SMA awards: Society for Medical Anthropology Polgar, Hughes, and Rivers Paper Prize Competitions
The SMA announces the competition for the Rivers Undergraduate Student Paper Prize, the Charles Hughes Graduate Student Paper Prize, and the Steven Polgar Paper Prize. SMA Board member Lenore Manderson oversees the competition; contact her at lenore.manderson@med.monash.edu au with questions (but for the submission e-mail address, see below).
The Rivers and the Hughes competitions focus on student achievements. The Rivers Prize will be given for the outstanding paper in medical anthropology written by an undergraduate student; the Hughes Prize will be awarded for the best paper written by a graduate student. The names of the winners (and of their mentoring professors, if appropriate) will be announced at the 2008 SMA annual business meeting during the annual AAA meeting. Encourage your students to apply.
Papers must have been written while a student, in this or the preceding academic year only. Both prizes carry a $250 cash award, and the journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly (MAQ) will have the right of first refusal on winning manuscripts. Winners serve on the judging committee in the following year’s competition.
Thje final date of submission for 2008 has been extended until September 1, 2008. Entries for the Rivers and Hughes (student) prizes must be sent to the chairperson of the prize committees, Lenore Manderson at lenore.manderson@med.monash.edu.au by the end of this day. She will then send your paper and the cover letter to the relevant sub-committee members. All submissions must be electronic. Papers should not exceed 20 double-spaced pages, not including bibliography. To support blind review, no identifying information or acknowledgments should be contained in the manuscript. Only the paper’s title should appear prior to the text on page 1.
The cover letter should contain (a) the paper title, (b) which competition it is being entered into (Hughes or Rivers), (c) details about the author (including information on student status and relevant advisor’s name, if any), and (d) an email address for correspondence. Please also include your (e) postal mailing address and (f) phone number.
Notification of competition results will be made in the Fall. It is the entrant’s responsibility to keep the prize coordinator updated as to any change in his or her email contact information. If you are the winner and cannot be contacted, you will forfeit the prize.
The Steven Polgar Prize is awarded to a professional medical anthropologist for the best paper published in the SMA’s journal MAQ during the most recent complete volume year. The prize carries a $500 cash award. No nominations are needed: articles published in MAQ by eligible recipients will automatically be considered for this prize.