2010 Adam Repán Petko Memorial Student Book Collection Competition
 Undergraduate winner Jennifer Barr receives her diploma from juror Ann Frenkel |
 Graduate winner John Alvarado was not able to attend the award ceremony |
The GRADUATE winner of The Adam Repán Petko Book Collection Competition for 2010 is John A. Alvarado for the entry entitled The Anthropology of Indigenous Mixtec Transnational Communities.
John’s collection covers the indigenous Mixtec population of the Oaxaca and Baja regions in Mexico, and their transformation from closed communities to transnational, maintained by members who migrated in search for work but returned and/or participated with their native communities. The body of the collection is in two languages: English and Spanish, but it also includes several books in Mixtec: a Bible, a dictionary and a trilingual documentation of a local festival. In judging John’s entry the judges pointed out that his collection was one of the most elaborate and in-depth; at the same time it was very personal. A tribute to Alvarado’s late teacher, the UCR professor Michael Kearney, John’s collection is also a growing research and reference tool of a serious scholar.
The UNDERGRADUATE winner of The Adam Repán Petko Book Collection Competition for 2009 is Jennifer A. Barr for the entry Finding Cinderella's Slipper: Fairy Tales Across Cultures and Time.
Jennifer’s collection focuses on the fairy tale and it covers different languages, cultures, traditions, and historical periods. As a true collector, she presents multiple versions of the same story, and some editions are included for the illustrations as much as for the stories. Jennifer points out that she wanted to include “not only works that outwardly identify themselves as fairy tales, but also to try to see the elemental fairy tale roots present at the base of the story itself”—thus she includes Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. The jury was particularly impressed with Jennifer's detailed bibliography; she includes not just the description of the contents, but also gives the context and lovingly describes the physical aspects of her books, including illustrations and information about the illustrators. Her collection shows a great imagination and great potential for growth.
The 2010 jury, Gwido Zlatkes, Chair, Ann Frenkel, and John Bloomberg-Rissman selected these entries from among 8 contenders.
