UChicago Students Awarded Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs Prizes

Published on April 3, 2023

The Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs recently announced the winners of prizes for papers written by students that include the Percy Buchanan Graduate Prize for graduate students, and the Sidney DeVere Brown Prize and the Mikiso Hane Prize for undergraduate students.  Three University of Chicago students were awarded including the following:

Percy Buchanan Graduate Prize, East Asia
Stephanie Painter
Paper Title: "What She Had: Property, Work, and the Imperative of Autonomy for Wives in the Qing"

Percy Buchanan Graduate Prize, Northeast Asia
Le Vi Pham 
Paper Title: "Filial Daughters and Disreputable Women: Japanese Geisha, Prostitutes, and the Pleasure Quarter in Colonial Korea, 1880-1930" 

Sidney DeVere Brown Prize and the Mikiso Hane Prize
Yiyang Zhao
Paper Title: "Go and Empire: Hon’inbō Shūsai’s 1935 Tour to Colonial Taiwan" 

The Percy Buchanan prize of $100, includes travel expenses of up to $100, and is awarded for the best original graduate student research papers.  Students have an opportunity to present winning papers at the conference. There is one prize for each of the four main AAS regions: China and Inner Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Graduate paper prize winners also receive a one-year complimentary membership in the Association for Asian Studies, and one of the winners will be nominated to present at the AAS annual conference (usually taking place in late March of that academic year) on the Council of Conferences designated panel. 

The Sidney DeVere Brown Prize, and the Mikiso Hane Prize are awarded to the two best original papers composed by undergraduates. Prizes of $100, plus travel expenses of up to $100, are awarded to the authors of the winning papers. Papers are reviewed by scholars in the appropriate field. Undergraduate winners have the opportunity to publish their papers in The Wittenberg East Asian Studies Journal. 

For more information, click here.