The Doshisha Asian Studies prize from the income of a gift from Amherst House, Doshisha University, is awarded for the best undergraduate honors thesis pertaining to Asia. Recommendations are made by the Asian Languages and Civilizations Faculty for work that exemplifies an understanding of Asian culture in a liberal arts context.

Past Winners

2023

  • Edmund Kennedy - Enduring Defeat: An Analysis of the U.S. Civil Administration’s Impact on Okinawan Autonomy and Memory, 1945-1972

2022

  • Olivia Doyle - (Mis)Representing the Ainu: The History and Politics of Ainu Exhibition in Japan’s National Museums

2021

  • Lexi Ma - The Coveted Passage: Illegal Migration from Fuzhou to the United States in the Late 20th Century
  • Sabir Meah -  Abrahamic Pagans? The Search for the Mysterious Qur’anic Audience in Mecca 

2020

  • Shreeansh Agrawal - Moving Out, Looking In: Representation in the Globalized Indian Contemporary Art Scene from 2000 to 2015
  • Julia Marie Cárdenas - One Dot in a Million: Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms and the Impact of Social Media

2019

  • Jamie Mason McNamara - Hybridity, Revolution, and Madame Nhu in French Colonial Vietnam

2018

  • Michael Bessey - From Poetry to Politics: The Shahnameh and Conversion to Iranian Nationalism

2017

  • Siyu Feng - From Istanbul to Kashgar: Ahmet Kemal's Education Mission to Chinese Turkestan, 1885-1917 

2016

  • Gabriela Espinosa - Amma, The Hindu Hugging Saint: Embodied Devotion, Transnational Belief, and the Creation of a Rose-scented Ministry

2015

  • Chen Jiang - Daughter of Art History: Three Case Studies of Morimura Yasumasa's Female Impersonation

2014

  • Yi Lu - Constructing the Republican Line: Workers of Kunming-Haiphong Railway, 1903-1910
  • Catherine Morse - Elvers to Kabayaki: From the Backwoods of Maine to the Markets of Japan, the Amazing Journey of the American Eel

2013

  • Bobbi Mason - Remembering, Rebuilding, Redefining Hiroshima: The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
  • Alice Wang - Ai Weiwei: The Politics of Art in Postmodernity

2012

  • Sarah Schear - Valuing Daughters: Contestations of Kinship and Activism Surrounding Sex-Selective Abortion in India

2011

  • Roman Gautman -  Indian Opinions on Tibet: The Indian Press, Foreign Policy, and the Emergence of Popular Sympathy for Tibet, 1947-2962
  • Alicia Ciccone - The Class of 1978:  New Waves in Music and the Chinese Diaspora

2010

  • Charles C. Hall - Tales of the Brave Fish: Whaling, Nation, and Nature in Contemporary Japan

2008

  • Ross Wolfarth - Not Charity for the Poor but Life to the Dead:  Protestant Missionaries and the Great North China Famine of 1876-1879

2007

  • Lola Milholland - Bitter Medicine, Luscious Delicacy: A Cultural History of Beef in Modern Japan

2006

  • John Kim - And Then Went Down the Navel...the Opacitization of Language in Chinese and English Poetry and Literature
  • Douglas Schrashun - The Sage of the Sakyas Meets the God of Manga: Tezuka Osmu's Interpretation of the Buddha Biography

2005

  • Joshua Skiles - Buildings in Dialogue with Tradition: Hara Hiroshi's Kyoto Station Building and the Works of Takamatsu Shin
  • Erin Tanaka - Someone Else's Problem: Purity, Impurity, and the Social Construction of AIDS in Japan

2004

  • Olga A. Zlotnik - Japanese "Parasite Single" Women in the Mecca of Haute Couture
  • Geoffrey Brounell - The Japanese Prime Minister

2003

  • Megan Lau

2002

  • Margaret Smart - A Conscious Balance: Japanese Women Creating Roles in Transition

2001

  • Reginald Jackson - A Robe by Any Other Name: An Investigation of Robe Katami in Japanese Literature and Drama

2000

  • George Solt - The U.S.-Japan Security Alliance: A Fragile Linchpin of Stability in East Asia

1999

  • Fumiaki Tosu - Okinawa, The 1950's Land Struggle

1998

  • Andrew Hecht - Have Your World and Eat it Too
  • Victor Hu - 
  • Amy Stone - From the Kitchen We Can See the World: Collective Identity, Personal Transformation, and Lifestyle Politics in Japan's Seikatsu Club Cooperative

1997

  • Senoe Torgerson - Journeys: A Bi-Cultural Account of the Shikoku Eighty-Eight Temple Pilgrimage

1996

  • Venessa Fong - Iron Girls, Model Workers, Virtuous Wives, and Good Mothers: Gender Inequality and Elite Constructions of Urban Womanhood in the People's Republic of China

1995

  • Kevin Carr - Rising from the Earth: A Study of the Freer Jizo bosatsu reigenki emaki and the Transformation of Jizo Belief in Kamakura Period Japan
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