For more than half a century, student bibliophiles have been receiving prizes for the quality of their book collections, thanks to the generosity of Yale alumnus Adrian Van Sinderen (Class of 1910). In 1957 Mr. Van Sinderen established two prizes, awarding $1,000 to seniors and $700 to sophomores, in order to encourage undergraduates to collect books, build libraries of their own, and read for pleasure and learning. In 2002 a poster competition was established. A $500 prize is awarded to the winning designer of the annual poster announcing the book collecting competition.
Due to the University’s response to COVID-19, the committee of judges was not able to view the finalists’ collections in person during the month of April. Instead, the committee created a special prize of $175 to celebrate the joy of books and collecting, which was awarded to each of the ten finalists in recognition of their collections. We congratulate them, and they are listed below.
2020 Finalists
James Barringer
Silliman College
Class of 2022
The Supreme Court of the United States
Rachel Chew Min Qi
Ezra Stiles College
Class of 2020
Approaching Experimental Ethnography
Cathy Duong
Morse College
Class of 2022
Vietnamese-American Literature: “The Ghosts Who Refuse Resurrection”
Rudd Fawcett
Jonathan Edwards College
Class of 2022
Graphic Design and Typography: History, Theory, and Practice
David Hurtado
Benjamin Franklin College
Class of 2020
Entorno: Explorations in Landscape and Environment
Christina Pao
Branford College
Class of 2020
Institutions: Their Construction and Deconstruction
Adrian Rivera
Jonathan Edwards College
Class of 2020
Writing about Writing
Adam Shaw
Timothy Dwight College
Class of 2020
Toward a Rational Society: Two Centuries of German Social Thought, from Hegel to Habermas, Through an Inclusive Lens
Kellen Silver
Pierson College
Class of 2020
Agapē Agape: Reconsidering “Love Literature”
Adrian Wong-Valle
Grace Hopper College
Class of 2020
Artists and Experts: The History, Theory, and Practice of Bartending and Mixology