The Ruth Benedict Prize

For more information about the Association for Queer Anthropology, sponsors of this prize, click here.

2018
Monographs: Ethno-erotic economies : sexuality, money, and belonging in Kenya by George Paul Meiu; honorable mention: Erotic islands : art and activism in the queer Caribbean by Lyndon K. Gill
2017
Monographs: The look of a woman : facial feminization surgery and the aims of trans-medicine by Eric Plemons; honorable mention: Queer Maghrebi French : language, temporalities, transfiliations by Denis M. Provencher
2016
Monographs: Real queer? : sexual orientation and gender identity refugees in the Canadian refugee apparatus by David A. B. Murray; honorable mention: Tourist attractions : performing race and masculinity in Brazil's sexual economy by Gregory Mitchell
Edited Volume: Queer brown voices : personal narratives of Latina/o LGBT activism, edited by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
2015
Monographs: Given to the goddess : South Indian devadasis and the sexuality of religion by Lucinda Ramberg; honorable mention: Under bright lights : gay Manila and the global scene by Bobby Benedicto
Edited Volume: Sex and sexualities in contemporary Indonesia : sexual politics, health, diversity and representation, edited by Linda Rae Bennett and Sharyn Graham Davies
2014
Monographs: After love : queer intimacy and erotic economies in post-soviet Cuba by Noelle M. Stout; Honorable Mention: Queer women in urban China : an ethnography by Elisabeth L. Engebretsen
Edited Volume: Queer excursions : retheorizing binaries in language, gender, and sexuality, edited by Lal Zimman, Jenny Davis, and Joshua Raclaw
2013
Monographs: Queer activism in India : a story in the anthropology of ethics by Naisargi Dave; Honorable mention: Sex in transition : rethinking gender and race in South Africa by Amanda Lock Swarr
Edited Volume: The transgender studies reader 2, edited by Susan Stryker and Aren Aizura
2012
Monographs: Techniques of pleasure : BDSM and the circuits of sexuality by Margot Weiss; Spaces between us : queer settler colonialism and indigenous decolonialization by Scott Lauria Morgensen
Edited Volume: Deviations : a Gayle Rubin reader by Gayle Rubin
2011
Monographs: Falling into the lesbi world : desire and difference in Indonesia by Evelyn Blackwood; Sex panic and the punitive state by Roger N. Lancaster
Edited Volume: Queer Bangkok : 21st century markets, media, and rights by Peter A. Jackson
2010
Monographs: Moving politics : emotion and ACT UP’s fight against AIDS by Deborah Gould; Gay fatherhood : narratives of family and citizenship in America by Ellen Lewin
Edited Volume: Homophobias : lust and loathing across time and space by David A. B. Murray
2009
Monographs: Allah made us : sexual outlaws in an Islamic city by Rudolf Pell Gaudio; out in the country : youth, media, and queer visibility in rural America by Mary L. Gray
Edited Volume: Out in public : reinventing lesbian/gay anthropology in a globalizing world edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap
2008
Monographs: Caribbean pleasure industry : tourism, sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic by Mark Padilla; The archaeology of ethnogenesis :  race and sexuality in colonial San Francisco by Barbara L. Voss
2007
Monographs: Imagining transgender : an ethnography of a category by David Valentine; The politics of passion : women's sexual culture in the Afro-Surinamese diaspora by Gloria Wekker
Edited Volume: Women's sexualities and masculinities in a globalizing Asia, edited by Saskia Wieringa, Evelyn Blackwood, and Abha Bhaiya
2006     Straight to Jesus : sexual and Christian conversions in the ex-gay movement by Tanya Erzen
2005     The gay archipelago : sexuality and nation in Indonesia by Tom Boellstorff
2004
Monograph: Toms and dees : transgender identity and female same-sex relationships in Thailand by Megan Sinnot
Edited Volume: Out in theory : the emergence of lesbian and gay anthropology, edited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap
2003     Global divas : Filipino gay men in the diaspora by Martin F. Manalansan IV
2002     The night is young : sexuality in Mexico in the time of AIDS by Hector Carrillo
2001     The stranger next door : the story of a small community's battle over sex, faith, and civil rights by Arlene Stein
2000
Monographs: Margaret Mead made me gay : personal essays, public ideas by Esther Newton; Homosexualities by Stephen O. Murray
Edited Volume: Archaeologies of sexuality, edited by Barbara L. Voss and Robert A. Schmidt
1999     Female desires : same sex relations and transgender practices across cultures, edited by Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa
1998     Takarazuka : sexual politics and popular culture in modern Japan by Jennifer Robertson
1997
Monograph: Render me, gender me : lesbians talk sex, class, color, nation, studmuffins by Kath Weston; Edited Volume: Two-spirit people : Native American gender identity, sexuality, and spirituality, edited by Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang
1996     Word's out : gay men's English by William L. Leap; Hidden in the blood : a personal investigation of AIDS in the Yucatan by Carter Wilson
1995     De los otros : intimacy and homosexuality among Mexican men by Joseph Carrier
1994     Cherry Grove, Fire Island : sixty years in America's first gay and lesbian town by Esther Newton
1993     Life is hard : machismo, danger, and the intimacy of power in Nicaragua by Roger Lancaster; Boots of leather, slippers of gold : the history of a lesbian community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis
1992     Lesbian mothers : accounts of gender in American culture by Ellen Lewin
1991     Bodies, pleasures, and passions : sexual culture in contemporary Brazil by Richard Parker
1990     Families we choose : lesbians, gays, kinship by Kath Weston; Neither man nor woman : the Hijras of India by Serena Nanda
1987     The Sambia : ritual and gender in New Guinea by Gilbert Herdt
1986     The spirit and the flesh : sexual diversity in American Indian culture by Walter L. Williams