The Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize

With support from the AAA, the HSAIG awards The Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize annually to a book of significance in the field of human sexuality.

The Human Sexuality & Anthropology Interest Group is now accepting submissions for 2024-2025!

The Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize is named for two pioneering anthropologists of sexuality. Professors Bolin and Herdt co-founded HSAIG in 2006 to create a forum for anthropologists from all subdisciplines to exchange ideas about research and teaching on the topic of human sexuality.

The prize will be presented at the HSAIG virtual business meeting for the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting in November 2025 to acknowledge excellence in a scholarly book written about human sexuality from an anthropological perspective. Authors may represent any scholarly discipline, including all subfields of anthropology and adjacent disciplines. The book must engage innovative anthropological theories and methods. Books placing human sexuality in evolutionary or archaeological context are welcome but must engage significantly with human sexuality and not only that of non-human animals. Sexuality must be the major topical focus of the text; manuscripts whose central focus is only on gender rather than also centering sexuality will not be competitive.

Submissions should be books that have been published in English between January 2024 and June 1, 2025. The prize is open to monographs but not edited volumes. Multi-author monographs are eligible; the prize money would be divided equally among the authors.

Self-nominations are allowed. All nominations must be accompanied by a cover letter discussing the significance of the work's contribution to anthropological understandings of human sexuality.

All nomination materials (cover letters) should be emailed to the chair of the committee, Ruth Goldstein, at ruth.goldstein@wisc.edu In the subject line of the email, please write "HSAIG 2025 Book Prize."

Both hard copies and electronic copies of books are accepted. Hard copies will need to be mailed individually to the four committee members. Please include a request for mailing addresses with your nomination email. PDFs or e-books will be circulated to the committee by the chair.

All materials must be received no later than June 15, 2025. If you are aware of a delay in sending materials from the publisher, please be stay in contact.

All award and selection committees abide by AAA's Statement on Ethics (https://americananthro.org/about/policies/statement-on-ethics/).