The SCA is proud to award the first annual Cultural Horizons Prize to Saba Mahmood (U Chicago) for her article "Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent:Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival" (CA 16, no. 2 (2000): 202-236).

2002's doctoral jury--Erin Koch (The New School), Guha Shankar (UT Austin) and Sasha Welland (UC Santa Cruz)--praised the essay for its ability to decompose the totalizing discourses that cast all Islams together under the rubric of fundamentalism, and for taking ethnographic writing beyond its traditional disciplinary audience.

About the Cultural Horizons Prize

The SCA has long been distinguished by having the largest graduate student membership of any section of the AAA. Recognizing that doctoral students are among the most experimentally minded--and often among the best read--of ethnographic writers, this award asks of SCA's dissertating readers, "Who is on your reading horizon?"

This spirit gave rise to the Cultural Horizons Prize, awarded yearly by a jury of doctoral students for the best article appearing in Cultural Anthropology.