Past Prize Winners

Past Winners

2018 – Alvaro Jarrin. Biopolitics of Beauty

2019 – Tortorici, Zeb.  Sins Against Nature, Sex and Archive in Colonial New Spain.  Durham NC:
Duke University Press, 2018.

Honorable Mentions

2018 – Mallory E. Matsumoto. Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos: “The Title and Proof of Our Ancestors”  

2019 – Sutton, Barbara. Surviving State Terror, Women’s Testimonies of Repression and Resistance in
Argentina. New York: New York University Press, 2018.

Joseph T. Criscenti Best Article Prize

Past Winners

2019 – Pugh, Jeffrey D. “Negotiating Identity and Belonging Through the Invisibility Bargain:
Colombian Forced Migrants in Ecuador”. IMR (International Migration Review) Volume 52
Number 4 (Winter 2018): 978–1010

Honorable Mentions

NECLAS Best Dissertation Prize

Past Winners

2019 – Co-Winners:

Rachel Nolan’s dissertation entitled, Children for Export, is engaging and well-researched assessment of Guatemala’s international adoption policy. Her work re-orients our understanding of international adoptions and civil war/state terror in Guatemala. Her thesis also contributes theoretically to multiple bodies of literature, and makes use of groundbreaking access to adoption war -time records. In addition to her theoretical contributions and methodological innovation, Nolan’s work is especially relevant for practitioners, adoptees, and adopted families.

The dissertation of Santiago Muñoz Arbeláez, The New Kingdom of Granada’s, examines critically the construction and consolidation of the New Kingdom of Granada. His work deconstructs the myth of empire-making, and is an important contribution to a “history from below.” His analyses also deepen our understanding of a region that previously had been given too little attention regarding the process of conquest and colonization. Impressive also, is the breadth of his archival work as well as his utilization of diverse documents and artifacts, including textiles, maps, and image, as he engages archaeology and art history as well as more traditional history scholarship.

Honorable Mentions

Other Honorable Mentions

Matsumoto, Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos: “The Title and Proof of Our Ancestors”

Mallory E. Matsumoto’s Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos: “The Title and Proof of Our Ancestors” makes significant interdisciplinary contributions on several levels for Latin Americanists and for Maya scholars as well. Matsumoto’s accomplishment has expanded the world of scholarly and activist discussion/debate concerning both colonial Guatemala and the current Maya rights movements. Matsumoto provides those who read English but not K’iche’ Mayan with direct and full transliteration, facsimiles, transcription and direct translation of five colonial documents, the Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos of the book’s title, as well as morphological analyses of four of the documents. She clarifies that the five are actually three títulos and two título summaries, and versions of four were published in Spanish translation many decades ago. But the older Spanish translations lack her supporting and thorough linguistic framing and analysis. At another level of interdisciplinary contribution, the book opens with Matsumoto’s complex (and well-written) socio-historical contextual information for the documents. Finally, these documents include a contemporary description – and perhaps the only surviving description–of Tecun Uman, the powerful Maya ruler of the invasion period, a person that some seeking to undermine Maya citizenship and agency argue never existed. The títulos have considerable significance for the writing of progressive, inclusive Maya histories.