James B. Palais Book Prize
The James B. Palais Prize of the Association for Asian Studies was initiated by the Palais Prize committee headed by AAS President Robert Buswell in 2008-09. The Palais Prize is given annually to an outstanding scholar of Korean studies from any discipline or country specialization to recognize distinguished scholarly work on Korea.
2025 Prize
The Palais Prize carries a $1,000 cash award.
Guidelines for Submission
- There are no citizenship or residence requirements for nominees.
- Authors need not be AAS members.
- Any original, scholarly, nonfiction work with a copyright date of 2022 or 2023 is eligible for the 2025 Palais Prize.
- Reference works, exhibition catalogs, translations, textbooks, collections of previously published essays, poetry, fiction, travel books, memoirs or autobiographies are not eligible.
- Publishers must complete the book nomination form. Each press may nominate a maximum of six books for the Palais Prize.
- Only publishers may nominate books.
- Upon receipt of a completed nomination form, publishers will be provided with addresses for prize committee members. A copy of each entry, clearly labeled “James B. Palais Prize,” must be sent to each member of the committee.
Books published by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc. are ineligible for consideration for prizes administered by the Association for Asian Studies. Employees of the Association are excluded from consideration for AAS book prizes, subventions, and grants. Publishers should check with authors to certify that they are not employed by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.
Deadline
The nomination deadline is June 30, 2024. Nominations will open for submission later in spring 2024.
2025 Palais Prize Committee
Ksenia Chizhova (Chair)
Princeton University
Sungyun Lim
University of Colorado
Eleana Kim
University of California, Irvine
Hwasook Nam
University of Washington
2024 Awards
Winner and Citation
Eleana J. Kim, Making Peace with Nature: Ecological Encounters along the Korean DMZ (Duke University Press)
Eleana Kim’s Making Peace with Nature is an insightful and thought-provoking account of the human-nature relationship that has emerged around the DMZ, an area that the author calls the “infrastructure of division” between the two Koreas. The Palais Prize committee was struck by Kim’s careful theorization of complex issues surrounding the area and her fresh analysis of new connections emerging in it. The book sets forth intriguing and daring propositions about the agency of the environment over state power and diverse human groupings (policy makers, preservationist activists, as well as residents). It challenges readers to think critically about the future of the DMZ beyond our political, epistemological and even ontological conventions.
Honorable Mention
Past Awards
James B. Palais Book Prize
2010 Sem Vermeersch, The Power of the Buddhas: The Politics of Buddhism during the Koryo Dynasty (918-1392)
2011 Hwasook Nam, Building Ships, Building a Nation: Korea’s Democratic Unionism under Park Chung Hee
2012 Eleana J. Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging
2013 Suk-Young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film and Everyday Performance in North Korea
2014 Theodore Hughes, Literature and Film in Cold War South Korea: Freedom’s Frontier
2015 Suzy Kim, Everyday Life in the North Korean Revolution: 1945-1950
2016 Steven Chung, Split Screen Korea: Shin Sang-ok and Postwar Cinema
2017 Jisoo Kim, The Emotions of Justice: Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Choson Korea
2018 Youngju Ryu, Writers of the Winter Republic: Literature and Resistance in Park Chung Hee’s Korea
2019 Eunjung Kim, Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea
2020 Yoon Sun Yang, From Domestic Women to Sensitive Young Men: Translating the Individual in Early Colonial Korea
2021 Monica Kim, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korea War: The Untold History
2022 Heonik Kwon, After the Korean War: An Intimate History
2023 Hwasook Nam, Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea; Honorable Mention, Ksenia Chizhova, Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday