The Boyer Prize

Nominations Due by:

June 1, 2024

2024 SPA Boyer Prize: Call for Submissions

The Society for Psychological Anthropology awards the Boyer Prize for Contributions to Psychoanalytic Anthropology annually to a published book and/or an article that addresses the psychodynamic process in cultural context. Because the Boyer Prize was not awarded in 2023**, please note the expanded publication time frame eligibility. The 2024 Boyer Prize will be awarded to a book and/or article published between June 1, 2022 and May 15, 2024. The deadline for submission is June 1, 2024.

By “psychodynamic process” we mean the implicit and often unconscious assumptions that shape emotions, relationships, dreams, and other aspects of subjective experience. By “cultural context” we mean the social world in which individuals are embedded and which is the usual focus of anthropological work. The Boyer Prize seeks to encourage and to reward work that takes a psychodynamic approach to a cultural phenomenon, an anthropological perspective on the psychodynamically oriented clinical context, or in some way integrates the theoretical or clinical insights of psychoanalysis with the traditional methods or subject matter of anthropology. Winners of the Boyer Prize are members of future selection committees on a three-year rotation.

The Boyer Prize is named for Dr. L. Bryce Boyer (1916-2000), a psychoanalyst who advanced the concept of countertransference and who, with his anthropologist wife, Ruth Boyer, conducted long-term research with the Mescalero Apache.

Nominations may be made by any active member of the American Anthropological Association, including the author. There is a preference for the award to be given to those who are members of the SPA, although this is not a requirement of the award. Two separate awards may be issued (one for a book and one for an article), depending on submissions.

The winner(s) of the Boyer Prize will be announced at the SPA Biennial meetings in Spring 2025. The prize comes with a $500 award.

All nominations, including self-nominations, must be accompanied by a cover letter discussing the significance of the work’s contribution to psychodynamic anthropology.

Submissions must be received by June 1, 2024, following the below guidelines:

If you are submitting a paper, all nomination materials (article PDF, cover letters) should be emailed to all the three prize committee members (email addresses below), cc’ing SPA Secretary Bridget M. Haas (bmh7@case.edu) with the email subject line “SPA Boyer Prize submission.”

If you are submitting a book, please email the nomination cover letter and, if possible, a PDF of the book to committee Chair, Andrea Chiovenda at chiovendaa@duq.edu, cc’ing SPA Secretary Bridget M. Haas (bmh7@case.edu) with the email subject line “SPA Boyer Prize submission.”  We will then supply you with the mailing address for the three Boyer Prize committee members to which hard copies of the book must be sent (postmarked no later than May 31, 2024).

Please direct any questions to SPA Secretary Bridget M. Haas at bmh7@case.edu

 All award and selection committees abide by the SPA’s Conflict of Interest Statement and Recusal Policy

** Please note that due to technical issues, submissions responding to last year’s (2023) Boyer Prize announcement were likely not received by the Boyer Prize committee. It has come to our attention that the 2023 Boyer Prize solicitation of submissions contained an incorrect email address for the prize committee chair, Dr. Chiovenda. Therefore, if you submitted an article or book for the 2023 Boyer Prize, we ask that you please re-submit the work for consideration for the 2024 Boyer Prize, which includes an expanded eligibility time frame, to include publications between June 1, 2022 and May 15, 2024.

Dr. Andrea Chiovenda (Chair)

Department of Psychology

Duquesne University

chiovendaa@duq.edu

Dr. Michael D’Arcy

Department of Anthropology

Haverford College

mdarcy@haverford.edu

Dr. Emily Ng  

Department of Anthropology

University of Pennsylvania

emily.ng@sas.upenn.edu