rabanes (University of California, Berkeley) for “Writing a-diagnostically: The Politics of Refusal in Postcolonial Rehabilitation Ethnography”
  • Bonnie Ruder (Oregon State University) for “Flying White Doctors and Temporary Obstetric Fistula Surgical Camps: The Allure and Consequences of the Quick-Fix”
  • Aalyia Feroz Ali Sadruddin (Yale University) for “What Happens After I Become a ‘Man’? End of Life Aspirations, Personhood, and Masculinities in Rwanda”

SMA Special Interest Groups (SIGS) also grant a range of awards. The 2018 prizes were awarded as follows:

AIDS and Anthropology Research Group (AARG) Moher Downing Distinguished Service Award
AARG is pleased to award Patricia Whelehan (State University of New York College at Potsdam) the 2018 Moher Downing Distinguished Service award in honor of her tireless efforts to advocate both for those living with HIV and for anthropological research on HIV. Since the emergence of HIV and AIDS, Professor Whelehan’s career has been dedicated to prevention and mitigation of HIV/AIDS in her community and beyond, through her research and advocacy. Within the discipline, Dr. Whelehan made substantial contributions in the field of human sexuality, including the publication of her 2009 book, Human Sexuality: Biological, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives, co-authored with Ann Bolin, which advocated for the importance of understanding sexuality as part of the effort to fight HIV/AIDS. She organized panels at conferences and encouraged graduate students to pursue the study of HIV/AIDS and human sexuality. Outside of the academy, she made substantial contributions to HIV/AIDS prevention on her campus and worked with local AIDS organizations. This engagement is particularly notable given her early involvement, when little was understood about HIV/AIDS & many did not engage due to ignorance or fear.

The Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) and Integrative Medicine (IM) Graduate Student Paper Prize
Recipient: Jane Saffitz (University of California, Davis)
Paper Title: “The Work of Good Fortune”

Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Study Group (ADTSG) 2018 Graduate Student Paper Prize 
Recipient: Sydney Silverstein (Wright State University)
Paper Title: “A Second Chance: Re-enactment, Excess Meaning, and the Social Worlds of PBC in Iquitos”

Alcohol, Drugs, and Tabacco Study Group (ADTSG) 2018 Graduate Student Travel Award
Recipient: Richard Karl Deang (University of Virginia)
Paper Title: “Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitical Ontologies: HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis and the Anti-Drug War in the Philippines”

Disability Research Interest Group (DRIG) Travel Awards
Recipient: Cara Ryan (New York University)
Paper Title: “Interdependence Among Autistic Adults: Rethinking the ‘Challenges of Care'”Recipient: Jane Saffitz (University of California, Davis)

Paper Title: “Occulting Care and the Violence of Humanitarianism Among People with Albinism in Tanzania”

Dying and Bereavement Special Interest Group Doctoral Student Paper Award
Recipient: Ji Yea Hong (The University of Chicago)
Paper Title: “The Diaspora of Death and the Viapolitics of Dwelling: Coffins, Houses, and Personhood in a Na Society

Dying and Bereavement Special Interest Group Emerging Scholar Paper Award
Recipient: Shannon Blanch (University of Otago)
Paper Title: “The Good, Dead (Digital) Citizen: Responsibilisation and Deathmanagement Websites”

Critical Anthropology of Global Health (CAGH) Study Group Rudolf Virchow Award
Professional Category: Thurka Sangaramoorthy (University of Maryland, College Park)
Paper Title: “Putting Bandaids on Things That Need Stitches: Immigration and the Landscape of Care in Rural Americans”

Professional Category: Elizabeth Roberts (University of Michigan)
Paper Title: “What Gets Inside: Violent Entanglements and Toxic Boundaries in Mexico City”

Graduate Student CategoryRaphael Frankfurter (UCSF, UC Berkeley)
Paper Title: “Conjuring Biosecurity in the Post-Ebola Kissi Triangle: The Magic of Paperwork in a Frontier Clinic”

Undergraduate Student Category: Sabine Shaughnessy (Barnard College)
Paper Title: “Reproductive Rationalities and Realities of Havana, Cuba during the Post-Fidel Transition”

Council on Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR) Graduate Student Paper Prize
Recipient: Charlotte Waltz (Utrecht University)
Paper Title: “Moral Regimes and Public Discourses: Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Activism in Cork, Ireland”

Council on Anthropology and Reproduction (CAR) 2018 Book Award for an Edited Volume
Recipients: Jennifer Cole (The University of Chicago) and Christian Groes (Roskilde University)
Book: Affective Circuits: African Migrations to Europe and the Pursuit of Social Regeneration (The University of Chicago Press, 2016)