Bela KornitizerThe Bela Kornitzer Award was established in 1992 by Alicia Karpati and her late husband, George Karpati, in honor of Bela Kornitzer, Mrs. Karpati’s brother.  The Award recognizes the achievements in Hungary and in the United States of Hungarian-born journalist and author Bela Kornitzer (1910-1964).  Recent non-fiction books published by Drew Faculty and Alumni are considered for the prize every two years.  In 2003, the endowment was increased to provide for separate Faculty and Alumni awards.  The award winners are traditionally announced at the biennial January Friends of the Library Gala.

Award Recipients

1995
Professor Karen McCarthy Brown
Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn
University of California Press, 1991 

1997
Professor Janet Handler Burstein
Writing Mothers, Writing Daughters: Tracing the Maternal in Stories by American Jewish Women
University of Illinois Press, 1996

2000
Professor Johannes Morsink
The University Declaration of Human Rights, Drafting and Intent
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999

2002
Professor Jonathan Rose
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
Yale University press, 2001

2004
Professor Catherine Keller
Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming
Routledge Press, 2003

Dr. Brian Regal, GSGS Ph.D. ’01, MA ‘96
Henry Fairfield Osborn:  Race and the Search for the Origins of Man
Ashgate Press, 2002

 2006
Assistant Professor of History C. Wyatt Evans
The Legend of John Wilkes Booth:  Myth, Memory, and a Mummy
University of Kansas Press, 2004 

Dr. J. Storrs Hall, C’76
Nanofuture:  What’s  Next for Nanotechnology?
Prometheus Books, 2005

2008
Associate Professor of Sociology Caitlin Killian
North African Women in France:  Gender, Culture, and Identity Stanford University Press, 2006

Dr. Martin Foys, C’90
Virtually Anglo-Saxon:  Old Media, New Media, and Early Medieval Studies in the Late Age of Print
University Press of Florida, 2007

2010
Associate Professor of History Sharon Sundue
Industrious in Their Stations:  Young People at Work in Urban America, 1720-1820
University of Virginia Press, 2009

Dr. Robert McParland, CSGS ‘05
Charles Dickens’s American Audience
Rowman and Littlefield, 2010

Bela Kornitzer’s papers, books, and other archival materials are housed among the Drew University Library’s Special Collections.   See https://uknow.drew.edu/confluence/display/Library/Bela+Kornitzer+Papers for an overview. To view a past exhibit of the author’s work, see https://uknow.drew.edu/confluence/display/Library/Bela+Kornitzer%27s+Great+American+Heritage.