University students Stephanie Hanson, Michael J. Murphy, Steven A. Pijut and Steve Scharre have won the 16th Annual Carl Neureuther Student Book Collection Competition, sponsored by University Libraries.
This competition invites full-time WUSTL students who collect books to compete for cash prizes by writing an original essay about their collection, compiling a bibliography and submitting several books from the collection.
First- and second-place winners are named in two categories, graduate students and undergraduates. First-place winners take home a prize of $750; second-place winners receive $500.
Murphy won first prize among graduate students for his essay and collection titled “Zap! Pow! Out!: Twentieth Century Queer Comics.” He is a doctoral candidate in art history in Arts & Sciences.
Pijut won the second-place graduate award. His collection is titled “Marginally Speaking: A Collection of Modernist and Post-Modernist Texts.” He is working on a doctorate in English literature in Arts & Sciences.
Hanson, a senior majoring in English literature and psychology in Arts & Sciences, is the first-place undergraduate winner. She calls her collection “Constructing Meaning From the World: A Fusion of International Fiction, Poetry and Essays.”
Scharre, a junior Religious Studies student in Arts & Sciences, won the second-place award for undergraduates. His book collection is titled “Jesus, Muhammad and the Relentless War for Peace.”
Carl Neureuther, a 1940 graduate of the School of Business, created the contest to encourage University students to pursue lifelong learning through reading. He believed reading fostered intellectual growth and encouraged the development of personal libraries.
Neureuther also left University Libraries an endowment to support the PopLit collection, housed on the main level of Olin Library.