Erasmus Institute to establish book award
Special to The Observer
Notre Dame's Erasmus Institute has established a publishing award to honor books which examine issues in the social sciences, humanities or arts in light of Christian, Judaic or Islamic intellectual traditions.
The new Erasmus Institute Book Prize will be awarded the author of the best nonfiction book in English published in the United States during the previous calendar year. The $20,000 prize will be awarded each spring beginning in 2002.
The prize is intended to celebrate the intellectual resources of these religious traditions and to encourage writers to apply them to issues ordinarily regarded as extraneous to religion. The winning book will be chosen by a three-member jury evaluating works from a wide variety of fields, though explicitly theological or ethical works will not be considered.
Jury members for the first Erasmus Institute Book Prize competition are Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities and director of the DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University; Sabine MacCormack, Walgreen Professor of Human Values, professor of history and professor of classical studies at the University of Michigan; and Peter Steinfels, "Beliefs" columnist for The New York Times and visiting professor of history at Georgetown University.
The inaugural winner will be announced Feb. 1, 2002, and the prize will be awarded at a reception in New York City on April 6, 2002. For the first competition, books published in either 2000 or 2001 may be submitted. Only the book's publisher or a member of the Erasmus Institute Book Prize selection committee may make nominations.
Established in 1997 and named in honor of the 16th-century Catholic scholar and reformer, the Erasmus Institute seeks to reinvigorate the role of Catholic intellectual tradition in contemporary scholarship. Primarily concerned with Catholic intellectual life, the institute also supports research deriving from the intellectual traditions of other Christian churches, Judaism, and Islam. In addition to the Erasmus Institute Book Prize, the Institute sponsors residential fellowships, summer seminars, and conferences in the United States and abroad.
All News Stories for Wednesday, March 28, 2001
