November 25, 1996

Awards and Honors

Carter Wilson, professor of community studies, has won the 1996 Ruth Benedict Prize for his book Hidden in the Blood: A Personal Investigation of AIDS in the Yucatan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). The prize recognizes the best monograph on a gay or lesbian theme and is given annually by the Society of Gay and Lesbian Anthropologists at its meeting during the American Anthropological Association convention, which was held this year in San Francisco November 20-24. Wilson shares this year's award with William Leap, author of Gay Men's English.

Hidden in the Blood explores the daily lives of staff and patients at a medical clinic that treats HIV-positive people in the southeastern region of Mexico. Readers come to know patients from a wide range of backgrounds--middle-aged fathers, married couples, transvestites, truck drivers, folklore dancers, and a young woman infected by a blood transfusion during plastic surgery.