The AAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies represents the highest honor the AAS can bestow.
Originally named the “Award for Distinguished Service,” in 1992 it was renamed the “AAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies.” It is intended to honor outstanding scholarship and service to the field. The award follows the same rotational pattern by area that is used for other nominations. The sitting President (corresponding to the council submitting nominations for the award) traditionally has had the most input in determining the award, which ultimately is approved by the AAS Board.
2021 Honoree: Nancy Abelmann (Posthumous)
The Association for Asian Studies honors the legacy of Nancy Abelmann (1959-2016) with this posthumous award in recognition of her pathbreaking research on Asia, as well as her work on the Asias within the United States. Abelmann served as Harry E. Preble Professor of anthropology, Asian American studies, and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research from 2009-2016.
A very brief mention of her published works demonstrates the breadth of her topics and concerns:
- Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement (University of California Press, 1996),
- The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003),
- with John Lie, Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots (Harvard University Press, 1995), and
- The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation (Duke University Press, 2009).
These works represent not only her zest for ethnographic scholarship, but also her commitment to social justice.
Nancy Abelmann’s professional achievements are many, not the least of which was her intense mentoring and shepherding generations of scholars in the United States, Korea, and elsewhere. In bestowing this award upon her, AAS honors the ways in which she touched people with a spirit of generosity that can best be reflected by the ripple effects of her inspiration. It is this combination of scholarship, personal responsibility, and social justice with a heart that comprise Nancy Abelmann’s distinguished contribution to Asian Studies.
2021 Honoree: Norma M. Field
The Association for Asian Studies honors the contributions of Norma M. Field, the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Professor in Japanese Studies Emerita in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.
Her contributions to the field of Japanese and Asian Studies are extraordinarily wide-ranging and encompass the traditional academic endeavors of research, teaching, and service, as well as a deep commitment to social justice and activism. While her early scholarship centered on classical Japanese literature, she is also an astute critic and translator of modern and contemporary works. In the 1990s Field authored two innovative semi-autobiographical works that provided incisive commentary on key social and political issues of the day.
Field continues to publish articles on literature, culture, and politics in Japanese and in English, in the popular press and in scholarly journals, on a range of topics including the atomic bombings of Japan, nuclear power and weaponry, and the 3/11 disaster and its aftermath. She has shaped the field not only through her published scholarship, but through her deep and lasting impact as a teacher and mentor; outside the classroom, she has brought together academics, activists, teachers, and students to examine critical issues of global concern. In sum, Norma Field offers a model for engaged scholarship which crosses disciplines, methodologies, and geographical boundaries to bring together scholars and citizens in order to recognize the value of lived experience through a humanitarian approach to research.
Previous Honorees
Full citations for honorees from 1998 to 2018 can be read here.
2020: Patricia Buckley Ebrey
2019: Sylvia Jane Vatuk
2018: David Chandler
2017: James L. Huffman
2016: Lyman Van Slyke
2015: Frederick M. Asher
2014: Charnvit Kasetsiri
2013: David Plath
2012: Charlotte Furth
2011: Sumit Sarkar
2010: Anthony J.S. Reid
2009: Martina Deuchler
2008: Zhang Zhongli
2007: John F. Richards
2006: Taufik Abdullah
2005: Edwin McClellan
2004: Cho-Yun Hsu
2003: Romila Thapar
2002: Jane Richardson Hanks
2001: James B. Palais
2000: Ono Kazuko
1999: Eleanor Zelliot
1998: Benedict Anderson
1997: Eleanor Hadley
1996: K. C. Chang
1995: Joseph W. Elder
1994: Lian Tie Kho
1993: Maruyama Masao
1992: Wing-tsit Chan
1991: Edward C. Dimock, Jr.
1990: Oliver William Wolters
1989: Francis B. Tenny
1988: Eugene Wu
1987: Clifford Geertz, John K. Galbraith, Catherine A. Galbraith
1986: Ronald Philip Dore, Maureen L.P. Patterson
1985: Derk Bodde, J. William Fulbright
1984: Milton B. Singer, Francis X. Sutton
Nancy Abelmann
Nancy Abelmann (April 24, 1959 – January, 6, 2016) was an American anthropologist and Harry E. Preble Professor of anthropology, Asian American studies, and East Asian languages and cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[1] where shd also served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Research from 2009-2016, and as Director of the Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies from 2005 to 2008.
Education and Research[edit]
Nancy earned a bachelors degree in East Asian Studies at Harvard University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from University of California, Berkeley.[2] An anthropologist of Korea and of Korean Americans, she studied transnational and urban studies, film studies, Asian studies, Asian American studies, education, and gender studies. Her work, along with John Lie, Kathleen McHugh, Jung-ah Choi and So Jin Park, helped energize and shape Korean studies and Asian American studies over the past two decades.[3]
Nancy was instrumental in the development of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as creating the Ethnography of the University Initiative with Peter Mortensen and Bill Kelleher.
From 2012-2014, she served as the President of the Society for Urban, National, and Transnational Anthropology.
Awards[edit]
- Helen Corley Petit Professorship 1998-99
- 2005 Leeds Prize from the Society of Urban and Transnational Anthropology for The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Class, and Talk in Contemporary South Korea, American Anthropological Association.[4][5]
- 2014 Im Seok-chae Award from the Korean Society for Cultural Anthropology (for best translated book in Korean) for her 2003 monograph, The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Class, and Talk in Contemporary South Korea from University of Hawaii Press.[6]
- Harry E. Preble Professorship 2007-2016
Works[edit]
| Library resources about Nancy Abelmann |
| By Nancy Abelmann |
|---|
- Making Family Work: How Korean American Teens and Parents Navigate Immigrant America (with Sumie Okazaki). NYU Press, 2018.
- South Korea’s Education Exodus: The Life and Times of Early Study Abroad (second editor, with Adrienne Lo, Soo Ah Kwon, and Sumie Okazaki). University of Washington Press, 2017.
- No Alternative?: Experiments in South Korean Education (co-edited with Jung-ah Choi and So Jin Park). Berkeley: Global, Area, and International Archive. University of California Press, 2012.
- The Intimate University: Korean American Students and the Problems of Segregation. Duke University Press, 2009.
- South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema (co-edited with Kathleen McHugh). Wayne State University Press, 2005.
- The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Class, and Talk in Contemporary South Korea. University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Korean translation published in 2014.
- Echoes of the Past, Epics of Dissent: A South Korean Social Movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
- Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots (with John Lie). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
References[edit]
- ^ "Remembering Nancy Abelmann". Berkeley Anthropology. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
- ^ "Remembering Nancy Abelmann". Retrieved 6 December 2019.
- ^ "Nancy Abelmann". The News Gazette. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
- ^ "Recipients of the Leeds Award, 1995-2017". Society for Urban, National, and Transnational/Global Anthropology. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
- ^ Kim, Eleana; Song, Jesook (2018). "Introduction: Reflections on Nancy Abelmann's Legacy". The Journal of Asian Studies. 77 (4): 945–952. doi:10.1017/S0021911818000967.
- ^ "Congratulations to Nancy Abelmann (The Im Seok Chae Award for 2014)". Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies. Retrieved 6 December 2019.
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