Newsletter: February 2005
Nancy Vuckovic and Janelle S. Taylor, Contributing Editors
2004 SMA Prizes Awarded
Vincanne Adams (UCSF)
The SMA awards were presented at a special ceremony at the SMA meeting at the Canterbury Hotel in San Francisco on November 19, 2004. We sincerely congratulate each of the winners for their success and contributions to the field of Medical Anthropology.
Charles Briggs (UC-San Diego) received the Polgar Prize for his essay entitled: “Why Nation-States and Journalists Can’t Teach People to be Healthy: Power and Pragmatic Miscalculation in Public Discourses on Health.” The Polgar Prize is selected from the articles appearing in a single volume of Medical Anthropology Quarterly. This year it was selected from volume 17 (published in 2003). The Polgar Prize committee included Pamela Erikson (our current MAQ editor), Lorna Rhodes (U Washington), and Peter Guarnaccia (Rutgers).
This year’s winner of the Rivers Undergraduate Prize is Tiffany Star Behringer (U Pennsylvania) for her essay “Changing paradigms of the one-child Policy: Exploring the Cultural Model of Reproduction and Gender Role of Chinese Immigrant Women.” Members of the Rivers Prize committee are: Paul Brodwin (U Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Simon Lee (National Cancer Institute), and Adriana Petryna (Princeton).
The winner of the Hughes Graduate Student Prize this year goes to Benjamin Hickler for his essay “Sexually Violent Predators and the Truth about the Future.” Members of the Hughes Prize committee are: James Pfeiffer (Case Western); Steve Ferzacca (U Luthbridge), and Joao Biehl (Princeton).
The WHR Rivers Undergraduate Student Paper Competition, the Charles Hughes Graduate Student Paper Competition, and the Steven Polgar Professional Paper Competition were created to honor three anthropologists who were pioneers in investigating the relationships between culture, social structure, biology, ecology, and health and illness. The prizes are awarded annually, and winners of the competitions receive cash awards.
The Rivers and Hughes competitions are for student achievements. The Rivers Prize is given for the outstanding paper in medical anthropology written by an undergraduate student. The Hughes Prizes is awarded to the best graduate student paper. We encourage SMA members who have students producing promising work to submit their essays for these competitions.
CAR Book Awards
Janelle Taylor (U Washington)
The Council on Anthropology and Reproduction, an interest group of the Society for Medical Anthropology, is pleased to announce this year's winners of the CAR edited volume prizes. The CAR Most Enduring Edited Collection prize for 2004 goes to Conceiving the New World Order, edited by Faye Ginsburg (NYU) and Rayna Rapp (NYU). Winners of CAR’s Most Notable Recent Edited Collection prize are Margaret Jolly (Australian National U) and Vicki Lukere (Australian National U) for their edited volume entitled, Birthing in the Pacific. The CAR book committee would like to recognize the scholarship and excellence of the edited volumes considered this year for prizes. The book committee would also like to thank all those who submitted recommendation letters, and we hope to receive more recommendation letters for future CAR Edited Collection prizes.
Please send your comments, contributions, news and announcements to the SMA Contributing Editors Nancy Vuckovic (nancy.vuckovic@kpchr.org) or Janelle Taylor (jstaylor@u.washington.edu).