Joseph Levenson Book Prize

Joseph Levenson Book Prize is awarded each year in memory of Joseph R. Levenson by the Association for Asian Studies to two English-language books, one whose main focus is on China before 1900 and the other for works on post-1900 China. According to the association, the prize criteria is whether the book is "the greatest contribution to increasing understanding of the history, culture, society, politics, or economy of China." While the association does not limit the discipline or period of the work, it won't consider anthologies, edited works, and pamphlets. Based on the scholarly interests of Levenson, the association gives special consideration to books that "promote the relevance of scholarship on China to the wider world of intellectual discourse."^[1]

Other prizes awarded by the AAS include the John Whitney Hall Book Prize for works on Japan, and other prizes for books on China include John K. Fairbank Prize given by the American Historical Association.

List of awards

Year	Category	Recipient	Titles	Publisher
1987	Pre-20th	Frederic Wakeman Jr.	The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth Century China	University of California 1985
1987	20th	Andrew J. Nathan	Chinese Democracy	Alfred A. Knopf, 1985
1988	Pre-20th	Robert P. Hymes	Statesmen and Gentlemen : the Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung	Cambridge University 1986
1988	20th	Andrew G. Walder	Communist Neo-traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry	University of California 1986
1989	Pre-20th	Andrew H. Plaks	The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel = Ssu Ta Ch'i-shu	Princeton University 1987
1989	20th	Joseph W. Esherick	The Origins of the Boxer Uprising	University of California 1987
1989	Honorable Mention, Pre-20th	R. Kent Guy	The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch'ien-lung Era	Harvard University 1987
1990	Pre-20th	Patrick Hanan	The Invention of Li yu	Harvard University 1988
1990	20th	Prasenjit Duara	Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942	Stanford University 1988
1990	Honorable mention, pre-20th	Jerry Norman	Chinese	Cambridge University 1988
1991	Pre-20th	Wu Hung	The Wu Liang Shrine: the Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art	Stanford University 1989
1991	20th	David Strand	Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s	University of California 1989
1991	Honorable mention, 20th	Melvyn C. Goldstein	A History of Modern Tibet, 1913-1951	University of California 1989
1992	Pre-20th	Philip A. Kuhn	Soulstealers: the Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768	Harvard University 1990
1992	20th	Philip C. Huang	The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988	Stanford University 1990
1993	Pre-20th	Martin J. Powers	Art & Political Exion in Early China	Yale University 1991
1993	20th	Edward Friedman Paul G. Pickowicz, Mark Selden	Chinese Village, Socialist State	Yale University 1991
1994	Pre-20th	Jing Wang	The Story of Stone: Intertextuality, Ancient Chinese Stone Lore, and the Stone Symbolism in Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, and the Journey to the West	Duke University 1992
1994	Pre-20th	Zhang Longxi	The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West	Duke University 1992
1994	20th	Gregor Benton	Mountain Fires: the Red Army's Three-year War in South China, 1934-1938	University of California 1992
1995	Pre-20th	Patricia Buckley Ebrey	The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period	University of California 1993
1995	20th	Vaclav Smil	China's Environmental Crisis: an Inquiry into the Limits of National Development	M. E. Sharpe, 1993
1996	20th	Julia Frances Andrews	Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979	University of California 1994
1997	Pre-20th	James L. Hevia	Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793	Duke University 1995
1997	20th	R. Keith Schoppa	Blood Road: the Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China	University of California 1995
1998	Pre-20th	Maggie Bickford	Ink Plum: the Making of a Chinese Scholar-painting Genre	Cambridge University 1996
1998	20th	John Fitzgerald	Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution	Stanford University 1996
1999	Pre-20th	Susan Mann	Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century	Stanford 1997
1999	20th	Roderick MacFarquhar	The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 3: the Coming of the Cataclysm 1961-1966	Columbia University 1997
2000	Pre-20th	Timothy Brook	The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China	University of California 1998
2000	20th	Lynn T. White, III	Unstately Power, Vol. II: Local Causes of China's Intellectual, Legal, and Governmental Reforms	M. E. Sharpe, 1998
2001	Pre-20th	Pamela Kyle Crossley	A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology	University of California 1999
2001	20th	Dorothy J. Solinger	Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market	University of California 1999
2002	Pre-1900	Lothar Ledderose	Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art	Princeton University 2000
2002	Post-1900	Edward J. M. Rhoads	Manchus & Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928	University of Washington 2000
2003	Pre-1900	David Schaberg	A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography	Harvard University Asia Center, 2001
2003	Post-1900	Lucien Bianco	Peasants Without the Party: Grass-root Movements in 20th-century China	M.E. Sharpe, 2001
2004	Pre-1900	Robert P. Hymes	Way and Byway: Taoism, Local Religion, and Models of Divinity in Sung and Modern China	University of California 2002
2004	Post-1900	Geremie Barmé	An Artistic Exile: a Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975)	University of California 2002
2005	Pre-1900	John Makeham	Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects	Harvard University Asia Center, 2003
2005	Post 1900	Yunxiang Yan	Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999	Stanford University 2003
2006	Pre-1900	Antonia Finnane	Speaking of Yangzhou: a Chinese City, 1550-1850	Harvard University Asia Center, 2004
2006	Post-1900	Ruth Rogaski	Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-port China	University of California 2004
2007	Pre-1900	Peter C. Perdue	China Marches West: the Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia	Harvard University 2005
2007	Post 1900	Michael Dutton	Policing Chinese Politics: a History	Duke University 2005
2008	Pre-1900	Martin J. Powers	Pattern and Person: Ornament, Society, and Self in Classical China	Harvard University Asia Center, 2006
2008	Post-1900	Sherman Cochran	Chinese Medicine Men: Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia	Harvard University 2006
2009	Pre-1900	Anthony J. Barbieri-Low	Artisans in Early Imperial China	University of Washington 2007
2009	Post-1900	Haiyan Lee	Revolution of the Heart: a Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950	Stanford University 2007
2010	Pre-1900	Robert E. Harrist	The Landscape of Words: Stone Inscriptions in Early and Medieval China	University of Washington 2008
2010	Post-1900	Susan Greenhalgh	Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China	University of California 2008
2011	Post-1900	Jacob Eyferth	Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: the Social History of a Community of Artisans in Southwest China, 1920–2000	Harvard University Asia Center, 2009
2011	Pre-1900	Eugenio Menegon	Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China	Harvard University Asia Center, 2009
2012	Post-1900	Yomi Breaster	Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract	Duke University 2010
2012	Pre-1900	Christopher M. B. Nugent	Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China	Harvard University Asia Center, 2010
2013	Pre-1900	Dagmar Schafer	The Crafting of 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth Century China	University of Chicago 2011
2013	Pre-1900 : Honorable Mention:	K. E. Brashier	Ancestral Memory in Early China	Harvard University Asia Center, 2011
2013	Post-1900	Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer	The Religious Question in Modern China	University of Chicago 2011
2014	Pre-1900	Andrea Goldman	Opera and the City: the Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770-1900	Stanford University 2012
2014	Post-1900	Joseph Allen	Taipei: City of Displacements	University of Washington 2012

References

• AAS CIAC Levenson Book Prize Winners Association for Asian Studies official site.
• Book awards: Levenson Prize for Books in Chinese Studies LibraryThing (Accessed March 9, 2015).

Notes

1. AAS Prizes