The Kenneth Sherrill Prize is presented annually by the American Political Science Association (APSA) to honor the best doctoral dissertation proposal for an empirical study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) topics in political science.
Citation from the Award Committee:
The 2024 Kenneth Sherrill Prize is awarded to Yun (Nancy) Tang for her dissertation proposal, which presents a blueprint for a comparative study of how LGBTQ+ movements engage the law in authoritarian contexts, using China and Singapore as her fieldwork sites. She lays out a sophisticated multi-method approach to pursuing her project, combining comparative ethnographic fieldwork (including interviews, participant observation and real-time examination of relevant social media conversations) with content analysis of court rulings and litigant filings. In explaining the importance of this work, Tang deftly weaves together multiple strands of literature, including comparative analyses of the dynamics between authoritarianism and contentious social movements, studies of legal mobilization, and interdisciplinary scholarship on LGBTQ+ movements. Her initial sense is that legal mobilization creates a dilemma for both authoritarian states and social movements operating within them. Social movements face what she calls an “authoritarian legal mobilization dilemma” in that they risk legitimizing authoritarian regimes by using legal avenues for activism. Authoritarian states, conversely, face the dilemma of “double-edged authoritarian legality,” because legal rulings enhance state legitimacy but also open opportunities for rights claims that undermine autocratic control.
The Kenneth Sherrill Prize Committee is deeply impressed with Tang’s project and its potential contribution to the fields of LGBTQ+ politics and political science more broadly.
Yun (Nancy) Tang (she/they) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University with research interests in authoritarian politics, law and social movements, gender and sexuality, and U.S. immigration.
Before Princeton, Tang represented low-income Asian immigrants as the Yale Mary A. McCarthy Public Interest Law Fellow at Greater Boston Legal Services. Tang was a Yale Fox International Fellow to the University of Cape Town, and a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Tang holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Amherst College. Her writings have appeared in the Journal of Democracy, Foreign Policy, Nikkei Asian Review, The Diplomat, and the Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal.
APSA thanks the committee members for their service: Dr. Ellen Andersen (Chair) of the University of Vermont, Dr. Logan S. Casey of the Movement Advancement Project, Dr. Gabriele Magni of Loyola Marymount University, and Dr. Carly Thomsen of Middlebury College.