Martin Hatch Prize

The Society for Asian Music (SAM) invites submissions for the 2025 Martin Hatch Prize. The Martin Hatch Prize recognizes the most distinguished student paper presented at the 2024 SEM Annual Meeting on an Asian music or performance topic.

Purpose: To recognize the most distinguished student paper on Asian music and/or performance, demonstrating a deep engagement or penetrating analysis of some aspect of Asian performing arts, both within Asia, broadly conceived, or in Asian diasporic communities.

Eligibility: Any student who presents a formal paper on Asian music or performance at the annual SEM meeting. Students must be pursuing an active degree program or writing a thesis or dissertation and cannot have completed the PhD. Student applicants for the Martin Hatch Prize may also apply for other awards.

Award: The Martin Hatch Prize consists of an award of $200, a 1-year subscription to the journal Asian Music, and automatic consideration of the revised paper for publication in Asian Music, following the standard blind review. In exceptional cases more than one applicant may be awarded the Martin Hatch Prize.

Application process: Papers must be submitted as presented at the meeting, and cannot exceed 12 double-spaced pages. An extra file containing media may supplement the application, although it is not required. Send cover letter/page (with name, address, institution and academic status), paper presentation and media file, if appropriate (via email, dropbox or other electronic method), to R. Anderson Sutton:rasutton@hawaii.edu.

Deadline: November 11, 2024.

The 2025 Martin Hatch Prize recipient will be announced at the SAM membership meeting during the 70th Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

Hatch prize recipients

2024 – Best paper from SEM Ottawa, Canada 2023

Prize: Chaeyoung Lee (Boston University) – "From the Sonic Margin to the Auditory Forefront: A Case Study of the Singing Contest for North Korean Defectors in South Korea."
Honorable Mention: Mark Hsiang-Yu Feng (UC Davis) – "The Intertwinement of Whiteness and Han-Taiwaneseness? The Practice of Samingzhi in Taiwanese Heavy Metal Concerts by ChthoniC."
Honorable Mention: Christina Nikitin (Harvard University) – "Fūzoku Queens: Trans* Migrant Sex Performers in Tokyo."

2023 – Best paper from SEM New Orleans 2022

Prize: Srijan Deshpande (Manipal Academy of Higher Education) – "Vocal Timbre and the Gendering of the Hindustani Tradition."

2022 – Best paper from SEM Cyberspace-Atlanta 2021

Prize: Davindar Singh (Harvard University) – "The Drive to Work: Punjabi Truck Songs and the Ethics of ʻdis-Affectedʻ Labor."

2021 – Best paper from SEM Cyberspace-Ottawa 2020

Prize: Jeffrey Dyer (Boston University) – "Popular Songs, Melodies from the Dead: Moving Beyond Historicism with Buddhist Ethics and the Ritual Aesthetics of Pin Peat Music and Cambodian Hip Hop."

2020 – Best paper from SEM Bloomington 2019

Prize: Sonia Gaind Krishnan (New York University) – "Material Bodies and Listening Selves: Sama’ as Healing Technology at Nizamuddin."
Honorable Mention: Yang Shuo (University of Pittsburgh) – "In-Between: Perspectives from an International Student on Decolonizing Ethnomusicology."

2019 – Best paper from SEM Albuquerque 2018

Prize: Brian E. Bond (The Graduate Center, City University of New York) – "Teaching Islam in Song: Sindhi Kāfī performance on India’s Western Border."

2018 – Best paper (2 awards) from SEM Denver 2017

Prize: Jeongin Lee (University of Texas at Austin) – "Women’s gugak in 21st century Korea: Challenging the Tradition and Recapturing the Contemporariness."
Prize: Yun Emily Wang (University of Toronto) – "Shopping and Chopping, Sound, Diasporic Intimacy and Everyday Movements in Chinese Toronto."

2017 – Best paper from SEM Washington, D.C. 2016

Prize: Andrew Colwell (Wesleyan University) – "Acoustic Feedbacks: Rethinking the Relationships between Place, Music, and Nature in a Mongolian Community."
Honorable Mention: Yun Emily Wang (University of Toronto) – "Sung and Spoken Puns as 'Home-making’ in Toronto’s Queer Chinese Diaspora."

2016 – Best paper from SEM Austin 2015

Prize: Vivek Virani (University of California, Los Angeles) – "Folk Musicians on Tour: Regional Devotional Music Emerges into India’s National Culture."
Honorable Mention: Inderjit Kaur (University of California, Berkeley) – "Ethical sensations: affective attunements in Sikh Shabad Kirtan."
Honorable Mention: Eshantha Peiris (University of British Columbia) – "W.B. Makuloluwa and Sinhala Cultural Nationalism in Postcolonial Ceylon."

2015 – Best paper from SEM Pittsburgh 2014

Prize: Lara Pearson (University of Durham) – "Gesture in Karnatak Music Pedagogy: Typologies, Ethical Constraints and Cross-modal Interaction."

2014 – Best paper from SEM Indianapolis 2013

Eben M. Graves (University of Texas at Austin) – "Big Talas, Shrinking Markets: Padavali-Kirtan in West Bengal’s Cultural Economy."

2013 – Best paper from SEM New Orleans 2012

Adam Kielman (Columbia University) – "Xiandia Minyao: ‘Modern Folk’ in Guangzhou."

2012 – Best paper from SEM Philadelphia 2011

Benjamin Tausig (NYU) – "Playing under Protest: Diffusion and Decay."

2011 – Best paper from SEM Los Angeles 2010

James Rhys Edwards (UCLA) – "Silence by My Noise: An Ecocritical Aesthetic of Noise in the Sound Art of Akita Masami."

2010 – Best paper from SEM Mexico City 2009

Katherine In-Young Lee (Harvard University) – "P'ungmul, Politics, and Protest: Drumming during South Korea‟s Democratization Movement / P’ungmul, la politica y protesta: la percusión durante el movimiento democrático en Corea del Sur."

2009 – Best paper from SEM Middletown 2008

Justin Scarimbolo (University of California, Santa Barbara) – "Reassessing the Shift from Muslim to Hindu Dominance in North Indian Classical Music."