Awards

2023 Awards

2023 Roseberry Nash Graduate Student Award

Winner

Chris Batterman Cháirez (University of Chicago), “Intimidad, incertidumbre, impase: una etnografía de la escucha y el ordinario en el Lago de Pátzcuaro, Michoacán”

Honorable Mention

Alexandra Reichert (Vanderbilt University), “’They Study for Six Years. We Study for Generations:’ Renegotiating Birth, Power, and Interculturalidad in the Ecuadorian Amazon”

2023 Graduate Student Award in Applied and Public Anthropology

Winner

Alana Ackerman (University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign) “Resettlement Denied: Persecution, Refuge, and the Violent Entrapment of Colombian Refugees in Quito, Ecuador”

Honorable Mention

Chris Batterman Cháirez (University of Chicago), “Archives: Weaving Time and Singing History”

2022 Awards

2022 SLACA Book Prize

Winner

Christopher Krupa (University of Toronto) A Feast of Flowers: Race, Labor, and Postcolonial Capitalism in Ecuador (University of Pennsylvania Press)

Honorable Mentions

Christopher A. Loperena (CUNY Graduate Center) The Ends of Paradise: Race, Extraction, and the Struggle for Black Life in Honduras (Stanford University Press)
Mareike Winchell (London School of Economics and Political Science) After Servitude: Elusive Property and the Ethics of Kinship in Bolivia (University of California Press)

2022 Arthur J. Rubel Book Prize

Winner

Elyse Ona Singer (University of Oklahoma) Lawful Sins: Abortion Rights and Reproductive Governance in Mexico (Stanford University Press)

Honorable Mentions

Irina Carlota (Lotti) Silber (City College of New York) After Stories: Transnational Intimacies of Postwar El Salvador (Stanford University Press)

Levi Vonk (University of Virginia) with Axel Kirschner, Border Hacker: A Tale of Treachery, Trafficking, and Two Friends on the Run (Hachette Book Group)

2022 Roseberry Nash Graduate Student Award

Winner

Anna Kirstine Schirrer (Columbia University) “Ancestral Lands, Ancestral Rights: International Jurisprudence and Collective Property in the Wake of the Plantation”

Honorable Mention

Joshua Mayer (UCLA) “Vigilance for Decolonization? Afro-Indigenous Responses to Dispossession in Nicaragua”

2021 Awards

2021 SLACA Book Prize

Winner

Yana Stainova (McMaster University) Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela (University of Michigan Press)

Honorable Mention

Rebecca C. Bartel (San Diego State University) Card-Carrying Christians: Debt and the Making of Free Market Spirituality in Colombia (University of California Press)

2021 Arthur J. Rubel Book Prize

Winner

M. Bianet Castellanos (University of Minnesota)  Indigenous Dispossession: Housing and Maya Indebtedness in Mexico (Stanford University Press)

Honorable Mention

Tami Navarro (Drew University) Virgin Capital: Race, Gender, and Financialization in the US Virgin Islands (SUNY Press)

2020 Awards

SLACA Book Prize

Winner: Matilde Córdoba Azcárate (UC San Diego), Stuck with Tourism: Space, Power and Labor in Contemporary Yucatán (UC San Diego)

Honorable Mention: Hanna Garth (Princeton University), Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal (Stanford University Press)

Roseberry Nash Graduate Student Award

Winner: Luísa Reis Castro (USC), “Mosquitos in Paradise: The geopolitics of knowledge and more-than-human work in the Northeast of Brazil.

2019 Awards

SLACA Book Prize

Winner: Amy Moran-Thomas (MIT), Traveling with Sugar: Chronicles of a Global Epidemic (University of California Press)Honorable Mention: Robert Samet (Union College), Deadline: Populism and the Press in Venezuela (The University of Chicago Press)

Roseberry Nash Graduate Student Award

Winner: Vladimir Carballo Acuña (Colegio de Michoacán, Mexico), “Tallar las políticas mineras: la indeterminación en el diseño infraestructural de las esmeraldas y de la formalización minera en Colombia”

Honorable Mention: Adela Zhang, (Stanford University), “The Color of Modernity: Aesthetic Populism and Citizen Security Infrastructures in Lima.”

2018 Awards

SLACA Book Prize

Winner: Kathleen M. Millar (Simon Fraser University), Reclaiming the Discarded: Life and Labor in Rio’s Garbage Dump (Duke University Press).

Honorable Mention: Alexander L. Fattal (UC San Diego), Guerrilla Marketing: Counterinsurgency and Capitalism in Colombia (University of Chicago Press).

Roseberry Nash Graduate Student Award

Winner: Daniel Salas (Dalhousie University), “Practices of Double Currency: Value and Politics in Rural Cuba.”

Honorable Mention: Felipe Fernández Lozano (Freie Universität, Berlin) “Diseños para escalar la infraestructura: A propósito de la intervención estatal en el casco urbano de Buenaventura, Colombia.”

Annual SLACA Awards 

The Arthur J. Rubel Book Prize, generously endowed by Carole H. Browner in honor of her late husband recognizes its namesake’s enduring intellectual achievements in research at the intersections of culture, health, and illness. His early training in epidemiology taught him the value of applying systematic techniques to the study of social phenomena; his classic monograph, Susto, A Folk Illness (1984), is an enduring example. From the start, Art’s intellectual commitment was to research that would foster dialogue between medical anthropology and the larger discipline. The Arthur J. Rubel Book Prize will be publicly awarded at the SLACA Annual Business Meeting in November, and the winner will be invited to give an online lecture to the SLACA membership and the public.

The Whiteford Graduate Student Award in Applied and Public Anthropology was created through the enduring support of anthropologists Michael B. and Scott Whiteford and honors their family’s enduring scholarly and financial contributions to anthropological study and applied service in Latin America. The award is bestowed on the best unpublished field research- based paper, from any subfield of anthropology, that explores, engages, and challenges applied anthropology in Latin America, the Caribbean, or among first-generation migrants from these areas. The papers can be written in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. The award is intended to help a graduate student attend the SLACA Spring (bi-annual) meeting and consists of a US $1000 prize. Eligible student must be registered in a graduate program in Latin American, the Caribbean or the United States.

The Roseberry-Nash Student Paper Award honors the work of two distinguished anthropologists, June Nash and the late William Roseberry, for their multiple contributions to the anthropological understanding of Latin America and the Caribbean. The prize consists of US $1,000 and direct consultation with the editor of the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology toward the goal of revising the paper for publication. Papers should draw on relevant anthropological literature and present data from original research in any field of anthropology and can be written in English, Spanish, French or Portuguese. Eligible student must be registered in a graduate program in Latin America, the Caribbean or the United States.

The Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology Annual Book Award recognizes distinguished anthropological work in book form that advances understandings of the Americas in innovative and potentially transformative ways. The prize is restricted to an author’s first book only. To be eligible for consideration a book must be relevant to the field of Latin American and Caribbean anthropology and/or focus on Latin American migrant and diasporic populations. Works should be ethnographies or monographs. Textbooks and anthologies will not be considered, but works of original scholarship by more than one author may be submitted. Works in English, Spanish, and Portuguese will be accepted

Entrants for the book award must hold a current membership in SLACA. Graduate student entrants do not need to be SLACA members but winners are required to register as members before receiving their award.

Past award winners are available in our archives here.