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 criterion 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 or Korea, the James B. Palais Book Prize for works on Korea, and the E. Gene Smith Inner Asia Book Prize, offered biennially, honors outstanding and innovative scholarship across discipline and country of specialization for a book on Inner Asia.
Other prizes for books on China proper, Vietnam, Chinese Central Asia, Mongolia, Manchuria, Korea, or Japan, substantially after 1800 include John K. Fairbank Prize given by the American Historical Association.
| Year | Category | Recipient | Title | Publisher | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Pre-1900 | Frederic Wakeman Jr. | The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Imperial Order in Seventeenth Century China | University of California Press 1985 | |
| Post-1900 | Andrew J. Nathan | Chinese Democracy | Alfred A. Knopf, 1985 | ||
| 1988 | Pre-1900 | Robert P. Hymes | Statesmen and Gentlemen : the Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung | Cambridge University Press 1986 | |
| Post-1900 | Andrew G. Walder | Communist Neo-traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry | University of California Press 1986 | ||
| 1989 | Pre-1900 | Andrew H. Plaks | The Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel = Ssu Ta Ch'i-shu | Princeton University Press 1987 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | R. Kent Guy | The Emperor's Four Treasuries: Scholars and the State in the Late Ch'ien-lung Era | Harvard University Press 1987 | ||
| Post-1900 | Joseph W. Esherick | The Origins of the Boxer Uprising | University of California Press 1987 | ||
| 1990 | Pre-1900 | Patrick Hanan | The Invention of Li yu | Harvard University Press 1988 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Jerry Norman | Chinese | Cambridge University Press 1988 | ||
| Post-1900 | Prasenjit Duara | Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 | Stanford University Press 1988 | ||
| 1991 | Pre-1900 | Wu Hung | The Wu Liang Shrine: the Ideology of Early Chinese Pictorial Art | Stanford University Press 1989 | |
| Post-1900 | David Strand | Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s | University of California Press 1989 | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Melvyn C. Goldstein | A History of Modern Tibet, Volume 1: 1913-1951: The Demise of the Lamaist State | University of California Press 1989 | ||
| 1992 | Pre-1900 | Philip A. Kuhn | Soulstealers: the Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 | Harvard University Press 1990 | |
| Post-1900 | Philip C. Huang | The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 | Stanford University Press 1990 | ||
| 1993 | Pre-1900 | Martin J. Powers | Art & Political Expression in Early China | Yale University Press 1991 | |
| Post-1900 | Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, Mark Selden | Chinese Village, Socialist State | Yale University Press 1991 | ||
| 1994 | Pre-1900 | 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 Press 1992 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Zhang Longxi | The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West | Duke University Press 1992 | ||
| Post-1900 | Gregor Benton | Mountain Fires: the Red Army's Three-year War in South China, 1934-1938 | University of California Press 1992 | ||
| 1995 | Pre-1900 | Patricia Buckley Ebrey | The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period | University of California Press 1993 | |
| Post-1900 | Vaclav Smil | China's Environmental Crisis: an Inquiry into the Limits of National Development | M. E. Sharpe, 1993 | ||
| 1996 | Pre-1900 | Stephen F. Teiser | Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism | University of Hawaii Press 1994 | |
| Post-1900 | Julia Frances Andrews | Painters and Politics in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979 | University of California Press 1994 | ||
| 1997 | Pre-1900 | James L. Hevia | Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy of 1793 | Duke University Press 1995 | |
| Post-1900 | R. Keith Schoppa | Blood Road: the Mystery of Shen Dingyi in Revolutionary China | University of California Press 1995 | ||
| 1998 | Pre-1900 | Maggie Bickford | Ink Plum: the Making of a Chinese Scholar-painting Genre | Cambridge University Press 1996 | |
| Post-1900 | John Fitzgerald | Awakening China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution | Stanford University Press 1996 | ||
| 1999 | Pre-1900 | Susan L. Mann | Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century | Stanford University Press 1997 | |
| Post-1900 | Roderick MacFarquhar | The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 3: the Coming of the Cataclysm 1961-1966 | Columbia University Press 1997 | ||
| 2000 | Pre-1900 | Timothy Brook | University of California Press 1998 | ||
| Post-1900 | Lynn T. White, III | Unstately Power, Vol. II: Local Causes of China's Intellectual, Legal, and Governmental Reforms | M. E. Sharpe, 1998 | ||
| 2001 | Pre-1900 | Pamela Kyle Crossley | A Translucent Mirror: History and Identity in Qing Imperial Ideology | University of California Press 1999 | |
| Post-1900 | Dorothy J. Solinger | Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market | University of California Press 1999 | ||
| 2002 | Pre-1900 | Lothar Ledderose | Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art | Princeton University Press 2000 | |
| Post-1900 | Edward J. M. Rhoads | University of Washington Press 2000 | |||
| 2003 | Pre-1900 | David Schaberg | A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography | Harvard University Asia Center 2001 | |
| 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 Press 2002 | |
| Post-1900 | Geremie Barmé | An Artistic Exile: a Life of Feng Zikai (1898-1975) | University of California Press 2002 | ||
| 2005 | Pre-1900 | John Makeham | Transmitters and Creators: Chinese Commentators and Commentaries on the Analects | Harvard University Asia Center 2003 | |
| Post-1900 | Yunxiang Yan | Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 | Stanford University Press 2003 | ||
| 2006 | Pre-1900 | Antonia Finnane | Speaking of Yangzhou: a Chinese City, 1550-1850 | Harvard University Asia Center 2004 | |
| Post-1900 | Ruth Rogaski | Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-port China | University of California Press 2004 | ||
| 2007 | Pre-1900 | Peter C. Perdue | China Marches West: the Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia | Harvard University Press 2005 | |
| Post-1900 | Michael Dutton | Policing Chinese Politics: a History | Duke University Press 2005 | ||
| 2008 | Pre-1900 | Martin J. Powers | Pattern and Person: Ornament, Society, and Self in Classical China | Harvard University Asia Center 2006 | |
| Post-1900 | Sherman Cochran | Chinese Medicine Men: Consumer Culture in China and Southeast Asia | Harvard University Press 2006 | ||
| 2009 | Pre-1900 | Anthony J. Barbieri-Low | Artisans in Early Imperial China | University of Washington Press 2007 | |
| Post-1900 | Haiyan Lee | Revolution of the Heart: a Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 | Stanford University Press 2007 | ||
| 2010 | Pre-1900 | Robert E. Harrist | The Landscape of Words: Stone Inscriptions in Early and Medieval China | University of Washington Press 2008 | |
| Post-1900 | Susan Greenhalgh | Just One Child: Science and Policy in Deng's China | University of California Press 2008 | ||
| 2011 | Pre-1900 | Eugenio Menegon | Ancestors, Virgins and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China | Harvard University Asia Center 2009 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Robert Ford Campany | Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China | University of Hawaii Press 2009 | ||
| 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 | ||
| 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 | |
| Post-1900 | Yomi Braester | Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract | Duke University Press 2010 | ||
| 2013 | Pre-1900 | Dagmar Schäfer | The Crafting of 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth Century China | University of Chicago Press 2011 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | K. E. Brashier | Ancestral Memory in Early China | Harvard University Asia Center 2011 | ||
| Post-1900 | Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer | The Religious Question in Modern China | University of Chicago Press 2011 | ||
| 2014 | Pre-1900 | Andrea Goldman | Opera and the City: the Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770-1900 | Stanford University Press 2012 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Scott B. Cook | The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation (2 volumes) | Cornell East Asia Series 2012 | ||
| Post-1900 | Joseph Allen | Taipei: City of Displacements | University of Washington Press 2012 | ||
| 2015 | Pre-1900 | Yuming He | Home and the World: Editing the “Glorious Ming” in Woodblock-Printed Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries | Harvard University Asia Center 2013 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Matthais L. Richter | The Embodied Text: Establishing Textual Identity in Early Chinese Manuscripts | E J Brill 2013 | ||
| Post-1900 | Winnie Won Yin Wong | Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade | University of Chicago Press 2013 | ||
| 2016 | Pre-1900 | Wai-yee Li | Women and National Trauma in Late Imperial Chinese Literature | Harvard University Asia Center 2014 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Tamara Chin | Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination | Harvard University Asia Center 2014 | ||
| Post-1900 | Luigi Tomba | The Government Next Door: Neighborhood Politics in Urban China | Cornell University Press 2014 | ||
| 2017 | Pre-1900 | Foong Ping | The Efficacious Landscape: On the Authorities of Painting at the Northern Song Court | Harvard University Asia Center 2015 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Anna Shields | One Who Knows Me: Friendship and Literary Culture in Mid-Tang China | Harvard University Asia Center 2015 | ||
| Post-1900 | Christopher Rea | The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China | University of California Press 2015 | ||
| 2018 | Pre-1900 | Li Chen | Chinese Law in Imperial Eyes: Sovereignty, Justice, and Transcultural Politics | Columbia University Press 2016 | |
| Post-1900 | Sigrid Schmalzer | Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China | University of Chicago Press 2016 | ||
| 2019 | Pre-1900 | Jonathan Schlesinger | A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule | Stanford University Press 2017 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Craig Clunas | Chinese Painting and Its Audiences | Princeton University Press 2017 | ||
| Post-1900 | Ching Kwan Lee | The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa | University of Chicago Press 2017 | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Thomas Mullaney | The Chinese Typewriter: A History | MIT Press 2017 | ||
| 2020 | Pre-1900 | Lara Blanchard | Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry | E J Brill 2018 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Ori Sela | China's Philological Turn: Scholars, Textualism, and the Dao in the 18th Century | Columbia University Press 2018 | ||
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Wen-shing Chou | Mount Wutai: Visions of a Sacred Buddhist Mountain | Princeton University Press 2018 | ||
| Post-1900 | Sasha Welland | Experimental Beijing: Gender and Globalization in Chinese Contemporary Art | Duke University Press 2018 | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Gao Hua (trans. by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian) | How the Red Sun Rose: The Origin and Development of the Yan'an Rectification Movement, 1930–1945 | The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press 2018 | ||
| 2021 | Pre-1900 | Stephen Owen | Just a Song: Chinese Lyrics from the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries | Harvard University Asia Center 2019 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Macabe Keliher | The Board of Rites and the Making of Qing China | University of California Press 2019 | ||
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Charles Sanft | Literate Community in Early Imperial China: The Northwestern Frontier in Han Times | State University of New York Press 2019 | ||
| Post-1900 | Joel Andreas | Disenfranchised: The Rise and Fall of Industrial Citizenship in China | Oxford University Press 2019 | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Yurou Zhong | Chinese Grammatology: Script Revolution and Literary Modernity, 1916–1958 | Columbia University Press 2019 | ||
| 2022 | Pre-1900 | Robert Ford Campany | The Chinese Dreamscape 300BCE-800CE | Harvard University Asia Center 2020 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | He Bian | Know Your Remedies: Pharmacy and Culture in Early Modern China | Princeton University Press 2020 | ||
| Post-1900 | Silvia M. Lindtner | Prototype Nation: China and the Contested Promise of Innovation | Princeton University Press 2020 | ||
| 2023 | Pre-1900 | Ruth Mostern | The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History | Yale University Press 2021 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Tao Jiang | Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China | Oxford University Press 2021 | ||
| Post-1900 | Joshua Goldstein | Remains of the Everyday: A Century of Recycling in Beijing | University of California Press 2021 | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Nicole Willock | Lineages of the Literary | Columbia University Press 2021 | ||
| 2024 | Pre-1900 | Susan Naquin | Gods of Mount Tai: Familiarity and the Material Culture of North China, 1000-2000 | Princeton University Press 2022 | |
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Christian de Pee | Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800–1100 | Amsterdam University Press 2022 | ||
| Pre-1900, Honorable Mention | Lawrence Zhang | Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China | Harvard University Asia Center 2022 | ||
| Post-1900 | Ho-fung Hung | City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule | Cambridge University Press | ||
| Post-1900, Honorable Mention | Joseph Esherick | Accidental Holy Land: The Communist Revolution in Northwest China | University of California Press |