The American Folklore Society’s 2012 Zora Neale Hurston Prize, given to a graduate or undergraduate student for the best work in any medium on African American folklore, was awarded to Kate Parker Horigan for her paper, “Unofficial Histories in Katrina Survivor Narratives.”

The AFS Folk Belief and Religious Folklife Section awarded its 2012 Don Yoder Graduate Student Prize in Religious Folklife to Benjamin Gatling for his paper "The Guide after Rumi: Tradition in Tajik Sufism."

The AFS Foodways Section gave second place in its 2012 Sue Samuelson Foodways Student Essay competition to Nancy Yan for her paper “Wor Sue Gai and Claiming Local Identity.”

The AFS Women’s Section gave its 2012 Elli Köngäs-Maranda Student Paper Prize to Elizabeth Zaleski for her paper "Other Writer's Mothers: Reflections on Representing Family.”