Aaron Vanides and Elizabeth Litchfield are the winners of
the 18th annual T. Kimball
Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting. Vanides, winner of the
second-year prize, was awarded $500 for his collection, “Into the Mists of the
North: A Comparative collection of the Medieval Germanic Tradition and Its
Modern Manifestations.” Litchfield received the $1,000 fourth-year prize for “A
Library of Love: Challenging the Social Order One Couple (Or Threesome?) At a
Time.” Fourth-year student Elizabeth Davidson received Honorable Mention for
“Religion in Late Antique Egypt.”
Above: a selection of
books from Elizabeth Litchfield’s collection
This year’s prize committee included Bradin Cormack,
Associate Professor, Department of English and Director of the Nicholson Center
for British Studies, University of Chicago; Brad Jonas, Powell’s Books Hyde
Park and member of the University of Chicago Library Society Steering
Committee; Alice Schreyer, Director, Special Collections Research Center; Sem Sutter, Assistant Library Director for
Collections; and Erin Wonder, winner of the 2007 fourth-year prize for her
collection, “Cultured Insolence: Wit in
British Literature.”
In his application essay, Vanides explains that
his collection began when he purchased a book as a 10th-grade
student in Menlo Park, California, that led to his learning
Norwegian and a fascination with Germanic languages and culture. He also
describes his trip to the Faroe Islands – to
date “the height of my experience as a book-collector,” – where he acquired
very hard-to-obtain books in this challenging language.
Above: books from the
collection of Aaron Vanides
Elizabeth Litchfield started out as an avid reader of romance
novels and discovered ,after she came to the University of Chicago
and served as a reviewer for a romance community website, that she wanted to
focus on “the very best of the genre.” Her collection is organized according to
standard “sub-genres” such as African-American, Classics, Gothic, Graphic
Novels, and Inspirational. Litchfield remains an enthusiastic fan of romance
novels, but she also values their scholarly potential: “These books are windows
into how communities of women are struggling with questions of identity and
power under the cover of pink typeface and floral covers.” For Elizabeth Davidson, an early fascination
with Gnosticism led her to study Coptic at Chicago; her collecting interests have expanded
to include magic and early monastic life. On a visit to campus she purchased
Bentley Layton’s The Gnostic Scriptures, and in the fall she will attend Yale,
where Layton
teaches, to study Ancient Christianity.
As diverse as these collections are in their subject focus,
each one reflects the passion, resourcefulness and creativity of the collector
who shaped it – and demonstrates that book collecting can be done on any
budget! Congratulations to our winners.
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